The Tādj oes-Salatina — Malay Taj us-Salāṭīn, Arabic Tāj as-Salāṭīn, “Crown of Kings” (Malay Mahkota Sēgala radja) — is a Malay-language Islamic “mirror for princes” (vorstenspiegel) of Perzisch-Moslimsch content, completed in Atjeh in 1607 and one of the two principal Atjehnese-composed mirrors for princes treated by Hooykaas in his survey of Malay literature. The work is Arabic in title, Persian-Muslim in content, Malay in language, and Atjehnese in place of composition — a synthesis that, in Hooykaas’s reading, exemplifies the literary cosmopolitanism of the court of Iskandar Muda’s Atjeh.
Date and Place of Composition
Hooykaas dates the completion of the Tādj oes-Salatina to 1607 — the same year as the accession of Iskandar Muda to the throne of Atjeh, and the year that opens the *bloeitijdperk* (golden age) of Atjehnese power. The work thus stands at the very threshold of the great Atjehnese seventeenth century — the moment at which the new sultan inherited the literary, theological, and political apparatus of the late-sixteenth-century Atjehnese court and put it to work for the new empire.
The work’s presence in Atjeh is also noted in Hooykaas’s commentary on the Sadjarah Malajoe: the Bendahara of Johor — the author of the Sadjarah Malajoe — “zal [in Atjéh] hebben kennis gemaakt [met de Tādj oes-Salatina], alwaar het in 1607 werd voltooid” (will [in Atjeh] have become acquainted with [the Tādj oes-Salatina], where it was completed in 1607). The implication is that the Bendahara’s own concept of a “Geslachtslijst der Soeltanen” — the working title he gives his own Sadjarah Malajoe — was modelled on the Tādj’s example.
Content
Hooykaas gives, in his chapter 19 (“Twee Moslimse exemplo-boeken als vorstenspiegel”), a chapter-by-chapter summary of the Tādj oes-Salatina:
I. Lof aan de Schepper (Praise to the Creator); II. Geloofsgetuigenis (Testimony of faith); III. The Crown Prince’s commission to improve an existing Hikajat Malajoe; IV. The Crown Prince’s exordium on the Bendahara’s duty; V. The Bendahara’s credentials and genealogy; VI. The commissioning of the work; VII. The author’s invocation; VIII. The author’s disclaimer; IX. The naming of the work; X. The warning against heresy.
The body of the work consists of twenty-four chapters of moral-political counsel: on the right use of counsel, on the keeping of treaties, on the right conduct of ministers, on the right conduct of judges, on the right conduct of religious officials, on the right conduct of war, and so on. The whole is, in Hooykaas’s summary, “meer eenvoudig stichtelijk gehouden” (more simply edifying) than the Boestan of ar-Rānīrī — the second of the two Atjehnese mirrors treated by Hooykaas.
Literary Genre
The Tādj oes-Salatina is, in Hooykaas’s reading, a vorstenspiegel — a “mirror for princes” of the kind that the Islamic world had produced in considerable numbers since the medieval period. Such mirrors — theoretical expositions on how an ideal ruler should conduct himself, illustrated with examples from the past — had, as Hooykaas puts it, “in Moslimse kringen lange tijd groot gezag moeten gehad hebben” (must have long had great authority in Muslim circles), and “inderdaad ook aan vorsten bekend was” (were indeed also known to princes). Hooykaas illustrates the practical authority of the genre with the anecdote of the Sultan of Singapore, who — two centuries after the Tādj’s composition — declined Raffles’s commercial proposals with a quotation from this very book.
Persian-Muslim Source
The Tādj oes-Salatina is, despite its Malay language and Atjehnese place of composition, Persian-Muslim in content: “Arabisch van titel, Perzisch-Moslimsch van inhoud, Maleis van taal, met Atjeh als plaats van vervaardiging” (Arabic in title, Persian-Muslim in content, Malay in language, with Atjeh as place of manufacture). The author drew his material — “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) — from the same Persian-language Muslim compilations that also supplied the Boestan oes-Salāṭīn of ar-Rānīrī.
Editions and Reception
The Tādj oes-Salatina circulated widely in manuscript and was edited by ROORDA VAN EYSINGA — whom Hooykaas characterises as “een altijd enthousiast mens en zonderling Malaïcus” (an always enthusiastic man and singular Malay scholar) — who began his edition with a poem. The work was studied in the kratons of Java — both the Surakarta and the Yogyakarta kratons — by “vorstelijke personnages, adellijke dames, hofdignitarissen en ambtenaren, onderdanen en zelfs Moslimse Chinezen; tot analfabeten drong dit geleerde en wijdlopige boek door” (royal personages, aristocratic ladies, court dignitaries and officials, subjects and even Muslim Chinese; to illiterates this learned and prolix book penetrated). The work’s authority in the Malay-Indonesian Islamic world was such that it was printed in numerous Javanese editions from Batavia, Semarang, and Sala “tot in recent verleden” (into the recent past).
Significance
For AcehWiki, the Tādj oes-Salatina is significant as the earlier of the two principal Atjehnese-composed “mirrors for princes” (the other being ar-Rānīrī’s Boestan oes-Salāṭīn of 1638). Its completion in Atjeh in 1607 — the year of Iskandar Muda’s accession — places it at the threshold of the great Atjehnese seventeenth century, and its Persian-Muslim content illustrates the cosmopolitan literary culture of the late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century Atjehnese court, in which Persian-language Muslim compilations were translated into Malay by Atjehnese-based scholars for an Atjehnese and Malay-Indonesian readership. The work’s influence on the Sadjarah Malajoe’s Bendahara — who, during his Atjehnese captivity after 1613, would have become acquainted with the Tādj — is one of the literary-historical links between the Atjehnese and the Malay chronicle traditions.
See Also
- Bustanu’s-Salatin
- Nur al-Din al-Raniri
- Sultan Iskandar Muda
- Sadjarah Malajoe
- Bendahara Sri Lanang
- Over Maleise Literatuur (1947)
- Acheh
- 1607
- 1613
- 1638
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. 165-173; Toelichting tot de Sadjarah Malajoe, aantekening bij de inleiding van de schrijver, p. 205.