The Relationship between Astronomy and Architecture as an Element of Malay Intelligentsia

Abstract

Islam has been very influential in shaping societal developments in the Malay world. Such an influence manifests in various aspects of their lives, one of which can be clearly seen in several influential works carried out by Malay intellectuals in a number of fields. Old Malay manuscripts that deal with many Islamic aspects of knowledge has become a great legacy left by esteemed Malay religious scholars and intellectuals that serves as a testimony of the spread of Islam to the Malay world. Against such a backdrop, this study was carried out to examine the positive (good) and negative (bad) signs associated with Islamic months that helped Malays decide the appropriate months in which houses should be built. The study was based on a mixed-method approach based on a quantitative method and a qualitative method to help yield empirically reliable findings. The corpus-based analysis was the main analysis used by focusing on significant lexical values and concordant synthesis to highlight the good and bad signs associated with Islamic months. The researchers selected five (5) manuscripts that belonged to a corpus called Petua Membina Rumah. The analysis showed 50% of the Islamic months had negative signs while 42% of such months had positive signs. The remaining 8% had a mix of positive and negative signs. In addition, there were some instances involving a combination of positive and negative signs. Such occurrences provide an interesting view of the impact of signs on the Malay society, especially on its civilization. These significant findings highlight not only the Islamic months deemed suitable for building houses but also the thinking of Malay scholars in shaping the civilization of the Malay world.