it’s arabicized not arabized!

feel like i’ve been a little less active here. tbh i really just have been so excited about getting a conditional offer to cambridge that i couldn’t bring myself back to the ground for a bit. it’s just such a big deal for me you know? i never thought that i would have such potential to be considered for an opportunity like this. i feel like it must be a long road because for the longest time, i never felt that i was any good in spite of spending so many hours studying and doing things that i am passionate about.

the biggest improvement i have seen so far is my sense of identity and confidence levels. i feel like i am able to acknowledge and own that my struggles were worth it, and that i can assure myself that i conquered whatever that crossed my path.

usually, i am pretty goon during seminar discussions for sites of asian interaction (probably because of the brain fog i was dealing with) but it seems to be going away… and possibly returning. the only way to deal with it is to sleep it off. so i guess i should take my friday slow and do what i can. i really need to finish the draft of the introductory chapter to my dissertation. the last two chapters are just too intense and i probably need to dedicate a lot of time in order to submit them on time!

anyway, back to the seminars, i actually noticed that i am able to tease out and articulate what i find interesting about the readings and lectures again. we recently looked at ronit ricci’s paper about how citations in islamic manuscripts are a site of literary networks in what she calls, ‘the arabic cosmopolis’.

Ricci, R. (2012). Citing as a Site: Translation and circulation in Muslim South and Southeast Asia. Modern Asian Studies, 46(2), 331-353.

when i was preparing for the cambridge workshop in kuala lumpur, my supervisor recommended me to read ricci’s book, islam translated, so that i had a more nuanced idea about the circulation of islamic texts and its role in conversion of maritime southeast asian polities.

ever since i read this book, i fell completely in love with the way in which manuscripts play such an important role in this part of the world. this paper is a more compressed version of the book, but still brilliant nonetheless.

i really like how meticulously she draws comparisons between various translation styles in different literary traditions. for example, she points out how the phrase bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim as what she calls, a paratext, is adapted to suit tamil, javanese and malay linguistic structures. the javanese example is pretty unique because of all the cases she looked at, the javanese text is the only one to translate the words into localized vocabulary, and basically paraphrases this sacred phrase rather than keeping it as it is.

essentially, ricci’s contemplations on the emergence of islamic literary tradition in southeast asia sheds light on the complexities in understanding what it means to undergo “arabization”. in fact, the term itself has become incredibly loaded in malaysia. especially after a particular prime minister’s daughter described the rising islamic conservatism as “arab colonization” or “arabization”. during a panel session of which she spoke about this topic, i somewhat challenged her to think about how uncritical and potentially, xenophobic such a remark comes across. and that it does not necessarily capture the wider imagination of malay muslims. she was pretty upset with me so i didn’t really get a good conversation at the end.

what i despise most about conversations about how malaysia is so “arabized” is basically for several reasons, as discussed during class the other day.

one, it operations on the assumption that there is a “real” and “pure” malay identity that is tolerant and inclusive. this essentialist concept of malays gallivanting in figure hugging kebayas and dancing to western music, drinking wine and gambling is mostly captured by the liberal malays that often make up the elite class. this is not to say that they are wrong about what it means to be malay. i just don’t think that this is the only way malayness has been expressed in the very long history of plurality that we are in. what more when you think about the presence of hadrami arabs and their tremendous influence on cultural, social and political practices of malay muslims.

two, it assumes that malays have no responsibility and agency in taking on trendier performative gestures of their piety. like, why blame everything on a community that exists outside of your own (taking this in the context of alienation produced by the modern nation-state)? ricci’s paper demonstrates that without interlocutors that are locally bred and based, such versions of faith and religion that we know of today wouldn’t be so widely embraced. so i think such a narrative is merely a trope of fear among the more liberal factions of the country, and not so much a genuine address of issues like political extremism.

is there some kind of communication breakdown in the society we are in today? ricci’s paper also make me ponder upon the whole “allah” drama-o-rama that happened a few years ago. basically, we had one of the most racially tensed court cases in the history of this country. all because there were many muslims that got upset with the usage of allah in reference to god in a malay translation of the holy bible.

