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Abstract

The tales of the prophets are among the most popular textual traditions across the Islamic world and Java proves no exception. Beginning with the first human and first prophet Nabi Adam, these often vast collections recount the biographies of all those viewed as prophets in Islam, ultimately leading up to the “seal of the prophets”, Muhammad. Many manuscripts of this genre were composed and copied in Javanese, in different periods, locales, and milieus, opening a window to how these core Islamic stories and the messages they carry were understood and transmitted in Java. The essay explores one example, a Layang Ambiya composed in the pĕsantren milieu in the mid-nineteenth century and written in pegon (MSB L12), currently housed in the Museum Sonobudoyo, Yogyakarta.

References

Museum Sono budoyo

MS. MSB L12 Layang Ambiya.

Secondary Sources:

Behrend, Timothy E. 1990. Katalog induk naskah-naskah Nusantara. Jilid 1. Museum Sonobudoyo Yogyakarta. Jakarta: Djambatan.

Pigeaud, Theodore G. Th. 1967. Literature of Java. Volume I. Synopsis of Javanese literature 900-1900. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Pudjiastuti, Titik. 2009. “Tulisan pegon; Wujud identitas Islam-Jawa”, Ṣuḥuf 2(2): 271-284.

Ricci, Ronit. 2019. Banishment and belonging; Exile and diaspora in Sarandib, Lanka, and Ceylon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tottoli, Roberto. 2002. Biblical prophets in the Qur’ān and Muslim literature. Translated by Michael Robertson. Richmond, VA: Curzon.

Umam, Saiful. 2011. Localizing Islamic orthodoxy in northern coastal Java in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; A study of pegon Islamic texts. PhD thesis, University of Hawai’i.

Wieringa, Edwin. 2003. “Dotting the dal and penetrating the letters; The Javanese origin of the Syair seribu masalah and its Bantenese spelling”, BKI 159(4): 499-518.

Yahya, Ismail, Moh. Abdul Kholiq Hasan, and Farkhan. 2018. Penerjemahan manuskrip Masā’il at-Talīm ke dalam aksara pegon pada abad ke-17. IAIN Surakarta Press.

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