If in the first millennium, Shiva-Buddhist leaders from India and China made pilgrimages to the east. In the middle of the second millennium, pilgrims from the archipelago had to head west.
Al Tabari, author of the History of the Kings and Apostles , who lived in the 10th century has written about the existence of the Sayabijah people. This word is the plural form of Sabaj or Zabaj. The name is a designation for people who come from an archipelago in the far east. It is said that the name comes from the records of Ptolemy who made geographical maps in Roman times.
The two classical historians don’t seem to be making this up. Recently the Eijkmann Genetics Laboratory, Jakarta, published research on traces of the genetic spread of the people of the Archipelago.
At least since the 8th century, the people of the Archipelago have interbreed with the people of the Comoro islands in eastern Tanzania. The people of Madagascar to the south, even have a mother line from Banjar, South Kalimantan. The intercontinental marriage is thought to have occurred around the 11th century or at the same time as the Srivijaya Kingdom.
How did the people of the Archipelago, get to the east coast of Africa to the Arabian peninsula? The answer is ocean voyage.
Ancestral Sailors
The people of the archipelago are recorded in history as extraordinary sailors. It is said that the replica of the Sriwijaya boat, which was inspired by the sculptures of Borobudur, is the only model of the cruiser cargo boat that has a cabin for concubines or concubines. Compare this with Portuguese boats which forbid carrying women because they have the potential to trigger conflict.
Gabriel Ferrand, an orientalist from France, reviews the colony of the Nusantara people in Madagascar in the first millennium. They are a formidable crew. The city’s rulers used them to repel pirates. Chinese sources say they are able to swim with their eyes open. This ability is currently owned by the Bajo people, a nomadic sea tribe scattered in various regions of the archipelago.
Denys Lombard, Indonesianist from France in his book Nusajawa: The Asian Network , repeatedly explains the importance of understanding the very old ocean shipping network. The network is thought to have been busy before European sailors arrived. The spice trade that brought camphor from the jungles of Sumatra to Alexandria existed even before the Gregorian calendar began.
The oldest Arabic record of the Nusantara people who controlled oceanic trade was written by Buzurg ibn Shahriar, in his book Ajaib Al Hindi . Written in the early 11th century, this book describes the testimony of a man named Ibn Lakis. He witnessed about a thousand Waq-waq boats docked at Sofala (Mozambiq). They look for valuables in their land. Starting from turtle shells, leopard skins, amber, and especially Zanggi slaves.
Another place that has become a transit port for the Indonesian people since the beginning of Christ is Coromandel Beach. The name comes from the mention of Portuguese sailors about the Cola Mandala Kingdom. Its other name is Kuru Mandalam or Kuru Territory. The Tanjore inscription from Tamil dating to the 11th century records the victory of King Cola over the Kadaram Kingdom (Kedah). George Coedes, also from France, interpreted the incident as an attack on the Srivijaya Kingdom.
The second half of the first millennium is widely referred to by historians as the “Indianization” era of the archipelago. Coromandel Beach in the ocean shipping lane is a port that is directly opposite the tip of Sumatra. It is in this area that the cross culture of the Archipelago and India finds a point of contact.
Pilgrimage to the Holy Land
Five hundred years after the heyday of Srivijaya, there are not many outside sources that tell about the sea journeys of the Nusantara people. There was a backflow of merchants ranging from the Moros from the Iberian Peninsula in the far west, Persian merchant ships from Hormus to Gujarat to the emergence of Zheng He’s large fleet from China.
Majapahit’s diplomacy from the east of the island of Java only reached Southeast Asia. The Panji-Inao mythology is a record of traces that still traces to this day.
The spread of the arrival of traders from the country “upper the wind” to the coastal areas of the archipelago became a sign of a new era. In the first millennium, Shiva-Buddhist leaders from India and China made pilgrimages to the east. In the middle of the second millennium, pilgrims from the archipelago had to head west.
The oldest record was written by a Yemeni -born Sufi of Aden. Written around the beginning of the 14th century. Abdullah bin As’ad al Yafi’i wrote about a man named Mas’ud al Jawi or Mas’ud from Java. Earlier, Mas’ud had been a mystical teacher in Mecca.
Michael Laffan, a researcher from Leiden, noted the existence of Mas’ud as a Murshid (role model) of the Tariqah Qadiriyah. It was Mas’ud who invited al Yafi’i into the brotherhood which referred to the teachings of Shaykh Abdul Qadir al Jailani. Somehow the history of subsequent pilgrims from the archipelago has never been separated from the Baghdad-born Sufi figure who lived in the early 12th century.
Hamzah al Fansuri, a poet and Sufi from Aceh is recorded to have made a pilgrimage to Mecca in the early 16th century. The poems he composed describe himself as a follower of Qadiriyah.
Uniquely, Nuruddin al-Raniri, the next pilgrim who lived a century later, also declared himself a follower of the same sect. In fact, as has been recorded in history, al-Raniri was someone who stated the teachings of Hamzah Fansuri as the teachings of zindiq (atheist). He even pronounced the death penalty for his followers.
Despite the controversy that occurred during the reign of Sultan Iskandar al-Tsani, the figure of al-Raniri is someone who wrote various very important notes about the history of the pilgrims of the archipelago. Azyumardi Azra, in his doctoral thesis compiled into the book Jaringan Ulama , wrote that Randir, Gujarat, was born as one of the three big pilgrims in the archipelago who built a network of ulama across the ocean.
The three big pilgrims were two from Aceh while the other one came from Makassar. They are Nuruddin al-Raniri, Abdul-Rauf al-Singkili, and Yusuf al-Makassar. It was this Triumvirate that later built the branches of the archipelago’s pilgrim/ulama network that has grown to this day.