apparently it caused great offense because the muslims concerned felt that allah was a specific signifier for god in an islamic context. and so to use it in a christian context was painted as being an insidious trick to seduce muslims into christianity. can’t help but to wonder how true this really is. after all, the arrival of christianity to the malay world was a LOT later than islam.

if we apply ricci’s analysis, allah was one of those words that authoritatively superseded”tuhan” in the malay language, especially in the advent of islamization. i guess this is what she meant by these processes being referred to “arabicized” rather than “arabized” because local languages were influenced by arabic in a way that encouraged combinations rather than replacements. perhaps more than anything, these issues are mostly deeply embedded by the severity of our racialized politics, rather than islamic discourse.

i don’t think i will be able to come up with a final opinion on these issues, but i am certainly on the side that we should abandon a blanket term like arabization to describe the slippery slope towards theocratic tendencies in malaysia. it’s a lot more complicated than that! but that doesn’t mean we don’t have the language for it. we just need to spend more time pondering and searching for pluralities that we can be at peace with.

re-imagining people’s herstory, one girl at a time.

sooooo just parking my speech for international women’s day 2019 celebrations at my university! so honoured that they invited me to partake in a student sharing session.

*takes deep breath*

i feel it is important for me to begin with this question. why is international women’s day significant to us?

we now know IWD as a day of celebration introduced by the united nations in 1975. however, it is incredible that the concept of “women’s day” goes back to the early 20^th century, where the first recorded demonstration was organized by the socialist party of america in 1909.

in fact, once women in soviet russia gained suffrage in 1917, march 8 was declared a national holiday there. perhaps IWD is not important enough to be day off in the imagination of many nations, but with the continuous revival of feminism especially with the #MeTooMovement and Women’s March, today remains as an opportunity to express womanhood in its most political form.

regardless, history or more appropriately, herstory does not lie about the legacy of contesting ideologies in creating a space for women to embrace their agency and fight for equal rights.

yet, such historiography still leaves limited room for women and the myriad of dynamic roles they have played in shaping the course of humanity’s progress.

do we only commemorate women because they have played a primary role in shifting the political tide? should we only celebrate women when they have invented something that could save the world?

this is not to undermine the remarkable achievements of women in fields such as science and technology as well as the arts and social sciences. in fact, the glass ceiling is an extremely real phenomenon of which many women are fighting to shatter and that includes myself. But here is something else to think about.

how do we consider the manifestations of feminism in its various forms, even in its most invisible state?

when i co-founded my organization, imagined malaysia, this would always be at the back of my mind as I continued to work towards my dream to be a historian.

i wonder, how can we use IWD as a space to go beyond what we already know as essential to empowering a certain kind woman?

this IWD, let us speak about female empowerment from various angles of experience and memory. how do we do that?

my mentor, dr sumit mandal, once mentioned in class that the study of history and dependence on conventional archives did not contribute to learning about the story of women in making meaningful social transformations.

instead, it was the rather unconventional research methods often deemed to be not archive-worthy that were central in documenting women’s history. given the persistence of patriarchal structures in family, society and government, women remain at the periphery when it comes to their influence in decision-making processes.

by emphasizing on the most ordinary aspects of the lives of women, a new kind of history became the ideal vehicle for presenting women’s history. this includes subjects such as women in education, birth control, domestic work, marriage, sexuality and motherhood.

take rosaline hoalim for example. she was a young medical student who met her peranakan husband in cambridge, england. rosaline and her siblings would eventually become one of british malaya’s most influential families.

rosaline’s british guyanese heritage brings an equivocal sense of cosmopolitanism to what would be a determining factor in her children.

most notably, her daughter pg lim would rise into prominence in the making of modern malaysia. Not only was pg one of the first women to practice law in the country, she would be best known as the first female ambassador.

as described by her son, lim kean siew, who would be best known as one of penang’s best lawyers and the founder of the labour party of malaya, rosaline never failed to instill the values of social reform in her children.

inevitably, this had resulted in a family that would be remembered through the course of malaysia’s historical changes.

while the iconic 1909 garment worker’s strike in new york has become a dominant narrative in women’s history, it is also important to highlight the overall impact of such an event in our awareness of the challenges of protecting the rights of workers in the light of global economic transformations.

a great example of this would be the work of malaysian anthropologist, aihwa ong titled “spirits of resistance and capitalist discipline”.

what was so brilliant about aihwa’s book was that it documented the cultural and political impact of “runaway factories” on the developing world. through ethnographical research, the book delivers an innovative analysis of the lives of young rural malay women who helped launch malaysia’s rise as a tiger economy.

these findings capture the kind of paradoxical experiences that shape life as a modern Muslim woman in the midst of massive modernization. aihwa noted the various resistance tactics by female workers to protest labor discipline and male control in the modern industrial situation.

