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LEKTTJRVol. 5, No. 2,2007

Daftar Isi

I'}cnelitian

Pcrlawanan Gender dalam Naskah Klasik Keagamaan Bugis:Kasus Lontaraq SiUi Rabiyatul Awwaliya

Mustari 159- 182

Naskah Klasik Jawa-lslam (Telaah atas Naskah Islam KejawenSuluk Besi Karya Pengerang Wijil Kadilangu

Abdul Mubarok 183 - 203

Materi Siaran Keagamaan diTelevisi: Studi Bahan CeramahMimbar Islam pada Stasiun TVRI Manado

Harisun Arsyad 204 -224

Artikel

I;uth Al-'Ari/in Ahmad Khatib SambasAhmad Rahman 225 --243

'l'racing Individual Styles: lslamic Calligraphy fiom NusantaraAli Akbar 244 -255'l'cka-Teki Inskripsi Islam Makam KediriClaude Gulliot dan Ludvik Kalus 256 - 278

'l'claah Buku

l'}rinsip-Prirrsip Tauhid dalam Buku al-Tawhtd: Its ImplicationsIrtr'l'httught and Life Karya lsma'il Rajial-Faruqi

Musmedia Pinem 279 -296

()bituari

Mcngenang Prof. Dr. Hasan Muarif Ambary(lka 1-undrasasmita 297

- 302

Tracing individual stYles ,

Islamic Calligraphy from Nusantara'

KaidahtulisankaligrafilslamyangtelahdibakukandiTimurTengahtidak memperoleh perhatian besar dari para penulis Nusantara pada masa

lampau. SeUatitnya, mereka lebih banyak mengembangkan 9ay1. tulisan

,rrdiri, dan yang-paling menonjol adalah 'kaligrafi floral'. Jika di Timur

Tengah kaligrafr merupikan seni tulis dengan disiplin penulisan_ huruf yang

,*frt f"tui di Nusantara seni hrlis merupakan bagian dari bentuk seni

lainirya, dan dalam seni mushaf tidak terpisahkan dari iluminasi.

Kata kunci: kaligrafi Islam, Nusantara, Al-Qur'an

, This article is based on a paper entitled 'Islamic calligraply from

Nusantara: a study based on ,o*. Q*'u' manuscripts' which was originally

prepared for the 'International Course in the handling and cataloguing of lslamic

liuior.riptr, organised by the Al-Furqan Foundation, London, in cooperation

with the international tslamic University of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, 27 March'

12 April 2006. The paper was tansdted fr_om Indonesian by Dr Annabel Teh

cattop, Head, south and southeast Asian collections, British Library, London.

244

Ali AkbarBryt al-Qur'an & Museum Istiqlal, Jakarta

Introductionihe study of Islamic art from Nusantara - the local name for the

island world of Southeast Asia, encompassing the present-day

states of Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei and the Philip-

pines - has barely been touched, whether by Westem scholars or

iocal ones. Studies of Islamic art generally ignore Southeast Asia,

covering only the area stretching from North Africa to Turkey, the

Middle-East, central Asia and Iran up to India, as if it is only art

Tractng indtvidual styles - Alt Atrbar

from these regions that can be called 'Islamic art'. This is despitethe fact that if population is taken into consideration, substantialnumbers of Muslims live in Southeast Asia (Indonesia has thelargest Muslim population in the worrd), and Muslims have beenpresent in this region for almost a thousand years. This situation ofneglect has arisen partly because of a colonial 'legacy, that hasconsistently belittled the role of Islam in the arts and cultures ofsoutheast Asia, while lavishing attention on works from the Hindu-Buddhist period.

