Sjaich Noeroddin — Arabic Shaykh Nūr al-Dīn, also written Sjaich Noeroddin in the older Dutch orthography — is the Atjehnese-based Islamic scholar whom Hooykaas identifies, in his survey of Malay literature, as the author of the Sirāṭ al-mustaqīm and the Bustān as-Salāṭīn, and as the figure whose Sirāṭ was sent from Atjeh to Kedah for the instruction of the new Muslim court there. Hooykaas’s identification of the Sjaich Noeroddin of the Kedah chronicle with Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī of Atjeh makes the Sjaich Noeroddin the principal vehicle by which the fiqh of the Shāfiʿite school was transmitted from Atjeh to the Malay Peninsula in the early seventeenth century.
The Identification with ar-Raniri
Hooykaas’s identification of the Sjaich Noeroddin of the Kedah chronicle with ar-Rānīrī of Atjeh rests on the convergence of name, office, and date:
- The Sjaich Noeroddin of the Kedah chronicle is named as the author of a book called Sirāṭ al-moestakīm — the same title as the Malay fiqh handbook begun by ar-Rānīrī in 1634 and completed in 1644.
- The Sjaich Noeroddin is described as an Islamic scholar whose book was sent from Atjeh — the same Atjehnese court at which ar-Rānīrī served as the principal religious authority under Sultan Iskandar II in the late 1630s and early 1640s.
- The episode falls in the same chronological frame as ar-Rānīrī’s Atjehnese period — the early seventeenth century, after the composition of the Sirāṭ in 1634-1638 and before the fall of the Atjehnese court’s patronage of ar-Rānīrī in the religious controversy of the early 1640s.
The identification is not stated explicitly by Hooykaas, but is implicit in his treatment of the Sjaich Noeroddin of the Kedah chronicle and the Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī of Atjeh as the same figure. The convergence of name, office, and date makes the identification probable, though not certain.
The Kedah Episode
Hooykaas records the Kedah episode in his chapter on Malay historiography, in his account of the Hikajat Marong Mahawangsa (the Kedah chronicle):
“Toen men dit in Atjéh vernam, liet de Moslim geworden vorst aldaar Sjaich Noeroddin diens boek Sirāṭ al-moestakīm naar Kēdah brengen ter onderrichting in de Wet.” (When this was heard in Atjeh, the Muslim ruler there had Sjaich Noeroddin’s book Sirāṭ al-mustaqīm brought to Kedah for instruction in the Law.)
The “Moslim geworden vorst” of Atjeh — the Muslim ruler of Atjeh who had the Sirāṭ sent to Kedah — is, in the context of the Kedah chronicle’s account of the conversion of the king of Kedah, the Atjehnese sultan under whom ar-Rānīrī served: Sultan Iskandar II, who reigned from 1636 to 1641. The episode thus falls in the same chronological frame as ar-Rānīrī’s Atjehnese compositions of 1638 — the Sirāṭ, the Bustān, and the Bad’ khalq as-samawat wal-arwah.
Significance
For AcehWiki, the Sjaich Noeroddin is significant as the principal vehicle by which the fiqh of the Shāfiʿite school was transmitted from Atjeh to the Malay Peninsula in the early seventeenth century. The Kedah episode — recorded by Hooykaas on the authority of the Hikajat Marong Mahawangsa — is the principal evidence for the role of the Atjehnese court as the centre of Shāfiʿite fiqh diffusion to the Malay Peninsula, and for the place of ar-Rānīrī’s Sirāṭ as the principal vehicle of that diffusion.
See Also
- Nur al-Din al-Raniri
- Sirat al-mustaqim
- Bustanu’s-Salatin
- Sultan Iskandar II
- Over Maleise Literatuur (1947)
- Acheh
- 1638
Source
Over Maleise Literatuur, by Dr. C. Hooykaas, Hoogleraarte Batavia; Tweede Druk (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1947), chapter 11 (“Geschiedschrijving in het Maleis”), p. 94 (the Kedah episode).