“female complaints” such as crying, period cramps and even falling prey to angry spirits were found to be frequent tropes that allowed women to defy back-breaking production targets and poor working conditions.

i find this very insightful because these “female problems” which have often been framed as the limited potential and capacity of women can actually be redefined so that women can gain control and power in patriarchal work spaces.

it cannot be denied that without the course of herstory, the progress of countries would not have evolved the way it did. the study of women’s history will always continue to expand so that it can be more sincere and inclusive.

i hope what i have shared with you today illustrates why it is crucial to radically ponder upon what IWD means to women of all walks of life. this is because i believe that through making greater sense of the past, we can seek solutions and opportunities for the women of today.

*fin*

nevertheless, she persisted.

this is to let you know that i FINALLY submitted my archival research report on martaban jars. well, the good thing was that i am allowed to get extensions upon request because i am registered as a disabled student.

yup, you read that right. besides depression and chronic anxiety, i also have to deal with an autoimmune condition called endometriosis. it looks like i am not as “productive” as i used to be since being diagnosed as an endowarrior (i call myself that so that i can take on a more positive outlook).

lo and behold, i now wear my endowarrior badge with pride because i survive!

i didn’t expect myself to encounter such great difficulty in writing this essay. i feel so tired and lethargic all the time. i think it would probably be better if i do not push myself to be super active because i seem to get exhausted pretty easily.

besides getting an extension, i cancelled two work-related appointments because they require me to travel to kuala lumpur, and well fuck that because it would take up the entire day! i got to deliver a speech on friday for international women’s day.

that’s pretty exciting but i prepared my talking points since i planned to share examples of women’s history and challenging patriarchal elements in historiography. it’s only 10 minutes though and i will be speaking to a crowd of scientists… not sure if they would be down for that.

back to the report. omg. i don’t know why i was struggling so much with this!

up to submission time (mostly because i got so frustrated and fed up with writing the essay that i decided to just finish it off and turn-it-in), i felt like i still had no idea whether i was writing it in the desired format. i might have just been overthinking but i am glad that i got rid of it. now just need to hope that it gets marked generously by my lecturer.

ok, i digress.

about three days ago, i went to the application portal for cambridge and saw that my status was updated to “awaiting for approval from graduate admissions office (gao)”. i was like what dat. so i did some googling and ended up back at the student room.

tbh it felt like good ol’ times when i was applying to the uk via ucas out of peer pressure. ended up finding a thread on postgraduate applications for 2019. and people said that that phrase meant…

i got a conditional offer. it seemed like 98% that was the case too. but like literally everyone whom i told, it’s only legit when i get the offer letter. funny, i thought i would have to wait for another couple more weeks until i heard from gao but hey, hey, what do you know – this woman did get a conditional offer the following night!!

i am still processing this but i couldn’t be any prouder of myself for not letting endometriosis, depression and anxiety inhibit my full potential.

this would not be possible without the support of my friends, mother, sisters, my partner and most importantly, the person who has mentored me throughout my time here – my supervisor.

do you know that feeling when something so amazing happens that being awake is suddenly so much joyous than sleeping? issa mood. the best part is that for the first time in my life i get to celebrate my achievement outside of a toxic environment. i overcame my chronic illnesses.

at the same time, i cannot help but to feel overwhelmed. even a little anxious. i have never ever lived abroad unlike my peers. and what more under the condition of postgraduate studies. i’m more excited than worried though. i really want to keep the positive vibes.

and to reward myself, i want to take a break this weekend. i don’t want to touch my books. i need to pause this moment. breathe. ponder. reflect. move. i deserve a moment to recollect what i thought was broken. this is like a process of kintsugi right now.

happy women’s day.

the past is not another country.

omg. it is super rare to find very good threads on history which are not just explanatory.

you could probably find plenty that showcase beautiful manuscripts, documents and photographs. i don’t blame people for not writing more details on what they have discovered in their research because twitter has very limited characters unlike a blog.

