Islam (part 7)

Islam From The Beginning To 1300

Date: 2002

The Spread Of Islam To Southeast Asia

The spread of Islam to various parts of coastal India set the stage for
its further expansion to island Southeast Asia. As we have seen, Arab traders
and sailors regularly visited the ports of Southeast Asia long before they
converted to Islam. Initially the region was little more than a middle ground,
where the Chinese segment of the great Euroasian trading complex met the
Indian Ocean trading zone to the west. At ports on the coast of the Malayan
peninsula, east Sumatra, and somewhat later north Java, goods from China were
transferred from East Asian vessels to Arab or Indian ships, and products from
as far west as Rome were loaded into the emptied Chinese ships to be carried
to East Asia. By the 7th and 8th centuries A.D., sailors and ships from areas
within Southeast Asia - particularly Sumatra and Malaya - had become active in
the seaborne trade of the region. Southeast Asian products, especially luxury
items, such as aromatic woods from the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra, and
spices, such as cloves, nutmeg, and mace from the far end of the Indonesian
archipelago, had also become important exports to both China in the east and
India and the Mediterranean area in the west. These trading links were to
prove even more critical to the expansion of Islam in Southeast Asia than they
had earlier been to the spread of Buddhism and Hinduism.

As the coastal trade and shipping of India came to be controlled (from
the 8th century onward) increasingly by Muslims from such regions as Gujarat
and various parts of south India, elements of Islamic culture began to filter
into island Southeast Asia. But only in the 13th century after the collapse of
the far-flung trading empire of Shrivijaya, which was centered on the Straits
of Malacca between Malaya and the north tip of Sumatra, was the way open for
the widespread proselytization of Islam. With its great war fleets, Shrivijaya
controlled trade in much of the area and was at times so powerful that it
could launch attacks on rival empires in south India. Indian traders, Muslim
or otherwise, were welcome to trade in the chain of ports controlled by
Shrivijaya. Since the rulers and officials of Shrivijaya were devout
Buddhists, however, there was little incentive for the traders and sailors of
Southeast Asian ports to convert to Islam, the religion of growing numbers of
the merchants and sailors from India. With the fall of Shrivijaya, the way was
open for the establishment of Muslim trading centers and efforts to preach the
faith to the coastal peoples. Muslim conquests in areas such as Gujarat and
Bengal, which separated Southeast Asia from Buddhist centers in India from the
11th century onward, also played a role in opening the way for Muslim
conversion.

The Pattern Of Conversion

As was the case in most of the areas to which Islam spread, peaceful and
voluntary conversion was far more important than conquest and force in
spreading the faith in Southeast Asia. Almost everywhere in the islands of the
region, trading contacts paved the way for conversion. Muslim merchants and
sailors introduced local peoples to the ideas and rituals of the new faith and
impressed on them how much of the known world had already been converted.
Muslim ships also carried Sufis to various parts of Southeast Asia, where they
were destined to play as vital a role in conversion as they had in India. The
first areas to be won to Islam in the last decades of the 13th century were
several small port centers on the northern coast of Sumatra. From these ports,
the religion spread in the following centuries across the Strait of Malacca to
Malaya.

On the mainland the key to widespread conversion was the powerful trading
city of Malacca, whose smaller trading empire had replaced the fallen
Shrivijaya. From the capital at Malacca, Islam spread down the east coast of
Sumatra, up the east and west coasts of Malaya, to the island of Borneo, and
to the trading center of Demak on the north coast of Java. From Demak, the
most powerful of the trading states on north Java, the Muslim faith was
disseminated to other Javanese ports and, after a long struggle with a
Hindu-Buddhist kingdom in the interior, to the rest of the island. From Demak,
Islam was also carried to the Celebes, tha spice islands in the eastern
archipelago, and from there to Mindanao in the southern Philippines.

