- While Moriscos produced and circulated Qur’ans in the Iberian Peninsula under the Habsburg monarchs, on the other side of the globe the Catholic empire encountered the easternmost expansion of Islam. It was a natural extension towards Southeast Asia that, by the end of the sixteenth century, was entering the Pacific region. When Luis Váez de Torres discovered the strait that bears his name in New Guinea in 1606, he found Muslims preaching Islam to the Papuans:
- Observations were made of the water throughout this land of New Guinea as far as the Moluccas, and the compass was set to fall on the Meridian of the Isles of the Thieves [Guam] with the Philippine Islands: at the end of this land we found Moros dressed with ready artillery, such as small cannons [falcones] and berzos, arquebuses andswords: they are conquering these people who are called Papuans, and they preach the sect of Muḥammad to them: these Moros made trade agreements with us (Pedro Fernández de Quirós, Descubrimiento de las regiones austriales, ed. Roberto Ferrando (Madrid: Historia 16, 1986), 325. Spanish original: “Hízose observación del Agua por toda esta tierra de la nueva Guinea hasta las Molucas, por todo esto fixa la Aguja que viene a caer en el Meridiano de las Islas de los Ladrones con las Islas Filipinas: al remate desta tierra hallamos Moros vestidos, con artillería de servicio, como son falcones y berzos, arcabuces y armas blancas: estos van conquistando esta gente que dicen de los Papúes y les predican la Secta de Mahoma: tuvieron estos Moros con nosotros contratación.”)
- When Ibn Baṭṭūṭah arrived in northeastern Sumatra in 1345, sultan Malik al-Ẓāhir was promoting theological discussion and qur’anic reading, the call to jihad and payment of the jizya:
- This is Sultan al-Malik al-Ẓāhir, one of the most illustrious and generous kings. He follows the shāfi‘ī school and is a lover of the alfaquis, who attend his meetings to read the Qur’an and engage in theological discussions. He makes many razzias and expeditions against the infidels, and as a humble man, he walks to the Friday prayer. The Sumatran people are all shāfi‘īs and like jihad, for which they volunteer. They have thus succeeded in subduing the infidels bordering on their territory, who, according to the peace treaty, pay capitation tribute (Ibn Baṭṭuṭah, Riḥlah (Beirut: Dār Bayrūt li-l-ṭabā‘a wa-l-nashr, 1985), 618).
-
- Several sultanates emerged in Southeast Asia in the fifteenth century, especially around the thalassocracies of Malacca in the Malay Peninsula and Brunei in northern Borneo.
- Story of Iskander:
- Important parts of the Philippine archipelago were under the dominion of Brunei: Palawan, Mindoro, Sulu, Manila, Balayan and Bombon. Consequently, Brunei kept sending preachers to these areas even after the founding of the Spanish settlement in Manila in 1571.
- Islamization of the Phillipine Archipelago:
- Historical Qur’ans in the Philippines
- Juan Salcedo, a military official, reveals in this quotation the bibliographic value of some Qur’ans preserved in the Philippines, “verdaderas joyas bibliográficas” from the sixteenth century. The text also notes the “gran estima” with which copies of the Qur’an were preserved.
- Torrubia mentions that shurafā’ from Mecca introduced Qur’ans into the islands. The Franciscan confessed that he saw many of them in Manila in 1724, seized in the southern fort of La Sabanilla (still extant) and transferred to the capital. These books were not destroyed, at least not deliberately, but secured in Manila.
- In the Archivo General de Indias in Seville some important documents can be found —for example, the only identified letter in the Arabic language issued by a Philippine sultanate,⁶⁰ and one of the earliest Jawi manuscript preserved from the Malay world—⁶¹ but not examples of the Qur’an. Finally, we can point to the reproduction of Sura al-Kāfirūn among the materials used by a Jesuit in his mission in Sulu, from the Arxiu Històric de la Companyia de Jesús a Catalunya in Barcelona.
Qu’ran in Spanish Philippines (Wiegers)
by
Tags:
Comments
One response to “Qu’ran in Spanish Philippines (Wiegers)”
-
I do not even know how I ended up here but I thought this post was great I dont know who you are but definitely youre going to a famous blogger if you arent already Cheers
Leave a Reply