Never forget: every Mohammedan is your enemy!
(Humme 1877: 84)
Dutch responses to the pilgrimage
In the middle of the nineteenth century, Dutch authorities believed that only one hundred or so Jawa ventured to Mecca each year engendering a relatively casual attitude to the H. ajj at the time (Spat 1912: 338–40).
Indeed regulations regarding the purchase of pilgrim passports were
relaxed in 1852 under Governor General A.J. Duymaer van Twist (Steenbrink 1984: 101). Europeans in Southeast Asia continued to see their real enemy in the ‘Arab priests’ of the archipelago. In a famous dispatch in 1811, Raffles had once described them as ‘mere drones . . . manumitted slaves . . . who worm themselves into the favour of the Malay chiefs . . . They hold like robbers the offices they obtain as sycophants and cover all in a veil of religious hypocrisy’ (Morley 1949:
162).
Attitudes were usually no different under Dutch rule sixty-six years later when, in an article to the Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsche Indië in June 1877, the former Resident of Timor, H.C. Humme, described how the
‘civilizing’ work done by Christian missions had rendered parts of the archipelago amenable to Dutch direction. He also wrote that when an Arab trader had left his three sons under the care of the Christian ruler of Savu, he had advised the latter to give them strict instructions that any attempt at proselytization would not be tolerated (Humme 1877: 89). By contrast with the Arab interlopers, local Muslims were usually cast as but nominal adherents to a foreign faith. In 1890 one missionary claimed that Islam, for the Javanese, was ‘a heavy and illfitting outer garment’
and that at home he would revert to his ‘national’ clothing, and absorb himself his ‘Polynesian and Hindu Pantheon, [with its] Gods, spirits and ghosts’ (Schuurmans 1890: 65).
Confused by the ‘Arab’ threat, it was only in the shadow of the events of 1857–58 in India that questions were raised seriously about the impact of the
H. ajj on Dutch rule in the archipelago (Jaquet 1980). Certainly officials would have been alarmed to hear that the years of 1858 and 1859 also saw a substantial rise in pilgrimage participation, with the official figures jumping from 100 to 3,000 pilgrims per annum (Spat 1912: 340).
Furthermore it was suspected that such pilgrims could easily come into contact with the many Indian ‘rebels’ who had sought refuge in Mecca.
Such anxieties were not entirely without foundation. We know that, later in the 1870s and 1880s, many Jawa studied at the S.awlat¯ıya madrasa which was founded in 1874 by one such émigré, Muh.ammad Khal¯ıl Rah.mat Alla¯h Kayrn¯aw¯ı of Delhi (1818–90) (Ibrahim 1996: 158).
Also known as Rah.mat Alla¯h bin Khal¯ıl al-Uthma¯n¯ı, this Indian alim¯ enjoyed the favour of Sultan Abdülhamid for a work (Iz.ha¯r al- haqq, The Manifestation of the Truth) attacking the inconsistencies of Christian theology (Snouck Hurgronje 1906: II, 345 n. 1; Abd al-Jabba¯r 1982:
108–12).
In March of 1859, the Indisch Genootschap of The Hague – with its membership of prominent merchants, academics, and officials whose careers and wealth depended on the continuance of Dutch rule in the Indies – held a meeting. In an open forum members addressed the following questions: ‘What are hadjis?’; ‘What is their influence on the Javanese?’; ‘Is it necessary or useful to adopt countermeasures?’ and ‘If so, in what way and by whom shall they be carried out?’ (Anon. 1859).
On the bureaucratic front, stringent government regulations of that same year specified that intending pilgrims were to seek permission to depart from their respective regent (bupati). Moreover these bupatis were to stamp the pilgrims’ passports after their return having conducted a short verbal ‘examination’. In this exam the regent was expected to determine if the pilgrim had actually been to Mecca. Here there was potential for high farce. Most regents had never been themselves, some simple souls might return with nothing to say of the experience, whilst enterprising fakes could give a convincing account of the Holy Land (see Spat 1912:
342; Djajadiningrat 1936: 178–79). Still, it was only with the bupati’s permission that a pilgrim would be permitted to don any form of quasi- Arab dress that alluded to his or her heightened status.