BUT that is not the point of this post. i think that twitter is mostly a socio-political space but ironically you don’t find historians engaging with polemics or the politics of their research areas.

i find that strange because as historians, we should be always engaging with transformations of historiography. given that history is not a linear process, we should always seek ways to understand the marginalized, the complex, the underrated – the downtrodden. this would mean that there must be more experimentation with methodologies and approaches to our objects of study.

i came across this twitter thread by an american historian of greek classics, matt simonton which i believe is a must read:

A short thread on the “Classics and its relation to ‘Western Civilization'” brouhaha. There’s already been enough said about the relatively recent development of the concept of “Western Civilization” and its ideological uses. I would focus instead on relating past and present. /1— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

before you think, since when netusha ever reads anything pertaining to white peeps and their history. well, i do okai, especially because if you want to be a good historian you would need to try to learn a breadth of literature. plus, i would totally want to be one of those historians who are able to support a project for writing more inclusive global histories. that can only be done if i were to have better knowledge about other continents, nation-states and communities.

back to simonton (2019) anyway (and yes i just in-text cited him because this is some legit criticism of classicism):

As @Twhittermarsh has already said, most classicists seek to historicize the ancient past, i.e. to understand it on its own terms and not in the service of some teleological argument that makes the present the straightforward inheritor of the Greeks and Romans. /2— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

this is where the tea spilling begins:

I wholeheartedly agree: One thing that emerges rather organically, I would say, from having my students read the ancient sources is their sense of alienation from the Greeks and their “weird” practices (bloody animal sacrifice, pederasty, etc.). /3— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

This kind of distancing (“the past is another country” etc) seems to me one purpose of any good history course: to “de-naturalize” or make unfamiliar something the students previously thought straightforward. /4— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

By the same token, if something does appear at first glance familiar, it is useful to dwell on it and work through the complexity. My students see, eg, the Spartan Great Rhetra as a kind of precursor to US divided government. But is it? /5— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

The Rhetra (eternally argued over by scholars, of course) encourages, IMO, a system in which the mass of citizen males in assembly are conditioned to give assent to policies devised by an elite class (gerontes + kings). The US Constitution differs in important ways. /6— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

simonton seems like a pretty dope lecturer. it’s nice that he is engaging with his students on the potential longue duree approach that can be taken to see the american constitution. i mean, my only exposure to studies of the constitution seems to be pointed to the world bounded within the legal text which is… not so much of a world at the end of the day.

And in any case it is important to highlight the extent to which the US founders intentionally rejected ancient Greek models of government, finding them too direct and unstable. The Rhetra and the Athenian constitution played almost no role in drafting the Constitution. /7— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

In part, of course, because the Aristotelian Ath Pol had not yet been discovered. But even if it had, I seriously doubt the Founders would have found it attractive. And this gets to the supposed inheritance of Greek ideals of equality, freedom, and democracy by “the West.” /8— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

this is just the pretext for what he is really getting at. that being the problems faced with conservative historiographies rooted in classic studies. and oh gurl, he got so real with us:

IMO, any account that tries to draw a straightforward connection is seriously lacking in historical accuracy and nuance. Early modern republicans did not typically look to the Greeks for models (Rousseau and Sparta being an exception). /9— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

Indeed, the whole idea that “the West” unproblematically took up the Greek mantle of democracy is just wrong: (Greek) democracy was largely a dirty word until people like George Grote began its rehabilitation in the mid-19th century. (@Kleisthenes2 knows this well.) /10— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

In general, see Jennifer Tolbert Roberts’ book on “Athens on Trial”: it was a long, hard process for the idea of the Athenian democracy being a positive model to gain acceptance, and for quite contingent historical and political reasons. /11— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

This brings me to a final point: proponents of a “pro-Western Civilization” narrative in Classics seem to me to engage in a rather sloppy, selective reading of the historical record, in which “freedom+democracy+capitalism+the West” comes in a too-neat and tidy package. /12— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

