Abstract
This fascinating work represents the output of 30 years of joint study by the two editors. And the value of undertaking this monumental task is clear, with the editors making a strong case for the importance of the Hikayat Miʿrāj Nabi Muḥammad within the corpus of Malay literature.
The tale dates to the early 17th century, according to Braginsky, placing it within a crucial period of Islamisation of the Malay world. The story relates the miraculous night journey of the Prophet Muḥammad to heaven referred to in Q17:1, providing colourful details on the various elements and encounters of the prophetic night journey. The narrative appears in different forms: this study represents one form presented in a manuscript held in Leiden, MS Cod Or 1713.
The editors remind us of the continuing popularity of the theme of the Miʿrāj in Indonesia. Curiously the Malay version of this story has been largely ignored by scholars, in spite of the work being mentioned by GH Werndly in his 1736 list of Malay works and the strong interest among scholars in versions of the story in other Muslim languages.
The editors wisely issue a disclaimer in the initial 22-page Introduction, pointing to the difficulty of understanding and translating the Malay text and declaring that ‘quite a few translations are therefore tentative’ (p. ix). Those with experience in studying and editing classical Malay manuscripts can easily identify with such a note of caution.
The editors include cross references to Heaven and Hell stories in other Malay literary materials. They also offer very helpful colour photographs, with covers of various kitab kuning and published versions associated with the Miʿrāj supplementing several photographs of pages of the Leiden manuscript.
The Introduction also offers a detailed description of Leiden MS Cod Or 1713, providing a guide for other manuscript editors of the kind of information that is worth mentioning in manuscript descriptions. They discuss matters of vocalisation of the Jawi Malay and observe that diagonal catchwords are written at the end of each page to lead on to the next. Page numbers have been added by a later hand, and the fact that the Malay of the text bears some Javanese influence invites the editors to speculate that the manuscript originated from Batavia.
The bulk of this study is devoted to the Romanisation of the Malay text and the editors’ translation into English (pp. 23–191). The editors’ overriding aim is to present the text for future scholarly study, not to study it in detail themselves. The section in the Introduction entitled ‘Spelling and mistakes in the text’ summarises their labour of love in producing this work. The challenges they faced are summarised in the statement that ‘[t]he spelling of both Malay and Arabic in this manuscript do not seem to follow any definite consistent standard’ (p. 20), with references to a difficult decision regarding whether words should be considered as Arabic or Malay, and scribal errors, omissions and repetitions. The editors conclude that errors point to ‘a living, but not particularly scholarly tradition…[the] modest background of the writer/scribe of the manuscript’ (p. 21). Given these challenges, the editors wisely decided that their Romanised text should adhere to modern spelling, thereby making the work much more accessible to a wider audience.
Given these challenges, it may seem churlish to point out infelicities in the Romanised and translated texts produced by the editors. However, such is an essential task of a book review. Romanisation errors occur at various points of the Malay text, with the following being a representative sample.
Jaʾfar should read Jaʿfar (p. 4).
ʾalayh al-salām should read ʿalayh al-salām (p. 4).
Ya Allāh, ya Ilahi, ya Rabi, ya Sayyidī (p. 93) show inconsistent diacritics.
Allāh taʿala (p. 93) also shows inconsistent diacritics.
Rāb al-ʿālamīn (p. 95) points to either an error in the MS or in the Romanisation. There is diacritical inconsistency in Bani Isrāʾīl (p. 100) and Banī Isrāʾīl (p. 105). The phrase Naṣrānī dan Yahudi (p. 102) shows inconsistency in diacritics.
Additionally, questions could be asked of the editors about certain translation choices, such as in the following representative sample:
Al-raḥmān > ‘the Beneficial’.
Allāh taʿala > ‘Allah the Highest’. SAW > ‘May Allah bless him and grant him peace’ (an English abbreviation such as PBUH would have been a more efficient way of rendering the abbreviation in the Malay text). Kedua sayyid itu > ‘the two lordly ones’.
The work concludes with a very useful Appendix (pp. 195–198), which lists the Miʿrāj MSS in Indonesian languages with their locations.
The choices made by the editors show that they had several audiences in mind: academic, hence the rigorous scholarship; specialist, hence the detail on manuscript study methodology; general, hence the choice of language in transliteration and translation to make it accessible to a non-specialist audience. Overall, this work represents a very valuable contribution to Indonesian and Malay manuscript studies as well as to studies of history, culture and linguistics, with the editors having produced a ground-breaking text edition of a little studied work.