From 1860 pilgrimage passes were to feature additional information about the pilgrim’s movements, including, for the first time, the name of their ship, the birthplace and most recent abode of the pilgrim (Spat 1912: 340–42). Such information added one more layer of information to colonial knowledge about the pilgrimage. Nonetheless there still
remained a dearth of informed expertise on the place of Mecca upon which the colonial state could make policy. Little was known about events after the pilgrims sailed from the Indies and there were calls for the establishment of Dutch agencies along the route and most especially at Jeddah (where a consulate would finally be opened in 1872).
In 1860 Salomo Keyzer (1823–68), a lecturer in Javanese and Islamic law at the Royal Academy of Delft, sought to bridge the gap in Dutch knowledge of the H. ajj process. He chose to do so by devoting the bulk of his Onze tijd in Indië (Our Time in India, The Hague, eight vols.) to the H. ajj, describing Mecca as the ‘cradle’ of an international plot for Muslims to rise against and massacre their colonial masters (Jaquet 1980: 289). Certainly Mecca was looming larger in the colonial imagination with the increasing rates of pilgrimage participation, particularly in the years after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Not only did this event bring the Arabian Peninsula more fully into the global-economy (Ochsenwald 1982: 61), it assured the future prosperity
of both Singapore and the Netherlands Indies (Bogaars 1973; Vlekke 1959: 309); it also heralded a new era in the communication of change throughout the lands below the winds. And despite ongoing Dutch hindrance in the form of passports and Haji exams, Jawi pilgrim numbers continued to rise, eventually outnumbering even those from India in 1892 (van Delden 1899). This may well be due to the Ottoman authorities applying far stricter sanitary and political sanctions to South Asian pilgrims (al-Amr 1978: 174). Nonetheless, after 1894, the Jawa would usually represent the largest single grouping of pilgrims present at Arafat each year (Vredenbregt 1962: 149).
Results of such increased participation were not slow in coming, and links were soon drawn between the increasing number of pilgrims and the anticolonial activities coordinated by local chapters of the S. uf¯ı orders (see ¯ Mr. 1881, no. 978). The troubled region of Banten in particular seemed affected by both hajis and insurgencies from the early 1870s (see Sartono 1966). However Banten, despite its rebellious tendencies, was firmly under Dutch control. On the other hand Aceh was then in the process of being drawn into the Dutch sphere in the most protracted jiha¯d of the nineteenth century.
The Aceh War (1873–c.1910) and the renewed Islamic threat
Whoever in the archipelago is not for us is against us. And whoever is against us we shall bring under our control. . . . The total soverenity over all the islands of this archipelago is a question of survival for us. On it stands or falls the colonial power in whose name we as Netherlanders are grateful. This might is our right.
The Indies journalist C. Busken Huet writing in 1883, as quoted by van ’t Veer (1969: 85) With the Anglo–Dutch treaty of 1871, and with both North Sea powers fearing the intervention in Sumatra of a third force – such as France, the USA or Italy – the Netherlands began the process of the ‘rounding off’
(afronding) of its oceanic empire.1 Until that point Holland had been content to hold the
Figure 3 Four Acehnese fighters (Or. 18097 S66 file h)
principal economic zones of the archipelago. It could even be said that prior to the Aceh War colonial rule was a by-product of economic exploitation. The supply of such products as coffee and tea from Java or rubber and pepper from West Sumatra had now been secured by the brutal campaigns of the first half of the nineteenth century. What would follow in the closing decades of the century would be the annexation of smaller sultanates weakened by the superior tonnage and resources of European shipping or overwhelmed by commercial concessions. In this regard the patchwork of sultanates of East Sumatra would be overlayed by huge plantations which brought foreign labour – Chinese and Javanese – that would displace the local Malays. As one study has observed, ‘by 1900 their sultans were stuffed (with emoluments) and mounted on display in what was now a thoroughly Dutch administered East Coast Residency of Sumatra’(Steinberg 1987: 195). This pattern was repeated throughout the archipelago as hereditary Sultans were sidelined and replaced by Dutch power. The Netherlands East Indies were taking final shape, with military conquests being reinforced by networks of Dutch capital and bureaucracy (see Steinberg 1987: 203–
06). This was all justified by the argument that The Netherlands had the moral right as a superior civilization to exploit the less civilized parts of the world to its economic advantage.
