The poems of Hamzah Fansuri

Abstract

This is a book that deserves an enthusiastic welcome. Hamzah Fansuri is the earliest Sumatran author known to us by name. His nisba, (al-) Fans?r?, is derived from Fansur, the foreign name for Barus, a pepper town on the north-west coast of Sumatra. He may have died around 1600, although the authors believe an earlier date, circa 1590, is more likely. Little is known of his life, but he has left a corpus of poems and prose writings in the mystical tradition of Ibn cArabi written with a verve and a passion never equalled in Malay. A variorum edition of the poems has long been a crying need. The authors need no introduction: Dr. Brakel, a brilliant young scholar who had already written a number of important papers on Hamzah before his tragically early death, barely a year after formal collaboration had begun; and Professor Drewes, who has contributed more than any other individual to establishing the field of Islamic writing in Malay and Javanese as an intellectual discipline in its own right and continues to do so. The field, unfortunately, is still underexploited. Despite their impor tance for the intellectual history of the region and a fuller appreciation of the achievements of the world of Islam, the spiritual and intellectual traditions of Islam in Southeast Asia are not widely known. Part of the reason is that competence in Arabic and knowledge of the traditional disciplines, such as Qur'anic exegesis, Jurisprudence, Dogmatics and Mys ticism are indispensable for the task. Scholars so equipped are more likely to be drawn to a study of the Middle Eastern heartlands of the Islamic world than of the so-called periphery. The fact that Professors Drewes and Brakel have brought such expertise to the study of a Sumatran author makes the publication of their book a major event. Although less than three hundred pages, this study contains a wealth of material, encapsulating almost all that is known of Hamzah, supported by an excellent bibliography, notes, and a number of appendices on such matters as commentaries on Hamzah by other Malay authors, Javanese renderings of some of his works, and the Arabic element in the poetry. As such, it is a vademecum of much that is needed for a closer study of the poems. The authors' approach is brusque, and their terseness of expression