Another contributing factor is that the study of Nusantaramanuscripts has traditionally been dominated by philologists - whoonly study texts - rather than art historians. The field oftanuscriptillumination from Nusantara has over the past few years receivedconsiderable attention from Annabel Teh Gallop br *t" BritishLibrary, London. However, the treasury of Nusantara calligraphyremains almost totally undiscovered, and to date there is-not asingle comprehensive or serious study of this field. Nusantara calli-graphy is almost never mentioned in manuscript sfudies, or if ithappens to be mentioned in passing, it is only in the context of theeight_popular calligraphic styres of the Middle Eastern tradition,namely Thuluth, Naskhi, Ta,liq (Farisi), Diwani, Diwani Jali,Riq' ah, ljazah and Kufi c.

These eight Middle Eastern styles of calligraphy seem to betreated almost as 'sacred', definitive, categories thit are never evenquestioned in any discussion of calligraphy in Nusantara. And yeta preliminary study of the treasury of Nusantara calligraphy revealsthat something different was going on! Attempting-to discussNugantara calligraphy by constant reference to these eight standards_t/es inevitably runs into problems. This paper will focus onQur'an manuscrips, because the finest examplei of manuscrip art- whether calligraphy or illumination - are forrrd in decoratedcopies of the Holy Book.

Some characteristics of Nusantara calligraphyone of the most notable features of Nusantara calligraphy, espec-ially in the surah headings of eur'an manuscriptr,lr trr. charac-

245

Jurnal Leldur Keagamaan, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2007: 214 - 255

teristic knotting of the certain letters. The letters ate ta' marbutah inthe words ayah, surah, mi'oh, Makkiyyah, Madaniyyah (or in the

word al-qissah at the start of literary works) and alif after ya' in the

word AyAt. This highly distinctive feature is found in Qur'an manu-

scripts from various regions, including Aceh, Palembang, Pakan-

baru, Sumed*g, Demak, Surakarta, Surabaya, Mataram, Makassar

and Ternate. On the basis of the occurrence of knots in Qur'ansfrom a wide range of states on different islands, calligraphic knots

appear to be a general feature probably also found in other parts ofNusantara. Nevertheles, the most striking and attractive examples

of these calligrapic knots are from Java. Many Qur'an manuscripts

from Java have examples of letters with multiple knots, and ofknots found in more than one word within the surah heading.

In manuscripts containing religious texts (referred to inNusantara generically as'kitab'), emphasising (or rubricating) the

start of new chapters by stylising or elaborating certain letters can

often be seen. The words amma, fasal, mas'alah or kitab whichindicate the start of a new topic, and simultaneously mark the close

of the previous topic, receive special treatment and are elaborated

according to the creative talents of the scribe. In addition to this

function of marking the juncture between chapters, in some

manuscripts the knotting of ta' marbutah also functions to highlightthe importance of a particular word.

Another distinctive feature of the Nusantara calligraphic tradi-

tion is the use of 'floral calligraphy'2 which can be most clearly

seen in Qur'an manuscripts from Palembang, Makassar, and isparticularly evident in some Qur'ans illuminated in the Terengganu

rtyt.. In the Middle Eastern calligraphic tradition, letters are

usually letters - in the sense of retaining their pure letter forms -even if placed against a background of floral ornaments; in other

words, the letters have a separate existence from their floral back-

ground. But what can be seen happening in Qur'an manuscripts

from Palembang, Makassar and Terengganu, for example, is

2 I propose the term ,floral calligraphy' for calligraphic compositions in

which the letters evolve or are fiansformed into floral ornaments themselves' As

far as I know, this is a new term.

246

-l'rot ing individual st),le,t :lli Akhar

something unusual: the letters metamorphose and actually .become,floral omaments. This calligraphic form also demon#ates howArabic (read: Islamic) letters have melded with the traditions of thesurrounding local community, to yield unique forms of adaptation.

'Floral calligraphy' in surah headings of eur'ans Ji-om Bima, w/est !{usaTenggara (above) and Terengganu, Malal;sia (below).