After all, for the century between 1815 and 1915, the Conservative Order in Europe defended what it thought of as the values of Christendom (God, family, property, monarchy) against the rising tide of liberalism, sovereign parliaments, written constitutions, etc. /13— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

To say nothing of socialism! Which even liberal orders attempted for a long time to stave off using property requirements for the franchise. Universal male suffrage was only begrudgingly bestowed. There is nothing inherent in “the West” that made this inevitable. /14— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

And anyway, as I hope I’ve already made clear, there were developments in Europe that the proponents of “Western Civ” conspicuously leave out: socialism, first and foremost, but also feminism, nationalism, even environmentalism, etc. /15— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

One can assess these developments however one wants. But whittling them away to leave a supposedly natural core of “freedom+democracy+capitalism” is a political choice, not one attuned to the complexity of history. /16— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

What does it mean for these proponents that some of these other developments in European history, such as national, racism, and fanatical anti-Bolshevism, led “the West” to tear itself (and many others) apart in the conflagration that was WWII? /17— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

The world is too complicated, and the stakes are too high, to formulate a self-serving conception of “the West,” its achievements, and its supposed connection to Classical antiquity and to pat ourselves on the back. In fact it protests too much. /19— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

What a lot of these proponents seem to want, IMO, is reassurance that their own particular (assumed) identity remains valid, in fact remains at the top of the political pecking order, in a time of uncertainty and change. /20— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

In that respect the demand that Classicists somehow make clear and even celebrate the present’s debt to the ancient past strikes me as reactionary in the most literal sense: they are reacting (negatively) to a world in which other groups and identities are gaining a voice. /21— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

no tea no shade to attasians but.. this thread is amazing! so relevant to islamic studies as well, which is fixated on theological explanations of history without getting it touch with archives that reveal more complex aspects of the muslim world.

when i embarked into an interest in philology of malay manuscripts, i was quite unsettled by the strange aversion to read manuscripts beyond the narratives that contain within them. i’ve come across many writings, mostly dominated by islamic studies scholars who are often trained with an orientalist lens, largely neglecting the historical and cultural contexts of which these texts exist.

thank goodness i had someone like my supervisor teach me about the radically different approaches that can be taken to interpret malay manuscripts from the precolonial period.

i would like to go into why i find syed naquib al-attas’ views on the islamization of the malay archipelago somewhat problematic, and requires further discussion. this is because i am not inclined to the perspective that you tell the entire history of religion in a region by just linguistic analysis and orientalist tropes about other religions like hinduism and buddhism.

back to simonton (2019), i liked that he ended his thread with some references to authors.

A final thought: this thread, fwiw, benefited from the work of (i.a.) Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, Simon Schama, Eric Hobsbawm, Richard Evans, Donald Sassoon, and Ian Kershaw. So it’s not that historians aren’t reading and appreciating European history: just different lessons drawn.— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

i am quite glad i’m not in the social circle for islamic discourse because i don’t know if i can hold conversation with people who are quite set on al-attas’ convictions. i for one believe in the continuities of the past and that not everything gets entirely displaced into disappearance. perhaps they evolve into something else, but history is far more resilient than that.

hot dogs were haram?¿ a brief semiological analysis.

rofl i was on the phone with my boyfriend last night. we recalled that time i wrote my first assignment in university. it was a 500 word essay for the class “introduction to cultural studies” which i took in my first year. i was so nervous about it. surprisingly this short was graded well and my lecturer even told me there was a lot of potential to expand it. i didn’t because i was too occupied with other matters.

anyway, i am archiving it on this space. who knows if i might revisit it in the near future:

semiology is the study of the systems of signs and how meanings are produced in our culture. according to the father of modern semiology, ferdinand de sassure, linguistics is composed of an interaction between signs, signifiers and the signified.

the philosopher, roland barthes notes that ‘any semiology postulates a relation between two terms, a signifier and a signified’. 1 barthes criticized sassure for only looking at denotation, and neglected connotation in his investigation of meaning-making in popular culture.

