ʿUthmān b. Shihāb al-Dīn Funtiyānaq in the late Ottoman Hijaz : kitab Jawi and Southeast Asian editorial networks in the 19th-20th centuries

Abstract

Situating the Pontianak-origin scholar and his publications in the Hijaz during the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II, this study reconsiders the intellectual life of ʿUthmān b. Shihāb al-Dīn Funtiyānaq through his editorial and translation practices from 1304/1887 to 1330/1912. Employing a qualitative approach, the research adopts Nor bin Mohd. Ngah’s (1982) discourse of Kitab Jawi and Islam Dayeh’s (2019) examination of the Islamic print culture. The study questions how ʿUthmān Funtiyānaq produced, self-edited, and published his Kitab Jawi, mostly in an Ottoman-owned publisher. It also examines how his works, translations, and editorial approaches reflect his engagement with the surrounding Arabic text materials, the intended readership, and the intellectual concerns of the Jawi diasporas of the period. Data is gathered from literature review, philological analysis, and interview. Most primary data of ʿUthmān’s treatises are preserved at Khazanah Fathaniyah in Kuala Lumpur and the Sophia University Library in Tokyo, while others were reissued by private publishers in Mecca, Cairo, Surabaya, Pattani, and Kuala Lumpur. After reconstructing the life of the Pontianak scholar, the research findings suggest that ʿUthmān’s productive time in the Late Ottoman Hijaz was not simply facilitated by the language barrier on behalf of the Ottoman officials, but instead by ʿUthmān’s connections with the Meccan scholars, the state-appointed proofreaders at Maṭba’a al-Miriyya, and several publishing sponsors. These connections enabled ʿUthmān to become a prolific author and editor both during his early intellectual career as a sheikh in the religious cities of Mecca-Medina and his later lifetime in Taif. His migration from Mecca-Medina to Taif also corresponds with a shift in editorial approach from the critical editing (taḥqīq) to more literal rendering (taṣḥīḥ) of the source materials. This shift arguably reflects the contrast in intellectual milieu between those regions, or, instead, the changing demands of the Hijaz book market and the expectations of the sponsors. Data also shows ʿUthmān’s engagement with Shādhiliyya teachings, both through hisinteraction with the works of Ibn ʿAtāʾillāh al-Sakandarī and his rendering of the notion of tadbīr (self-control) in the later works, despite no account suggesting that ʿUthmān himself subscribed to Shadhiliyya Sufism. Over his 12 treatises, ʿUthmān’s legal reasoning and scriptural hermeneutics are mostly identifiable in his two monographs, Risāla Tafsīr Sūrat Yāsīn and Fatḥ al-Mutafakkirīn,respectively a critical edition of Hamamizade Ihsan’s commentary of Q.36 and Aḥmad Zaynī Dahlān’s gloss of al-Suyūṭī’s Jāmi’ al-Ṣaghīr.