This progress of Islamic conversion shows that port cities in coastal
areas were particularly receptive to the new faith. Here the trading links
were critical. Once one of the key cities in a trading cluster converted, it
was in the best interest of others to follow suit in order to enhance personal
ties and provide a common basis in Muslim law to regulate business deals.
Conversion to Islam also linked these centers, culturally as well as
economically, to the merchants and ports of India, the Middle East, and the
Mediterranean. Islam made slow progress in areas such as central Java, where
Hindu-Buddhist dynasties contested its spread. But the fact that the earlier
conversion to these Indian religions had been confined mainly to the ruling
elites in Java and other island areas left openings for mass conversions to
Islam that the Sufis eventually exploited. The island of Bali, where Hinduism
had taken deep root at the popular level, remained largely impervious to the
spread of Islam. The same was true of most of mainland Southeast Asia, where
centuries before the coming of Islam, Theravada Buddhism had spread from India
and Ceylon and won the fervent adherence of both the ruling elites and the
peasant masses.

Sufi Mystics And The Nature Of Southeast Asian Islam

The fact that Islam came to Southeast Asia primarily from India and that
it was spread in many areas by Sufis had much to do with the mystical quality
of the religion and its tolerance for coexistence with earlier animist, Hindu,
and Buddhist beliefs and rituals. Just as they had in the Middle East and
India, the Sufis who spread Islam in Southeast Asia varied widely in
personality and approach. Most were believed by those who followed them to
have magical powers, and virtually all Sufis established mosque and school
centers from which they traveled in neighboring regions to preach the faith.

In winning converts, the Sufis were willing to allow the inhabitants of
island Southeast Asia to retain pre-Islamic beliefs and practices that
orthodox scholars would clearly have found contrary to Islamic doctrine.
Pre-Islamic customary law remained important in regulating social interaction,
while Islamic law was confined to specific sorts of agreements and exchanges.
Women retained a much stronger position, both within the family and in
society, than they had in the Middle East and India. Local and regional
markets, for example, continued to be dominated by the trading of small-scale
female buyers and sellers. In such areas as western Sumatra, lineage and
inheritance continued to be traced through the female line after the coming of
Islam, despite its tendency to promote male dominance and descent through the
male line. Perhaps most tellingly, pre-Muslim religious beliefs and rituals
were incorporated into Muslim ceremonies. Indigenous cultural staples, such as
the brilliant Javanese shadow plays that were based on the Indian epics of the
Brahmanic age, were refined, and they became even more central to popular and
elite belief and practice than they had been in the pre-Muslim era.

You Might Also Like:

The Greek Genius

The Greeks were the first to formulate many of the Western world's fundamental concepts in politics, philosophy, science, and art. How was itthat a relative handful of people could bequeath such a legacy tocivilization? The definitive answer may always elude the historian, but a goodpart of the expl...
Read More

Islam (part 10)

Islam From The Beginning To 1300 Date: 2002 Islamic Culture The attainments of the Muslims in the intellectual and artistic fieldscan be attributed not only to the genius of Arabs, but also to those peopleswho embraced the Islamic faith in Persia, Mesopotamia, Turkey, Syria, Egypt,North Africa, and ...
Read More

Islam (part 11)

Islam From The Beginning To 1300 Date: 2002 The Arab Empire Of The Umayyads Muhammad's victory over the Umayyads, his capture of Mecca, and theresulting allegiance of many of the bedouin tribes of Arabia created a whollynew center of power in the Middle Eastern cradle of civilizations. A backward,no...
Read More

Islam (part 12)

Islam From The Beginning To 1300 Date: 2002 From Arab To Islamic Empire: The Early Abbasid Era The sudden shift from Umayyad to Abbasid leadership within the IslamicEmpire reflected a series of even more fundamental transformations withinevolving Islamic civilization. The revolts against the Umayyad...
Read More

Islam (part 13)

Islam From The Beginning To 1300 Date: 2002The Mosque As A Symbol Of Islamic Civilization From one end of the Islamic world to the other, Muslim towns and citiescould (and can today) be readily identified by the domes and minarets of themosques where the faithful were (and are) called to prayer five...
Read More

Islam (part 14)