in semiotics, denotation and connotation are useful terms that describe the relationship between the signifier and its signified. this deepens the analytic distinction that makes up two types of the signified: “a denotative signified and a connotative signified”. 2

denotation means the literal meaning of a sign while connotation is its secondary meaning. both are crucial in comprehending the value of a certain concept or idea in its projection. intriguingly, such complexities in the representation of meanings can be observed in everyday life and allows us to reflect on the state of a society’s ideals and perceptions.

for instance, the recent issue with the renaming of auntie anne’s “pretzel dog” to “pretzel sausage” with malaysian religious authorities. This was because “dog” was deemed as inappropriate and offensive as some muslims see dogs as unclean. 3

even though “dog” denotes the canine species, it also has a long history of connoting sausages. however, this signification might have disappeared in the context of malaysian-muslim controversies. an explanation to this could be the nature of islamic discourse taking place, which has witnessed a rise in literalist interpretations of ideologies.

as much as “the process of signification” appears systematically universal, uncertainties lie with its possible outcomes as the signified relies on different experiences, places and histories.

References

1 Strinati, D. (2004). An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture. 2 nd edition. London: Routledge, pg 103.
2 Chandler, D. (2014). Semiotics for Beginners: Denotation, Connotation and Myth. Available at http://visual-
memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/sem06.html (Date accessed 21/20/2016)
3 Murad, D. (2016). Rename “Pretzel Dog” to “Pretzel Sausage”, Jakim tells Auntie Anne’s. Available at
http://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2016/10/18/rename-pretzel-dog-to-pretzel-sausage-jakim-tells-auntie-
anne/ (Date accessed 21/20/2016)

sultantepe özbekler tekkesi and the road to hajj.

lale can talking about the motivations behind her research on central asian pilgrims.
she’s so clear and articulate!

writing social history can be extremely tedious. i have always admired people who work very closely with various methodological frameworks so that they can reveal the complexities of certain objects, goods, people and ideas in the form of descriptive writing.

but no shit. if you want to be a historian, you need to be able to peruse very detailed, dense descriptions of objects of study. otherwise you might be in a real dilemma. i really do think that the following is an excellent reminder that such historical writing, if presented well, can be very far from boring:

Can, L. (2012). Connecting People: A Central Asian Sufi network in turn-of-the-century Istanbul. Modern Asian Studies, Volume 46, Issue 2 (Sites of Asian Interaction) March 2012 , pp. 373-40.

oh, oh btw it is pronounced as jan not ‘ken’ and so basically turkish language the c is the j?¿ i am so shook right now.

so i was pretty surprised when a white guy in my class said he felt that this piece of writing was just too descriptive that the main point of the research was lost to him. i was like dafuq bruh. because if we compared to last week’s reading on chinatown enclaves by hu-dehart (2012) it seems pretty clear to me that can does the exact opposite.

well, for starters, she is writing about the movement of central asian pilgrims to the hajj in mecca and how they make a pitstop at this tekke (sufi lodge) called the sultantepe özbekler tekkesi in istanbul. she digs through a shit tonne of archives including guestbooks and diaries in the tekke to find out about the stories of central asian pilgrims that end up in this place. i mean c’mon man, look how epic her abstract is!

The role of Sufi networks in facilitating trans-imperial travel and the concomitant social and political connections associated with the pilgrimage to Mecca is often mentioned in the literature on Ottoman-Central Asian relations, yet very little is known about how these networks operated or the people who patronized them.

This paper focuses on the Sultantepe Özbekler Tekkesi, a Naqshbandi lodge in Istanbul that was a primary locus of Ottoman state interactions with Central Asians and a major hub of Central Asian diasporic networks. It departs from an exclusive focus on the experiences of elites, to which much of the conventional historiography on Ottoman-Central Asian relations has confined itself, and examines the butchers and bakers, craftsmen and students who set out on the hajj to Mecca in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Drawing on sources from the private archive of this lodge, the paper reconstructs the experiences of a diverse range of remarkably mobile actors and explores the myriad ways in which this Ottoman-administered institution facilitated their travel to and from Mecca. Through its focus on the conduits and mediators, the structures and buildings—the actual sites—where connections were forged, the paper sheds light on the role that such state-administered Sufi lodges played in delivering on the paternalistic rhetoric and system of sultanic charity that was an integral part of late Ottoman politics and society.

in case you’re not really into reading the whole thing, i wrote some notes.

