Abstract
Raja Rum whether understood as a Greek, Persian or Turkish ruler is a popular figure in traditional Malay literature. A great array of kings of Rum occurs in many Malay literary genres in which his protean image emerges as king-sage, just king, or tyrant. However fantastical adventure tales and historical or quasi-historical chronicles are his favourite ‘habitats’. In the former genre, Raja Rum appears in the fanciful world of heavenly and demonic creatures that populate various never-never lands in some of which allusions to the Ottoman empire can be discerned. A different, although no less imaginary, Raja Rum appears in works of the latter genre. This is Iskandar Zulkarnain (Alexander the Great), first a Persian and later a Turkish king, the greatest ever monarch of East and West and the preacher of the primordial Islam of the prophet Ibrahim (Abraham). Represented as the progenitor of local dynasties, this ‘stranger-king’ dominates the world of political mythology in chronicles of many peoples of the Malay Archipelago. He and his descendents create the ‘dynastic space’ in which Malay dynasties are linked to each other and with lineages of the great powers of the external world. On the basis of Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals) and Tambo Minangkabau (Minangkabau traditions) the article examines this mandala-like dynastic space which, inter alia, shows an interaction between the political mythologies of these two works.
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