Prior to the afronding, Aceh, which had a long history as an independent power, had survived through its domination of the pepper trade and its aggressive policies towards the smaller Sumatran states. However, by the 1870s, that trade had collapsed, and Acehnese power was on the wane.
Piracy was rife in the Straits of Malacca, while the impoverished court enjoyed little control over its former imperium outside the capital. Dutch and British merchant-imperialists were eager to present Aceh as a rogue state ready for annexation. This was expected to be an easy matter.
Yet it was not to be so easy. When the first expeditionary force arrived in March of 1873 it was routed with the death of its commander General Köhler. This humiliation captured the imagination of large segments of the Jawi ecumene – at least momentarily. For example, one Javanese rebel, Hadji Mohamad Ali of Taskimalaya claimed to be in possession of the same magical weapons used by the Acehnese (Mr. 1873, no. 694).
And a letter from a Sumatran in Mecca, Muhammad Salih, mentioned that a number of Jawi shaykhs, from both the British and Dutch spheres, had met at the house of a Batavian shaykh to discuss the conflict and affirm their opposition to the Dutch (Mr. 1874, no. 524).
The British were also alive to widespread sympathy for the Acehnese in the Peninsula. The Dutch Consul, then an English entrepeneur by the name of W.H. Read (1819–1909), reported that he was unable to stem the tide of inflammatory letters coming from Mecca. Such letters – known in Java as wasiat al-nabi or surat kiriman – predicted the final days of the world and the impending expulsion of non-believers from the lands of Islam. They were often alleged to originate from the Shar¯ıf of Mecca, or were purported to originate from a plot hatched at Singapore by visiting members of the Shar¯ıf’s party (see Snouck Hurgronje 1906:
II, 181–82; Mr. 1881, no. 720). Sartono (1966: 167–68) records that many such letters, some written in Mecca, others locally, were found between 1880 and 1885 in Aceh, Lampung, Banten, Batavia, and the Priangan (see also Mr. 1881, no. 1139). Indeed many Jawa are said to have predicted the ultimate defeat of Holland and others even announced the dispatch of an Ottoman fleet – sparked initially by the Ottoman paper Baçiret (Reid 1969: 128, 149; Schmidt 1992: 58 n. 39). All of these unlikely possibilities strengthened the hope for an East empowered by Islam and an Islam seen in turn by Dutch observers as a pervasive and coordinated threat.