The beauty of, the surah headings shown above is in contrastwith the style of writing in the rest of each of the eur'ans, which isinevitably written simply, always in Naskhi. Tiis leads to theconclusion that Qur'an rnanuscripts are sor,netimes written by twopeople- The calligraphic surah headings on the illuminated pageswere written by the illuminator of the eur'an, while all the otherpages are by the copyist of the eur,an.

such collaboration often occurred in the copying of eur,ansand other manuscripts, because illuminated pug", ir, {*,r, manu_scripts were treated very specially. The surah headings on illumi-nated pages were the work of the illuminator, whose sfeciality wasnot writing but drawing- The resulting compositiorx ur" t ightydistinctive. In such compositions, the 'ideology, or particular idio-syncratic tastes of the illuminator informs

-irl, t"tt".s, yielding

letters with very distinctive styres. Such distinctive results can beseen in the surah headings in a eur'an believed to be fiom Ternatc,North Maluku"

247

Jurnal Lektur Keagdmaan, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2007: 2"14'255

Surah hteadiw, Qur'aY manuscript, PNN4.49, , . ,'.,'....

In this manuscript, the surah headings on the illuminated pages

at the beginning of the Qur'an were almost certainly writtgn py th.illuminator. It is impossible to'imagine that if the surah,hgadinql

had been written by a trained calfigrapher (khattat), that he would

have produced letters lpoking like this. The letter ta' marbutah inthe *ords at-fatihai- ia *:oinqrft ib so stylised that it hai'taken

on a completely new form, resembling a clove flower. The tail ofthe ,ain has been shaped iit. u leaf, as is characteristic of floral

calligraphy. Such 'daring' would probably not have occurred if the

writer had been a 'pure' calligrapher.Other good examples are the calligraphy of the surah headings

on the illuminated pages in several Qur:ans in the collection of the

Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia, including 1998.1.3427,1998.1.3430, 1998.1.3 494, 1998.1.3549,and 1998.1.3505. There is

great harmony in the interplay between the calligraphy and the

surrounding floral motifs.

Middle Eastern and Nusantara Qur'an Calligraphy

Qur'ans have probably been copied in Nusantara ever since the

conversion of the local population to Islam. Although this praotice

has been going on for such a long time, the copying of Qur'ans -and other religious texts - is primarily to fulfill the practical needs

of the Muslim community, for the teaching of religion. Therefore,

the majority of Qur'an manuscripts are simple in form. Althoughthere are also Qur'an manuscripts decorated with artistic motifs, up

till now no examples have been found that can match the brilliance

of Mamluk Qur'ans, or of Qur'ans from Turkey, Persia or Irldia.

248

l'racing irulividual.stylts lli,4kbor

The Ottoman Turkish sultans valued calligraphy very highly.sultan Bayazid II (1481-1512) is known to have been very close tL,and to have studied with, Syaikh Flamdullah al-Amasi (d.1520), theforemost otloman calligrapher. In court accounts it is recorded thatwhile his teacher was practising calligraphy, the sultan was happyto hold his inkpot. calligraphy continued to deveiop under theottoman, and a number of new styles were bom. calligraphy wastaught systematically, through the master-ctnd-student system3.This system was maintained rigidly for centuries right up to thepresent, and even now contemporary Turkish calligraphers cantrace their professional genealogies back through five centuries toSyaikh Hamdullah al-Amasi, rais al-khattatin (Faremost amongCalligraphers).

Through this master-and-student system of teaching calli-graphy, the rules for writing Arabic script, the fundamentals ofwhich had been laid down by earlier generations of calligraphers,could be rnaintained carefully. An interesting outcome of this tradi-tion is the standardisation of rules for writing Arabic calligraphy. Itis this master-and-student system, and the stanclardisation of rulesfor writing, which appear not to have featured in the calligraphictradition of Nusantara throughout the many centuries of itsdevelopment.

Nusantara scribes generally copied eur'ans and other rnanu-scripts primarily for the pu{poses of teaching and as everydayreading materials. what was needed in such circumstances wasobviously simple manuscripts that could be read easily. sumptuouslarge Qur'ans were usually produced in palaces, in order to enhancethe prestige and authority of the ruler.

