The Abolished Sultanate and its Royal Library: Arabic Qur’an Commentaries from Eighteenth-Century Banten
This article examines a number of Islamic manuscripts from the Banten royal library. Following the abolition of the Banten Sultanate and the forced abandonment of Surosowan Palace in the early nineteenth century, the Dutch colonial government appropriated the sultan’s goods and chattels, which inclu...
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| Опубликовано в: : | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/archipel, |
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| Главный автор: | |
| Формат: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Язык: | Anglais |
| Опубликовано: |
Archipel
2025
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| Предметы: | |
| Online-ссылка: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Итог: | This article examines a number of Islamic manuscripts from the Banten royal library. Following the abolition of the Banten Sultanate and the forced abandonment of Surosowan Palace in the early nineteenth century, the Dutch colonial government appropriated the sultan’s goods and chattels, which included a collection of Islamic manuscripts. These were transferred to Batavia, where they were housed in the Koninklijk Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen. My focus is on a number of Arabic Qurʾan commentaries that formed part of this collection. In this article, I argue that the manuscripts that were held in the Banten royal library demonstrate the existence of a highly sophisticated level of exegetical scholarship at the court. Moreover, the collection notably includes two manuscripts of the ʿArāʾis al-bayān, the Sufi Qurʾan commentary of the famous Persian Islamic scholar and mystic, Ruzbihān al-Baqlī (d. 1209). These are of differing dates but are clearly directly related. The inclusion of this work in the royal library is clear proof that the Islamic scholars of the Banten Sultanate were familiar with Sufi tafsīr, in addition to works that constituted a more mainstream Qurʾanic exegetical discourse in the pre-modern Southeast Asian context. Furthermore, the inclusion of a later copy of al-Baqlī’s commentary indicates that this work was in continual use in Southeast Asia since the sixteenth century until the fall of the sultanate. |
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