The Bustan al-Salatin — Arabic Bustān as-Salāṭīn, Malay Boestan oes-Salāṭīn, “Garden of Kings” (Dutch Lusthof der Vorsten) — is a Malay-language Islamic compendium composed by Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī in Acheh in 1638 at the command of Sultan Iskandar II (Iskandar Thani), and one of the three principal writings by which Raniri shaped the religious and political literature of the Achehnese sultanate after the suppression of the Wujudiyyah mysticism of Hamzah Pansuri and Shamsuddin of Pasai. It is the second of the two principal Acehnese-composed “mirrors for princes” treated by Hooykaas in his survey of Malay literature — the earlier being the Tādj of 1607 — and is, in Hooykaas’s reading, “meer het werk van een geleerde” (more the work of a scholar) than the Tādj, a learned and prolix compilation whose historical chapter on Acheh is, however, often more reliable than the Sadjarah Malajoe itself.
Genre and Purpose
The Bustan al-Salatin belongs at once to the genre of “mirror for princes” (adab literature) and to that of universal history. Its declared purpose is to instruct rulers and their ministers in the principles of just government by exempla drawn from the lives of past kings, prophets, sages, and saints. Its range is encyclopaedic: cosmology, the history of the prophets, the history of the pre-Islamic kings of Persia and of the caliphs, the history of the saints and mystics, the principles of statecraft, the duties of the ruler and the ruled. The work was composed in the Bahasa Djawi of the Achehnese court, drawing on Arabic and Persian sources familiar to Raniri from his Gujarati education, and on Malay sources — including the historical traditions of Acheh itself.
Like the Tādj oes-Salatina, the Bustan al-Salatin is Persian-Muslim in content. Raniri “ontleent zijn stof van talrijke anecdoten aan dezelfde en soortgelijke Moslimse verzamelwerken in de Perzische taal uit Voor-Indië” (derives his material, of numerous anecdotes, from the same and similar Muslim compilations in the Persian language from India). “Meermalen komt dan ook dezelfde anecdote in beide [werken] voor” (The same anecdote often occurs in both works) — a fact that, in Hooykaas’s reading, points to the common Persian-language source tradition on which both Acehnese “mirrors for princes” drew.
Author and Date
Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī — a Gujarati-born Muslim scholar of Hadrami descent — wrote the Bustan al-Salatin on the order of Sultan Iskandar II of Acheh in 1638, in the same year in which he also composed the Sirāṭ al-mustaqīm (March 1638) and the Bad’ khalq as-samawat wal-arwah. The composition thus falls in the first years of Iskandar II’s reign — the brief interregnum between the death of Iskandar Muda in 1636 and the religious controversy that would later drive ar-Rānīrī from Acheh — and forms part of ar-Rānīrī’s project of providing the Achehnese faithful with the literary apparatus of a Shāfiʿite sultanate. The work belongs to the period between Raniri’s arrival in Acheh in 1637 and his return to Ranir in 1644, and was composed for the court of Iskandar Thani and his successor Taj al-Ālam in the very years when the suppression of the Wujudiyyah was redrawing the contours of Achehnese religious life.
Place in Raniri’s Oeuvre
The Bustan al-Salatin is named by Snouck Hurgronje in The Achehnese as one of the principal writings of the pandit, alongside the *Ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm* and the *Tibjān fī maʿrifat al-adyān*. Voorhoeve, in his introduction to the 1955 edition of Raniri’s two Malay treatises, notes that “of the works that Raniri composed in Acheh, most are directed against the Wujūdiyyah” — but the Bustan al-Salatin belongs to a different category: a work of statecraft and universal history rather than of polemic. Its composition in the immediate aftermath of the public disputation against the Wujudiyyah suggests that it formed part of the same project of orthodox reform — providing the new Achehnese monarchy with the literary apparatus of a Shāfiʿite sultanate. Hooykaas contrasts it with the earlier Tādj of 1607: “terwijl BOCHARI’s Tādj meer eenvoudig stichtelijk gehouden is, is daarentegen RANĪRI’s Boestān meer het werk van een geleerde, die zich niet ontziet zijn lezers te vergasten op een hoofdstuk dat belangrijk moge zijn voor een theoloog (I) of een geschiedvorser (II), maar het lezend publiek wel eens zwaar gevallen zal zijn” (while Bochari’s Tādj is more simply edifying, Rānīrī’s Bustān is more the work of a scholar, who does not refrain from treating his readers to a chapter that may be important for a theologian (I) or a historical researcher (II), but may have been heavy going for the reading public). The two works thus represent two phases of the Acehnese “mirror for princes” tradition — the earlier more edifying, the later more scholarly.
Contents
Hooykaas gives, in his chapter 19, a detailed chapter-by-chapter synopsis of the Bustan al-Salatin:
- Book I. Schepping van hemel en aarde (Creation of heaven and earth) — including nōer Moehammad (the light of the Prophet), lauhi mahfōëz (the well-preserved tablet), qalam (the pen), carsh (the throne of God), qoersi (the footstool of God), the seven heavens, the angels, the djinn, and Iblis.
- Book II. Profeten en koningen (Prophets and kings) — a history of the prophets from Adam to Muhammad, the Persian kings, the Byzantine emperors, the Egyptian rulers, the Arab rulers before Islam, the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs, the Muslim rulers of Delhi, and — significantly for AcehWiki — the sultans of Malacca and Pahang, and the sultans of Atjéh and the godsdienstleraars daar te lande, voorgangers en tijdgenoten uit 16de en 17de ceuw (the sultans of Aceh and the religious scholars there, leaders and contemporaries of the 16th and 17th century).