The form of naskhi found in eur'an manuscripts written ondluwang (locally-made .lavanese paper) is simpler, because suchmanuscripts were certainly not made with aesthetic criteria in mindbut merely for educational purposes. This was especially the case inreligious schools Qtesantren), as can be seen from the eur,anmanuscripts in the AW (Abdurrahman wahid) collection in the

'Derman 1998:186.

249

Jurnal Leldur Keaganaon, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2007: 244 - 255

National Library of lndonesia (PNRI), and in scores of Qur'anmanuscripts on dluwang in the collections of the Mpu TantularState Museum in Surabaya, and the State Museum of West NusaTenggara in Mataram, Lombok.

ConclusionThe rules of cursive calligraphy which have such a long tradition inthe Middle East appear not to have been paid much attention byscribes in Nusantara, and in general have not had a strong influence

on the calligfaphy of Arabic scripts in Nusantara. In certain

respects, throughout Nusantara communities have developed theirown styles of Arabic writing. Whereas in the Middle East calli-graphic styles have been developed very systematically, with 'one'set of standard rules for writing, this was not the case in Nusantara,

where each scribe seems to have been free to develop his own style

of writing. There thus appears to be a divide in the 'world' ofArabic writing: while in the Middle East the Arabic script was

treated as a respected artistic discipline in a class of its own, inNusantara the writing of Arabic is part of a continuum with other

art forms. Furthermore, in this region, Arabic script was mainlyused for functional reasons, namely to copy religious texts, or foradministrative purposes, or for other functional uses.

In terms of style, a unique feature of calligraphy in Qur'anmanuscripts from Nusantara is the use of 'floral calligraphy'.Floral calligraphy refers to calligraphic compositions in which the

letters are so stylised that they become floral forms, in keeping withthe motifs of the surrounding illumination. Local creative talent can

be seen in the rich variety of forms of floral calligraphy found.

This unique form of calligraphy was created and developed byilluminators in the course of copying a Qur'an manuscript, and was

carried out alongside the illumination of the manuscript. Apart fromfloral calligraphy, there are other tendencies to stylise calligraphy,

such as can be seen in Qur'an manuscripts from Aceh, with letters

that are very free in shape. The developers of this tendency were

also illuminators of Qur'an manuscripts.

250 2s1

Tracing individual styles -- Ali Akbar

Even though within certain parameters it cannot be said thatNusantara calligraphy scales the greatest artistic heights, with itsown distinctive characteristics and rich variety of forms,calligraphy from Nusantara makes an inspiring and meaningfulcontribution to the calligraphic treasury of the Islamic world.*

References

Derman, M. Ugur. 1998. Letters in Gold: Ottoman Calligraphyfrom the Sakip Sabanci Collection, Istanbul, New York: TheMetropolitan Museum of Art.

Kumar, Ann, and John H. McGlynn. 1996. Illuminations: TheWriting Traditions of Indonesia. Jakarta: Lontar Foundation -New York and Tokyo: Weatherhill, Inc.

Gallop, Annabel Teh. 2004. "Beautifying Jawi: BetweenCalligraphy and Palaeography." Second InternationalConference on Malay Civilization: Malay Images, UniversitiPendidikan Sultan Idris, Legend Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, 26-28Februari 2004.

Gallop, Annabel Teh. 2005. "The Spirit of Langkasuka?Illuminated manuscripts from the East Coast of the Malaypeninsula." Indonesia and The Malay World, Vol. 33, No. 96.

Jurnal Lektur Keagarnaan, Vol. 5, No, 2, 2007: 244 - 255

Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia (IAMM 1998.1.3427 (above and below).(Photos by Ali Akbar)

2s2 253

Traalng lndlvlduul ttylas * All Akhar

IAMM 1998.1,i549 (above and below).

W

il!r

Jurnal Lektur Keagamaan, Vol, 5, No. 2, 2007: 244 - 255

IAMM t998.1.i4i0 (above) and 1998.1.3494 ftelow)IAMM 1998.1.3505 (above and below).

Tracing individual styles - Ali Akbar

254 255

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