The Chirkah (or Ḥarakah, as Van Nieuwenhuijze prefers to read it) is a Malay Sufi treatise by Shamsuddin of Pasai, the pantheistic mystic who dominated the religious life of the court of Iskandar Muda of Acheh until his death in 1630. The work is named, together with the Mirʾāt al-muḥaqqiqīn, among the writings of Shamsuddin that Nuruddin ar-Raniri cites and refutes in the *Tibjān fī maʿrifat al-adyān* (pp. 108, 110–111 of the Voorhoeve facsimile).
The reading of the title
The title of the work is transmitted in the manuscripts as Chirkah, but Van Nieuwenhuijze proposed to read it as Ḥarakah (“movement”). Voorhoeve records this conjecture in his apparatus to the *Tibjān* (notes ad pp. 108, 110, 111) with the abbreviation “vN” alongside the lemma “Chirkah.” The reading Ḥarakah — if accepted — would situate the work in the technical Sufi vocabulary of the maqāmāt and aḥwāl, in which ḥarakah (“movement”) signifies the active progress of the mystic along the path, in contrast to sukūn (“repose”). The traditional reading Chirkah has no obvious Arabic or Malay analogue.
Content and character
The Chirkah (or Ḥarakah) belongs to the same body of Wujūdiyyah mysticism as the Mirʾāt al-muḥaqqiqīn of Shamsuddin and the Asrār al-ʿārifīn and Kitāb al-Muntahī of Hamzah Pansuri. It sets out, in the Bahasa Djawi of the Achehnese court, some aspect of the doctrine of the unity of being (waḥdat al-wujūd) in the form developed by Shamsuddin from the heritage of Hamzah Pansuri. Raniri’s citation of the work in the *Tibjān* (pp. 108, 110–111) suggests that it was used in conjunction with the Mirʾāt al-muḥaqqiqīn, and that Raniri treated the two works as complementary expositions of the Wujūdiyyah position that he sought to refute.
Raniri’s refutation
Raniri’s citations of the Chirkah occur in the central section of the *Tibjān* on the Wujūdiyyah (pp. 108, 110–111). The citations form part of a sustained polemic against Shamsuddin of Pasai as the continuator of Hamzah Pansuri. Van Nieuwenhuijze, in his dissertation Sjamsu’l-Dīn van Pasai (Leiden, 1945), made the Chirkah the object of a special study, in which he proposed both the reading Ḥarakah and a number of conjectural emendations to the text as transmitted by Raniri.
Significance
The Chirkah is one of the principal surviving works of Shamsuddin of Pasai and one of the principal sources for the Wujūdiyyah mysticism of Acheh in its golden age. Its refutation by Raniri in the *Tibjān* is one of the chief documents of the religious controversy that defined the transition from the age of Iskandar Muda to that of Iskandar Thani and Taj al-Ālam. The uncertainty over the very title of the work — Chirkah or Ḥarakah — is a measure of the difficulty of the textual tradition of Malay Sufism, in which works survive chiefly in the citations of their opponents.
See Also
- Acheh
- Asrar al-‘arifin
- Bahasa Djawi
- C.A.O. van Nieuwenhuijze
- Hamzah Pansuri
- Hudjdjat as-siddiq li-daf az-zindiq
- Kitab al-Muntahi
- Mir’at al-muhakkikin
- P. Voorhoeve
- Pasai
- Raniri
- Raniri’s public debate against the Wujudiyyah in Acheh
- Shaikh Shamsuddin of Sumatra
- Sultan Iskandar Muda
- Tibjan fi ma’rifat al-adyan
- Wujudiyyah
Source
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. Apparatus criticus ad pp. 108, 110, 111 of the Tibjān facsimile, where Van Nieuwenhuijze’s reading Ḥarakah is recorded.
C. A. O. van Nieuwenhuijze, Sjamsu’l-Dīn van Pasai: bijdrage tot de kennis van de Sumatraansche mystiek. Leiden, 1945.