The Jawāhir al-ʿulūm (“The Jewels of the Sciences”) is a Malay religious and mystical compendium by Nuruddin ar-Raniri, composed in Acheh during the period of his activity at the court of Iskandar Thani and his successor Taj al-Ālam (1637–1644). It survives in a London manuscript and is named by Voorhoeve in the 1955 edition of Raniri’s two Malay treatises as one of the principal writings in which Raniri developed his argument against the Wujudiyyah and his exposition of the orthodox Sufi position.
Content and character
The Jawāhir al-ʿulūm is a work of encyclopaedic scope — its very title, “the jewels of the sciences,” indicating the breadth of its subject-matter. Like the *Ḥall aẓ-ẓill* and the *Ḥujjat aṣ-ṣiddīq*, it belongs to that part of Raniri’s oeuvre which Voorhoeve describes as “directed against the Wujūdiyyah.” It cites repeatedly the *al-Insān al-kāmil* of ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jīlī — the great Sufi cosmology — as an authoritative source. It also cites the Ithbād an-naṣīḥa and the Irāʾat ad-daqāʾiq of the Indian mystic ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-Mahāʾimī (pp. 37, 39, 40, 58 of the London manuscript), as well as the *Laṭāʾif al-iʿlām* (without naming its author). It cites the Shamsuddin of Pasai by name, noting that the latter had appealed to the *al-Insān al-kāmil* but that he had — in Raniri’s view — interpreted the text incorrectly. The Jawāhir al-ʿulūm thus bears direct witness to the textual controversy that lay behind Raniri’s public disputation against the Wujūdiyyah at the court of Iskandar Thani.
Citations of other authorities
In the course of the work Raniri cites a number of authorities whose names are otherwise known from his other writings and from the apparatus of the *Tibjān*. Among the Sufis he cites Shaikh Shibli (p. 141), Shaikh Djunaid (pp. 45, 145), Shaikh Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh (pp. 141, 157), and Ibn ʿArabī (repeatedly). The citations of al-Mahāʾimī and of the *al-Insān al-kāmil* point to the Indian and Ḥadramī channels through which Raniri’s Malay Achehnese polemic was supplied with the materials of Arabic and Persian Sufism.
Significance
The Jawāhir al-ʿulūm is one of the most extensive of Raniri’s Malay religious writings and is unique among them in the explicitness with which it documents the textual controversy between Raniri and Shamsuddin of Pasai over the interpretation of the *al-Insān al-kāmil*. It belongs, with the *Ḥall aẓ-ẓill*, the *Ḥujjat aṣ-ṣiddīq*, the *Tibjān*, the *Ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm*, the *Laṭāʾif al-asrār* (lost), and the *Bustān as-Salāṭīn*, to the body of Malay religious prose composed in Acheh during the years of the orthodox reaction against the Wujūdiyyah.
See Also
- Abd al-Karim al-Jili
- Acheh
- Ahmad al-Mahaimi
- Bahasa Djawi
- Bustan al-Salatin
- Hall al-zill
- Hudjdjat as-siddiq li-daf az-zindiq
- Ibn Arabi
- Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh
- Iskandar Thani
- Lata’if al-asrar
- P. Voorhoeve
- Raniri
- Shaikh Junayd
- Shaikh Shamsuddin of Sumatra
- Shaikh Shibli
- Sultan Tajul-alam
- 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. Inleiding §1 (“De auteur”) and §2c (“De secten”); apparatus criticus, where the Jawāhir al-ʿulūm is cited on pp. 36, 37 (notes to p. 121 of the Tibjān).