Keyzer’s theme of Mecca as the heart of an international conspiracy thus resounded throughout the 1870s and 1880s in official dossiers. In such files too the Ottoman Sultan, Abdülhamid II (r.1876–1909), was often implicated by wild association or assumptions. This was due to his campaign for recognition as the Caliph of all Muslim peoples and his patronage of the S. uf¯ı orders – and¯ the Naqshband¯ıya in particular (see Fattah 1998: 68). Thus from 1879 the writers of Foreign Office dossiers, already excited by an attack on the British corvette Ready in Jeddah harbour in 1878, were re-animated by the echoes of a Muslim plot in 1881. Writing from Jeddah, the British consul, James Zohrab, wrote that a letter had come from Java from ‘a person of influence among the Javanese’ claiming that
A widely extended secret society exists embracing Musulmans of all nationalities with the object of restoring the khalifate to the Arabs of the Hedjaz. . . . In Java . . . the Sultan of Turkey is disliked and is considered to have forfeited by his bad
government and indifference to true Muslim interests, all claim to the support of his co-religionists. His speedy fall is considered certain, and his Empire, it is believed, will pass to Russia, neither of which events will create in Java either surprise or regret. . . . [Moreover] letters [are said to have been sent] from Abdul Mutalib [Shar¯ıf of Mecca, 1880–82] addressed to Mussulman Chiefs in Java strongly inculcating fanatical ideas and principles and hatred of the Christians, declaring enmity towards them to be necessary and praiseworthy.2
If it indeed ever existed, the original letter was most likely written by a returned pilgrim with some knowledge of the day-to-day life of the Ottoman territories. Consensus among the ulama¯ also held to the theoretical superiority of a Quraysh¯ı (and thus not Ottoman) Caliphate, although Arab protestations were seldom voiced directly to the Porte in exchange for a form of indirect rule (Ochsenwald 1984: 6). Although they could hardly express such views openly, many Jawa residing in Mecca also resented the Ottoman government, its corrupt officials and poorly disciplined troops.3 In connection with this, the local
government’s failure to deal with the regular attacks of the Bedouin on the pilgrim caravans continued to be seen as a sign of its inherent weakness.4 Even the Sha¯fi¯ı Muft¯ı of Mecca, Ah.mad bin Zayn¯ı Dah.la¯n, is said to have voiced criticism of it tempered by the fact that he himself was the recipient of a state gratuity (Kaptein 1997: 5).
The letter from Java cited above might be compared with news in a second letter which drew the attention of W.H. Read’s cousin in
Singapore. It is clearly the work of a Jawi author ignorant of both Arabic and the Hijaz.
. . . as to the Mohamedan plot, my spies inform me that the Mohammedans have been warned to be ready in about two years time, when a second Mohamed will come. A man has already come forward. His age is 38. His name is Iman Imhabill. He was born in Mecca. Nobody knows his present sejourn. In two years there will be a war with the Kaffirs. After some forty years the Prophet Jesus will come upon the earth and then the Iman [sic]
will die and Jesus will rule the world. . . . the Sultan of Turkey has already sent letters to all places where Mahomedanism prevails to make ready for war against the Kaffirs when the time comes, in about two years.5
Certainly the Hijaz, as the reputed source of many of these letters, was a dangerous place to live until the relative stability of Saud¯ı rule after 1924.¯ This was even the case for diplomats, as when Bedouin attacked one party outside the walls of Jeddah in 1895. Such events led to Jeddah harbour being crowded with European warships. However gunboat diplomacy seldom led to any substantive results (Ochsenwald 1984:
200).6 Mecca thus remained the unassailable centre of pan-Islamic agitation disseminated by the ‘fanatical hadjis, priesters and Arabs’ now flowing to the East in increasing numbers. Hence when reports of unrest in Mecca were received, Dutch officials were usually urged to be on their guard in the Indies (see, for example, Mr. 1879, no. 668).
At the heart of this Dutch fear lay also an awareness of a growing anticolonial resurgence throughout the Muslim world. In 1883, the second Dutch Consul in Jeddah, J.A. Kruijt, connected this resurgence with the ongoing Acehnese conflict, of which he had experience, and which was now led by the ulama¯ and omnipresent hajis. In particular he nominated the Wahha¯b¯ı movement and the Sanu¯s¯ıya order as being connected to this conflict. In previous dispatches he had freely associated both Mecca and Constantinople with anti-colonial uprisings in Algiers.7 The seeds of such fears were in turn well sown in an increasingly fragmented Dutch society below the winds.
An increasingly polarized colonial society: 1870–1900 Back in their Indies, the Dutch were the smallest minority in an extremely diverse colony. The nineteenth century witnessed a steady influx of Hadrami and Chinese migrants which in turn had followed the earlier migrations of Chinese into the region from the latter half of the eighteenth century (Steinberg 1987: 223; Trocki 1997). For the latter this was especially noticeable after the opening of the Suez Canal enabling more and more lower status Hadramis to seek fame and fortune in the bila¯d al-j¯awa. Already in 1870 there were some 13,000 Arabs in the Indies (de Jonge 1997: 95). The Qa¯d.¯ı of Say’un, Muh.sin bin Alaw¯ı al-Saqqa¯f (d. 1873), was so concerned by this mass exodus that he composed a poem urging his compatriots to remain beside their ancestral wells rather than venture to the irreligion and vice of ja¯wa (Ho 1997:
134, 139–43).
