wrote most of his poetry in Persian. It was during the era of British colonization that Edward Fitzgerald learned Farsi on the advice of a friend and translated Omar Khayam into English.
Today, Farsi is considered as the second language apart from English among interllectials in India and Pakistan as well as the 10,000-strong Parsi community of Zoroastrian descendants who settled in Bombay.
When I first arrived in Malaysia four years ago, I put my children in private Malay school to learn Bahasa Melayu. Today, they speak the language well, but I did not get very far myself since everybody I am dealing with speaks English. The foreigners I know think that they are not encouraged by the Malays to learn the language.
Bahasa Melayu is, like most oriental languages, a language of ideas contrary to modern Western languages. For instance, the Sun is a combination of two words mata (eye) and hari (day), a beautiful way of describing the sun. Orang utan is made up of orang (man) and utan (forest), which is exactly what the creature is.
Bahsa Melayu is also rich with foreign words, specially Arabic.
The way these words are used is also very expressive. For instance, the word sakit in Arabic means quiet person. Penjara means window which very aptly describes a prison since your only contact to the outer world is a window.
At least one Arabic word is wrongly used: Horoof, that is the plural of harf (letter). The whole alphabet is horoof. In Bahasa Melayu however, it signifies a letter while the alphabet is called abjad. Abjad, the categorizing of Arabic alphabet in numerical order, was originally rooted in the Hebrew Kabala, where the numbers are linked to the Hebrew alphabet.
I was very surprised to see so many pure Persian words - penjara, piala, not have any roots in Arabic or any other language in Bahasa Melayu. The Wilkinson Malay English dictionary published in 1901 mentioned 140 Farsi words. The big question I show did these words come from the other side of the world to these areas?
My curiosity took me to the national library in Kuala Lumpur. While I did not find out more about the Farsi words, I discovered that bangsawan or Malay opera – which resembles European opera - was introduced in Penang in the late 1800s by and Indian opera troupe known as wayang Parsi. Boria music, dance comic sketches which originated in Persia made its appearance in Penang in the late 19th century. And Ghazal, the style of music which originated in Persia, was introduced into Johor around 1900. Later, I learnt that nobat, the musical instruments used during ceremonies in the Kedah royal court, is also of Persian origin.
I could see that there could be a relationship between the spread of Islam and Farsi words, and I browsed through a wide collection of books to delve deeper into the matter.
In the course of its history, Southeast Asia has been influenced by different external forces. In the first century of the Christian era, two principal civilizations of the East, Indian and Chinese, appeared in the region and left a deep impression on the social and cultural life of the people.
Southeast Asia was gradually divided into two spheres of influences – one under Indian culture and the other Chinese. It was obvious that it was from the Indian sub-continent that religion came to Southeast Asia. Hinduism and Buddhism came first. They shaped the great civilizations of Cambodia and Jawa. These religions were not spread by armies or colonists, but by merchants and priests. Later travelers brought Islam to these areas.
In the Chinese annals of 677AD, an account is given of an Arab chief who is believed to have been the head of an Arab settlement of the west coast of Acheh in Sumatra (L. Thaib, The Folitics and Governments of Southeast Asia). According to Malays chronicles, the honour of being the first missionary to Perlak was an Arab called Abd-Allah Arif, who is said to have visited the island about the middle of the 12th century. One of his disciples, Burhandin I, is said to have carried the knowledge of Islam down to the west coast of Sumatra as far as Pariaman (Padang) in west Sumatra (S. Fatimi, Islam Comes to Malaysia).
Ibn Battutah, who visited Samudra Pase in 1345AD, found that the Sultan, Malik al-Zahir, was a man of wisdom who loved knowledge and encouraged learning. Consequently, Samudra Pase developed into a contra of Islamic studies and a meeting place of Islamic scholars who included Qadi Samudra…Pase in 1407AD. (Arnold, Preaching of Islam).
In the Sulu and Mindanao in the Philippines, we find that Islam reached the archipelago well before the arrival of Villalobos force in 1542AD. The island was named Philippines in honour of Philip, the son of emperor Charles V and heir to the Spanish throne.
