“This is an annotated transcription and translation of the Syair Tabut (Poem of the Tomb Effigies) of Encik Ali, a Malay-language, Jawi-script syair account of the Muharram commemorations of 1864 at Singapore. The only known part lithograph and part manuscript of this text, on which this edition is based, is held in the library of Leiden University, shelfmark Kl. 191. For a full discussion of this Syair, see the accompanying article by Lunn and Byl (2017).”
The Syair is a riveting account of Muharram commemorations in #Singapore in 1864 – the last year Muharram processions were permitted before the colonial authorities banned them. For an image of Muharram in late colonial Singapore, here's a glimpse: Schlitter, 1858. pic.twitter.com/vt9x5b0xui
.@juliasbyl and I also published a (rather long) analysis of the Syair, looking into the court cases that emerged from the "Muharram riots" that year, the music, and the many rich details in the poem – that article also seems to be open access! https://t.co/PIxcAtY0nb
The Syair itself is a #Jawi-script scroll that lay unexamined in @ubleiden for over 150 years – here's a sense of the beautiful lithographed opening, and the messy, manuscript end: pic.twitter.com/lE33YSeAA1
Anyway, open access, for who knows how long: I hope people will enjoy at least the Syair, and for a sense of some of the most colourful aspects, check out the Muharram Scroll, from c. 1840s Madras Presidency, now in the collections of @acm_sgpic.twitter.com/ua8rfOBkld
And (finally? maybe) it was the wonderful @michaeltalbotuk who directed me to the map collections of the @UkNatArchives – who knew (apart from real historians) that such gems existed? The snippet below was crucial in reconstructing 19thC Singapore geography. pic.twitter.com/YANiWA4vUJ
In 1753 the British Museum was founded through the bequest of the vast collections of Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1673), including over four thousand manuscripts, which are now held in the British Library. … (Read more here.)
Arabic text with interlinear translation in Javanese
Featured image: 16th century-mid 18th century, Arjunavijaya A broken piece of palm-leaf, with text in Old Javanese written in Balinese script, containing parts of stanzas 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20 (but not of stanza 13) from canto 10 of the Arjunavijaya (or Arjunwijaya), a court poem (kakavin or kakawin) authored by Mpu Tantular in the second half of the 14th century, describing a scene of confrontation between Śiva’s attendant Nandīśvara and the demon Rāvaṇa. This fragment corresponds with the critical edition published by Supomo (1977 I: 109), with English transation (1977 II: 203-204). Identified by Ida Bagus Komang Sudarma, Wayan Jarrah Sastrawan and Arlo Griffiths, June 2018. http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=sloane_ms_3480_f001r
… In addition to two manuscripts in Malay, Sloane owned five items from Java, which though fragmentary in nature encompass a wide variety of languages and scripts (Javanese, Old Javanese, Lampung and Chinese) and writing materials (palm leaf, bamboo and paper), and range from commercial documents to a primer of religious law. Sloane’s Javanese manuscripts, which are of interest not only for their diversity but also for their relatively early date, have now all been digitised and can be read on the Digitised Manuscripts website…