i loved how she really humanizes the individuals that she discovers through her archival research. if you read the actual paper, she talks about how and why they ended up at the sufi lodge and the different things that they did. so, like some people ended up being mücavirs (long term residents) because they were refugees. some people were also just looking for a job in istanbul and needed a place to crash in while they figure out what to do next. they had names, hopes and aspirations – all of which can was able to capture by simply detailing their presence in the tekke.

the road to hajj is rendered as a non-linear, multidimensional journey for muslim lives, and in this case central asians. it didn’t matter that those who came to stay at the tekke where immediately making their way to the hajj. it could also have been a more sporadic process. they could come before and after or somewhere in between.

and contrary to popular belief, these sufi guys weren’t always the most morally upright people. in fact, can found records of sufis being thrown out of the tekke for engaging in illicit sex, drug and alcohol abuse LOL. it is so crazy yet so awesome because when reading islamic history it always seems so squeaky clean. so this paper is so cool because it is describing how naturally messy the lives of people are, no matter how islamic their contexts are.

when we were concluding our discussion at the end of class, i shared about what was at the back of my mind – what compelled these shaykhs to perform the role of the postnisin (kinda like the head of the sufi order, but he would also be the warden) in the tekke. and like he would take care of the poor, the destitute, the sick, the young or any muslim or non-muslim central asian that was in need to recollect themselves to perform the hajj, or just even get their shit together essentially. it’s pretty admirable tbh.

i guess ummah must be the underlying tone of inspiring such agency and goodness in these people. and i really liked that my lecturer brought up about how it is impossible for the journey to the hajj to be done in a linear fashion with zero interruptions. this tekke is so instrumental in the mobility of pilgrims, and that could probably be said for many other sufi lodges in different parts of the muslim world.

lale can is an amazing historian whose work reveals the fundamental flaws in conservative islamic studies writing to render social realities as invisible. islamic studies scholars shouldn’t still be writing about islam in a very monodimensional way today, especially given that when we unearth agents, driving forces, political economy and faith as very contingent to the spread of this world religion.

cool stuff, wei.

new history through archives of mobility.

currently wrestling with developing more specific research questions for my investigation of martaban jars. good thing is that my lecturer set some guidelines for us to follow in writing the archival research report. one of the suggestions he made was to read the following:

Harper, T. and S.S. Amrith, (2012) “Sites of Asian Interaction: An Introduction,” Modern Asian Studies 46, 2 (Mar.), pp. 249-257.

honestly, this is such an epic read. it is not just a summary of the papers that are in the book. it also lays out the various methodological frameworks that historians can utilize to tease out more subaltern aspects of history. the overarching theme of the book is histories of cosmopolitanism in asia, and how through a study of movements, goods, ideas, people and objects (i have literally memorized that phrase btw because my supervisor repeats it like a chant for lectures lel) we can actually even look at the limits of cosmopolitanism.

i am a neat-freak and use colour to memorize so here are my notes.

these limits are not necessarily dictated by the creation of the modern nation-state, but they seem to also be due to factors that involve the extent of mobility that these movements, goods, ideas, people and objects are capable of. huhu saw what i did there?

plus, my entrance into understanding the study of material culture began with one particular chapter in this book. it also started my extreme fandom during my gap year when i was self studying historiography and southeast asian studies in anticipation that my parents would force me back into the rigidity of law school. aren’t i glad i won the battle at the end.

Mandal, S.K. (2012) “Popular Sites of Prayer, Transoceanic Migration, and Cultural Diversity: Exploring the Significance of Keramat in Southeast Asia,” Modern Asian Studies 46, 2 (Mar.), pp. 355-372.

i never really looked at keramat (muslim shrines) in this way. this chapter taught me that history is not necessarily centred on the discourse of powerful individuals. i could actually make the focus of complex relations more evident if i tried to examine materials that can demonstrate a broader process that is going on in the vastness of world history.

so now onto my martaban jars *cracks knuckles*, perhaps i can write about how when we look at the localization of martaban jars into heirloom objects in borneo, we can actually see how cosmopolitanism fades away into the background, becoming deeply embedded to the point of subtlety.