Islam From The Beginning To 1300 Date: 2002 An Age Of Learning And Artistic Refinement The avid interest in Muslim ideas and material culture displayed byEuropean knights and merchants who journeyed to the centers of Islamiccivilization in this era cautions us against placing too great an emphasis o...
Read More

Islam (part 15)

Islam From The Beginning To 1300 Date: 2002 Western Intrusions And The Crisis In The Arab Islamic Heartlands By the early 1800s, the Arab peoples of the Fertile Crescent, Egypt,coastal Arabia and North Afric had lived for centuries under Ottoman-Turkishrule. Though most Arabs resented Turkish domina...
Read More

Islam (part 2)

Islam From The Beginning To 1300 Date: 2002 Muhammad, Prophet Of Islam Into this environment at Mecca was born a man who would change completelythe religious, political, and social organization of his people. Muhammad (c.570-632) came from a family belonging to the Koraysh. His early years werediffi...
Read More

Islam (part 3)

Islam From The Beginning To 1300Date: 2002 The Islamic Faith And Law Islam places great emphasis on the necessity of obedience to God's law inaddition to faith. The Koran is the fundamental and ultimate source ofknowledge about Allah and the proper actions of his followers. This holy bookcontains th...
Read More

Islam (part 4)

Islam From The Beginning To 1300 Date: 2002 The Spread Of Islam The Islamic state expanded very rapidly after the death of Muhammadthrough remarkable successes both at converting unbelievers to Islam and bymilitary conquests of the Islamic community's opponents. Expansion of theIslamic state was an ...
Read More

Islam (part 5)

Islam From The Beginning To 1300 Date: 2002 Conclusion In this chapter, we have examined the origins and meteoric development ofIslam - both the religion and the community. The great power of Muhammad'steachings enabled the creative but fragmented Arab tribes to unify and expandacross three continen...
Read More

Islam (part 6)

Islam From The Beginning To 1300 Date: 2002The Coming Of Islam To South Asia The pattern of political fragmentation that had left the much-reducedAbbasid caliphate vulnerable to nomadic invasions was also found in theregions of South Asia to which Islam spread during the centuries of Abbasiddecline....
Read More

Islam (part 8)

Islam From The Beginning To 1300 Date: 2002Spread Into Africa The spread of Islam, from its heartland in the Middle East and NorthAfrica to India and Southeast Asia, revealed the power of the religion and itscommercial and sometimes military attributes. Civilizations were alteredwithout being fully ...
Read More

Islam (part 9)

Islam From The Beginning To 1300 Date: 2002The Abbasids, Zenith Of Islamic Civilization In 750 the Umayyad Dynasty was removed from power by rebels, and a newdynasty, the Abbasid, ruled most of the Muslim world from 750 to 1258. Thecity of Baghdad was built in 762 as the capital of the new caliph,Ab...
Read More

A History Of Islam (part 1)

Islam From The Beginning To 1300 Author: Stearns, Peter N.Date: 1992s Arabia Before The Prophet Islam produced one of the greatest civilizations the world has ever known. While Europe wallowed in the mire of the Dark Ages, Islam produced advances in science, mathematics, literature, medicine, archit...
Read More

Byzantium And Islam

Byzantium 395 Byzantium at the death of Justinian Byzantium 1000 AD Constantinople Islam at its Height Ottoman Empire 1450-1700 Ottoman Empire 1450-1700...
Read More

Sumerian History

Pre-Sumerian Evidence of inhabitation of the lands that would become Sumer date prior to 5500 B.C. It is probable that earlier settlements existed, but the rising waters of the Persian Gulf forced the settlers further north. These initial settlements were located around the marsh lands of the south....
Read More

Old Testament History

The Patriarchal Era (1800-1290 BC)Exodus and the Period of the Judges (1290-1050 BC)Early Israelite Monarchy (1050-750 BC)The United KingdomSaul (1029-1000)David (1000-961)Solomon (961-922)Rebellion of the North and Its AftermathThe Southern KingdomAssyrian Dominance (750-605 BC)The Rise of AssyriaT...
Read More