Andrew C. S. Peacock. Arabic literary culture in Southeast Asia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Abstract

In his latest monograph, Andrew C. S. Peacock presents an exceptional study on Southeast Asian manuscript traditions in Arabic before the advent of print in the region. While Arabic was not as widely spoken as Malay and Portuguese in maritime Southeast Asia (p. 17), it played a central role in Muslim intellectual life. Arabic Literary Culture in Southeast Asia in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries explores “Arabic texts that were composed in seventeenth to eighteenth-century Southeast Asia, or for a Southeast Asian audience, and the Arabic texts that were read and copied in the region” (p. 2). It especially covers Arabic texts collected, copied, or commissioned by several royal courts in the Indonesian Archipelago: Banten, Aceh, Palembang, Bone, and Makassar. The book gathers 66 Arabic treatises whose manuscripts are preserved in Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia Jakarta, overseas libraries, and private collections or digitalized by scholars and archival schemes. Colophons and marginalia provide subtle and often overlooked information on completion dates, places, ownerships, and patronages, giving an idea of the manuscripts’ circulation and connecting the manuscripts to wider literary networks in Asia, Africa, and Europe. This monograph might be one of the most comprehensive in the field, given Peacock’s ambitious quest of presenting a monograph covering extensive studies of Arabic manuscripts in Southeast Asia, many of which are of Middle Eastern and North African or Indian provenance.