most of the secondary sources i am reading to acquire photographs and information about the jars are from museum collection catalogues in europe. at first i thought of understanding the reasons for artifact acquisition to be the object of study, but then i need to make the jars as the archive itself. i think they can because of their aesthetic origins, but also for their functionality in different cultures, particularly ranging from myanmar to china and borneo.

close up #2
(please forgive me for that ugly ass arch in the second column)

plus, i found out that eric tagliacozzo wrote in one of his books about how martaban jars were so valuable that they were often looted and smuggled through the borders between borneo! that really does break the whole orientalist curation trope that seems to colonize narratives of material culture.

now that i have some ideas for my approach to the jars, i am quite excited to read some of the papers in my bibliography to further refine my research questions.

writing my first archival research report.

i’ve been so eager to take this module for my final semester in university. it is called “sites of asian interaction”, taught by one of the most remarkable malaysian historians of our time (and yes, i don’t count professor khoo kay kim as remarkable in this context). *scandalouuusss*

the module is shaped on the basis my supervisor’s book project with historians tim harper and sunil amrith. even the title is based on the book – sites of asian interaction: ideas, networks and mobility.

i really wanted to write about carcosa and king’s house, the resident and guest house of britain’s high commissioner pre-independence. for simple reasons obviously. one was that i have a strong affinity to the buildings after spending months of sleepless nights putting together an exhibition on the multiplicity of narratives about ‘merdeka’. the other was the accessibility of archives on the building, ranging from its blueprint, to photographs and memorandum of understanding between the british and malaysian governments. writing about this building’s history as site of interactions would allow to demonstrate it as a nodal point in the process of colonization and decolonization.

but my lecturer seemed pretty ambivalent about it. plus, he was pretty adamant that this assessment does not expect “conventional history” to be the choice of study. so my other suggestion to study the travels of the malay sufi poet, hamzah fansuri were shot down without hesitation.

and maybe i should put myself to do something that would allow me to explore past research interests that i never had the opportunity to. this was when i recalled my desire to learn more about the heirloom jars used by communities in borneo for rituals of life and death.

my tentative title at the moment is this:

Memory, Ritual and Transmission of Martaban Jars in Borneo

the martaban jar is a lug-handled storage jar that originates from the southern coast of myanmar. during my visit to tun jugah foundation in kuching, sarawak, i learnt about the importance of martaban jars as heirloom pieces to orang asal families in borneo.

in fact, it felt like a first hand lesson about how much meaning these jars have for the indigenous communities in borneo. this was because i had the pleasure of meeting melia linggi brown, the granddaughter of tun jugah and director of the foundation.

it was quite annoying to be in a delegation of people who only cared to ask the kind of questions only private collectors would care about. such as the date of acquisition and origins. many of the martaban jars on dated back to the ming dynasty. it then occurred to me that many of us who were there with melia did not consider the movement of these jars from one point in the asian region to another.

so i took the opportunity to ask melia a question that the collectors around me probably thought was stupidly unsophisticated – “among the many jars here, which one is your favourite, melia?”

her eyes lit up almost immediately and she excitedly points to a very large, dark brown glazed martaban jar. “this one belonged to my grandmother and when she got married, this was the one jar she insisted to bring when she moved to her new home”, melia said. “i feel like a part of her is always with me because of this jar”. she proceeded to show me her first jar which she acquired as a teenager. they were often used for spiritual practices that date back centuries.

a tree of beads made from precious stones and glass.
with some martaban jars in the background.

these jars do not just have great commercial and aesthetic value, they are also attached with memories of ancestry, love, life and death. i hope to investigate the movements from across the asian region to borneo through an examination of artifact acquisition processes.

good news is that my lecturer approved this topic! but he asked me to specify what are the interactions that i wish to better understand and more specifically, how does the jar itself serve as an archive. gosh, i hate it everytime he asks me these difficult questions.

then again, i really do need to pin down how and why i am looking at artifact acquisition processes of museums around the world for martaban jars. can i even make the martaban jar itself the archive? or should the documentation on what, where and why the jar was acquired by various agents, be it curator or private collector, be the focus of my report?

i’ve compiled twelve sources for my bibliography. i guess i should get reading so that i can submit the paper in time of the original deadline.

also, what the hell is the format for an archival research report?!