Contrasted with their ancestral wells, the verdant gardens of Southeast Asia were rich indeed. The Hadramis also enjoyed a special place of honour among the Jawa by virtue of their assumed kinship with the family of the Prophet. This was emphasized by the use of such customary honorifics as h.ab¯ıb and sayyid. Further, due to their networks across the Indian Ocean, many Hadramis made their fortunes in the management of the H. ajj (see Freitag and Clarence-Smith 1997).
This foreign and Muslim economic elite also remained emotionally attached to the Hadramaut as the source of their identity. In many instances they sent their locally born sons, known as muwalladu¯n (Ar.) or peranakan (Mal.) back from the lands of the Jawa to the harsh truth (and assumed piety) of Hadramaut (Ho 1997: 134–37, 142). The very first modern college in Tarim was even founded (in 1886) by a pious endowment (waqf) established by such Singapore-based merchants. Van der Meulen (1947: 150) later remarked of the ancestral home of the al- At.t.as ¯ family that its ten mosques and deeply sunk wells were
‘monuments to the piety of the far-scattered sons’.
For this same reason the poorest inhabitant of Hureidha can prostrate himself on an Italian marble floor in the central mosque and his children can get a school education which, by giving far more than local conditions require, creates the longing as well as the capacity for life and work in the rich, new
countries that are so far away.
Nevertheless, familiarity can breed contempt. And whereas Hadramis had long been living among the Jawa, intensified migration and their
commercial activities were increasingly questioned by some Jawa, much as Meccans were revising their estimation of the Jawa as tractable visitors who always honoured their debts (cf. Snouck Hurgronje 1931).
Moreover, with the migration of Hadramis of less illustrious birth there came an increasing tendency among the Jawa to question their claims to moral sanctity. Over time Arabs became less the ‘lord sayyids’ of Malay literature (see Raja Ali Haji 1982: 134) and more often envied merchants and moneylenders.
The Dutch certainly encouraged such prejudices, and continued to see them as a pernicious (and now pan-Islamic) influence. As a result, the first adviser to the Colonial government for Oriental Languages and Moehammedan Law, L.W.C. van den Berg (1845–1927), was commissioned to write a report on the Arabs in the Indies. This was published in 1886 as Le Hadhramout et les colonies Arabes dans l’archipel Indien (Hadramaut and the Arab Colonies of the Indian Archipelago). In his report, van den Berg noted the general vigour of their communities and the significant respect enjoyed by Hadramis among local peoples. At the same time growing numbers of migrants led to a physical demarcation in some towns as Arabs often maintained their own mosques and foundations distinct from indigenous society. This was no doubt compounded by the fact that, from the 1860s, they had been obliged by the Dutch to reside in racially distinct quarters (wijken) (de Jonge 1997: 97–103).
Sumit Mandal (1994) argues that this not only achieved the colonial aim of separation but also engendered a heightened sense of community among them. Still, these quarters took in substantial non-Arab
populations and most ‘Arabs’ were in fact the Malay-speaking children of local mothers. Nonetheless ethnic distinction was maintained, especially by the Alawiyu¯n, the Hadrami elite that claimed descent from the Prophet through his son-in-law Al¯ı. Marriage was the key to maintaining this position. According to Islamic convention, only a partner of equal or higher lineage may marry a woman of noble blood (a sayyida or shar¯ıfa). The suitability of any given partner was referred to as kafa¯a (compatibility). Engseng Ho (1997) has argued that the issue of kafa¯a became even more important for the Alawiyu¯n in Southeast Asia when it became clear that they needed to avoid their long term absorption by both indigenous society and their less illustrious fellow Hadramis. For this reason, genealogies were written in the Hadramaut in the 1880s for consumption by the muwallad¯ın living in the bila¯d al- j¯awa (see Ho 1997: 141–42).