Chinese sources dating from the Yuan Dynasty (1280-13658) recorded that Arab traders had established their settlements in Mindanao at the end of 13th century. The first person to introduce Islam to Sulu islands was Tuan Mashaileha whose descendants constituted the core of the Muslim community in Sulu (Carmen, Islam in the Philippines).
As for Thailand, the majority of Muslims live in the southern provinces which belonged to the sultanate of Patani. Patani was once the largest and most populous Malay stat in the Peninsula. It is said the founder of the Kingdom of Patani, Raja Tu, was converted by Sheikh Saif from Samudra Pase in 1457AD (David Wyaht, The Story of Patani).
In Malaysia, Islam came after the foundation of Malacca around 1400AD. It is said the King of Melacca married the daughter of the Sultan of Samudra Pase and become a Muslim, calling himself Iskandar Shah (Fatimi, Islam Comes to Malaysia).
According to Pak Guru Zahaln Bin Man of Seni Silatkalam, in the 11th century a group of 14 people left India for Southeast Asia. There were originally Farsi who had lived in India for generations.
After they arrived in Kedah, they stated to trade. But they were harassed by a gang of pirates. The leader of the newcomers, Abd-Allah Rafaie Gibrari, known as Sheik Tajreed, resisted the pirates. Although in his early 50s, he displayed great skill and overcame the pirates. The news reached the royal palace in Kedah. Raja Merong Maha Wangsa summoned Sheik Tajreed. Being a warrior himself, Raja Merong wanted to wrestle with the old man. Sheik Tajreed, romping like and elephant, hooked the Raja around the waist, swept him off the ground, knocked him down and sat on his chest. Shiek Tajreed asked him to attack again with a sword. But Sheik Tajreed, with a sudden thrust of shoulder, one hand holding his waist, bent his opponent, swept him off the ground, brought him down on his back and lost no time in disarming him.
The amazed Raja Merong insisted on learning the new martial art. Sheik Tajreed agreed on one condition – that the Raja converted to Islam because Kalamh required the “Shahadah” (I bear witness that there is nothing to be worshipped exept Allah and Mohammad is the messenger of Allah). So Raja Merong Wangsa converted and changed his name to Mozaffar Shah (1130-1179) and cones-Indians called this land Kadaram and the Chinese called it Ktet-Cha. Some parts of it were known as Lang-Ka-Suk. On Sheik Tajreed's suggestion, it was named Kedah, from the Arabic word gaduh which means a bowl used to measure rice.
I make a short trip to Kedah where I met Ismail Saleh, historian and author of the book The Sultan Was Not Alone, and Wan Shamsudin Mohamman Yusof, the head of the Kedah museum. According to them, is the district of Langgar in Alor Setar, a tombstone found in the Tanjung Inggeris village cemetery hears Jawi inscription with the name.
The legend of Merong Maha Wangsa tells of the arrival of Islam in Kedah. It relates how one Sheik Abd-Allah, around 531 Hijrah (1136AD) converted the king to Islam, taking the name Sultan AL-Muzzaffar Shah (Tarikh Salasilah, Mohammed Hassan). It was Sheik Ab-Allah who introduced the nobat in the palace. The orchestra was used in court at the time of Kalifah Hrun Rashid in Baghdad.
Raja Merong Maha Wangsa or Sultan Al-Muzaffar Shah is well known as the first King of Kedah. The legends and tales about him were used in the preaching of Islam.
Although books written about region. It is certain that Arabs must have established commercial settlements on some of the islands of Southeast Asia as they did elsewhere during a very early period.
But the historical chronology of Silat Kalamh, which matches that of Kedah State with the conversion of Raja Merong Maha Wangsa to Sultan Muzaffar Shah, the fact that Kedah is the only State in Malaysia that has an Arabic name, the afact that Silat Kalamah is practiced throughout Malaysia and the hundreds of Farsi words in the Malay language is convincing evidence that the story of Sheik Tajreed could be true.
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