The public debate between Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī and the adherents of the Wujudiyyah at the court of Sultan Iskandar Thani of Acheh in 1637 is the dramatic hinge of Raniri’s Achehnese career and the opening event of the orthodox reaction against the pantheistic mysticism of Hamzah Pansuri and Shamsuddin of Pasai. Shortly after the accession of Iskandar II, Raniri refuted the adherents of the extreme Wujūdiyyah mysticism in a public disputation in the presence of the sultan; from that time forth he enjoyed royal favour, both from Iskandar II and from his successor Ṣalīyatu’d-Dīn (Taj al-Ālam).
Background
The religious life of the court of Iskandar Muda (1607–1636) had been dominated by the Wujudiyyah mysticism of the school of Hamzah Pansuri, whose *Kitāb al-Muntahī* and *Asrār al-ʿārifīn* expounded the doctrine of the unity of being (waḥdat al-wujūd) in its most extreme Achehnese form. The principal continuator of Hamzah was Shamsuddin of Pasai, whose Mirʾāt al-muḥaqqiqīn and Chirkah (or Ḥarakah) developed the metaphysics of the unity of being in Malay. Even after Shamsuddin’s death in 1630 his disciples remained in honour with the sultan, and the Wujūdiyyah continued to flourish at the Achehnese court.
The accession of Iskandar Thani and the arrival of Raniri
After Iskandar Muda died in 1636 the spiritual climate in Acheh changed. Iskandar Muda’s successor Iskandar Thani — who came to the throne in 1637 — was disposed to receive a more orthodox religious teaching. In the same year Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī arrived in Acheh from Ranir, a Gujarati shaikh of the Rifāʿiyya who had been formed in the scholastic apparatus of Gujarati Arabian Islam by his teacher Sayyid ʿUmar Bā Shaybān and his spiritual grandfather Muḥammad al-ʿAddārs. Raniri came to Acheh already armed with the *Tibjān fī maʿrifat al-adyān* — a Malay encyclopaedia of religions and sects in which the Wujūdiyyah were catalogued among the heresies of Islam — and prepared to defend the orthodox position in disputation.
The disputation
Voorhoeve’s introduction to the 1955 edition of Raniri’s two Malay treatises records the event concisely: “kort na de troonsbestijging van Iskandar II kwam Nūruddīn in het land; in tegenwoordigheid van de sultan weerlegde hij de aanhangers van de extreme Wudjūdiyyah-mystiek in een openbaar debat.” (“shortly after the accession of Iskandar II, Nūruddīn arrived in the country; in the presence of the sultan he refuted the adherents of the extreme Wujūdiyyah mysticism in a public debate.”) The disputation took place in the presence of Iskandar Thani and resulted in Raniri’s gaining the royal favour.
The orthodox reaction
The disputation was followed by an orthodox reaction whose precise chronology is not fully recorded but whose main features are attested. Snouck Hurgronje, in The Achehnese Vol. I, notes that Iskandar Thani “is said to have put the disciples of the heretical mystic to death and to have ordered his books burned — an episode of religious persecution in the generation after Iskandar Muda’s reign in which Raniri’s puritanical influence is commonly reckoned to have played a decisive part.” The burning of the books of Hamzah Pansuri’s school — works such as the *Asrār al-ʿārifīn* and the *Kitāb al-Muntahī* — was the dramatic consequence of the disputation, although the survival of manuscripts of these works (the Muntahī in Cod. Or. 7291(3) and Cod. Or. 1952; the Javanese translation in Cod. Or. 5716(2) and 7736(1)) shows that the burning was not wholly effective.
The literary consequence of the disputation was the rapid production, at the command of Iskandar Thani, of the *Ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm* (March 1638) and the *Badʾ khalq as-samāwāt wal-arwāḥ*, followed by the *Tibjān*, the *Ḥujjat aṣ-ṣiddīq*, the *Ḥall aẓ-ẓill*, the *Jawāhir al-ʿulūm*, and the *Bustān as-Salāṭīn*. This body of Malay religious prose — composed in the joint reigns of Iskandar II and Taj al-Ālam — is the literary deposit of the orthodox reaction that the disputation opened. The *Ḥujjat aṣ-ṣiddīq* in particular ends with a notable pronouncement on the shathīyāt — the ecstatic utterances such as anā al-ḥaqq of al-Ḥallāj — declaring that whoever, being in his senses, pronounces such shathīyāt must be killed and will burn in hell eternally: a justification, in scholastic form, of the persecution that had been undertaken.
Significance
The public disputation at the court of Iskandar Thani is the central event of the religious history of Acheh in the seventeenth century. It marks the transition from the golden age of Achehnese mystical poetry — the age of Hamzah Pansuri and Shamsuddin of Pasai — to the age of the orthodox reaction, in which Raniri’s authority replaced that of the Wujūdiyyah mystics at the Achehnese court. The composition of Raniri’s Malay works, and the burning of the books of the Pansuri school, are the two principal consequences of the disputation; and the Tibjān and the Ḥujjat aṣ-ṣiddīq are the principal documents by which we know of it.
See Also
- Acheh
- Asrar al-‘arifin
- Bahasa Djawi
- Bustan al-Salatin
- Chirkah
- Hamzah Pansuri
- Hudjdjat as-siddiq li-daf az-zindiq
- Iskandar Thani
- Kitab al-Muntahi
- Mir’at al-muhakkikin
- P. Voorhoeve
- Raniri
- Raniri’s arrival in Acheh (1637)
- Shaikh Shamsuddin of Sumatra
- Shathihiyat
- Sirat al-mustaqim
- Sultan Iskandar Muda
- 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”), pp. 5–7.
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.
The Achehnese, Vol. II, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.