- Book III. Rechtvaardige koningen en bekwame staatsdienaren (Righteous kings and capable state officials) — in six paragraphs.
- Book IV. Godvruchtige koningen en heilige personen (Pious kings and holy persons) — including the famous anecdote of the conversion of Ibrahim ibn Adham.
- Book V. Onrechtvaardige koningen en onverstandige staatsdienaren (Unrighteous kings and foolish state officials).
- Book VI. Milddadige en edele mensen en helden (Generous and noble people and heroes) — including a long account of the Holy War and the 18 campaigns of the Prophet, the Battle of Badr, the Battle of Uhud, and the siege of the trench.
- Book VII. Het verstand (aql) en alle soorten van wetenschap (ilm) — on intellect and the sciences, on virtue and vice, on physiognomy, on medicine, on the benefits of marriage.
The Acehnese Historical Chapter (Book II.m)
The historical chapter of the Bustan al-Salatin on Aceh is, in Hooykaas’s judgement, of considerable historical value. Hooykaas notes that “de geschiedkundige gegevens, steeds van een jaartal voorzien, een betrouwbare indruk maken, wel eens de voorkeur blijken te verdienen boven de voorstelling van de SM, en toch in de Boestän slechts een aanloopje vormen, een onderdeel hoogstens van het boek” (the historical data, always provided with a year-date, make a reliable impression, sometimes prove to deserve the preference over the representation of the Sadjarah Malajoe, and yet in the Bustan form only a preamble, a sub-component at most of the book). The Bustan al-Salatin thus preserves, in passing, an Acehnese royal chronology that is in places more reliable than the Sadjarah Malajoe’s — a fact that gives the work importance as a check on the Sadjarah Malajoe’s narrative.
Manuscripts and Reception
The Bustan al-Salatin survives in numerous Malay manuscripts, of which the most important are preserved in the collections of the Leiden University Library, the Royal Asiatic Society in London, and the Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde at The Hague. The work remained a standard reference for Malay historians and religious teachers throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; it was used as a source by later Malay chroniclers and is cited in the historical literature of Acheh, Johor, and other Malay sultanates.
Van der Tuuk — the Dutch Malay scholar whom Hooykaas characterises as “een enthousiast orientalist en zonderling man” (an enthusiastic orientalist and singular man) — gromde over the Boestān: “Dit werk geeft meer dan het belooft, wat in de Maleische letterkunde een groot wonder mag genoemd worden” (This work gives more than it promises, which in Malay literature may be called a great miracle). Extracts appear in H. N. van der Tuuk, Maleisch Leesboek (verhaal 6 en 7, pp. 37–41); in Niemann, Bloemlezing II, pp. 225–233; and in Winstedt & Blagden, A Malay Reader, pp. 102–103. The contents-opgave of the Bustan al-Salatin that Hooykaas reproduces in his survey was, he notes, supplied by Dr. P. Voorhoeve.
Significance
For AcehWiki, the Bustan al-Salatin is significant as the most ambitious of Raniri’s Malay compositions and the work in which his vision of an orthodox, Shāfiʿite Achehnese sultanate finds its fullest literary expression. Its composition in 1638 — at the command of Sultan Iskandar II, in the same year as the Sirat al-mustaqim and the Bad’ khalq as-samawat wal-arwah — places it at the heart of Raniri’s project of orthodox reform in Aceh. It is at once a monument of Malay prose and a programme of royal education: a mirror for princes composed for the court of Iskandar Thani and Taj al-Ālam. Its historical chapter (Book II.m) on the sultans of Aceh and the religious scholars of the 16th and 17th centuries is — in Hooykaas’s judgement — sometimes more reliable than the Sadjarah Malajoe, and is thus a key check on the Malay chronicle tradition.
See Also
- Nur al-Din al-Raniri
- Tādj oes-Salatina
- Sirat al-mustaqim
- Tibjan fi ma’rifat al-adyan
- Hudjdjat as-siddiq li-daf az-zindiq
- Iskandar Thani
- Sultan Tajul-alam
- Sultan Iskandar Muda
- Sadjarah Malajoe
- Wujudiyyah
- Hamzah Pansuri
- Bahasa Djawi
- C. Hooykaas
- P. Voorhoeve
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- H. N. van der Tuuk
- Over Maleise Literatuur (1947)
- Acheh
- 1638
- 1607
Source
Over Maleise Literatuur, by Dr. C. Hooykaas, Hoogleraarte Batavia; Tweede Druk (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1947), chapter 19 (“Twee Moslimse exemplo-boeken als vorstenspiegel”), pp. 173–175; chapter 19 footnotes (extract references).
Extracts in: H. N. van der Tuuk, Maleisch Leesboek (verhaal 6 en 7, pp. 37–41); Niemann, Bloemlezing II, pp. 225–233; Winstedt & Blagden, A Malay Reader, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), pp. 102–103. Contents-opgave door Dr. P. Voorhoeve.
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A. W. S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R. J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E. J. Brill, 1906.
Twee Maleise geschriften van Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī: in facsimile uitgegeven met aantekeningen door P. Voorhoeve. Uitgaven van de Stichting De Goeje, No. 16. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1955. Inleiding §1 (“De auteur”), pp. 5–7.