The Aqeedah of Tuan Guru pdf download

The Aqeedah of Tuan Guru Translated By Auwais Rafudeen

THE AQEEDAH OF TUAN GURU

Tuan Guru, meaning “Esteemed Master”, was the title of Shaykh ‘Abdullāh [d.1807], a prince and Islamic scholar who hailed from the Ternate islands in eastern Indonesia. He was born in the early 1700’s and was the son of Prince ‘Abdussalām, who himself was a qāqī, or Islamic judge.

His family traced their descent directly to the Holy Prophet, the Salutations and Peace of Allah be upon him. Tuan Guru was given a thorough training in the various branches of Islamic knowledge and proved himself an expert in Qur’ān, hadīth,‘aqīdah, fiqh and tasawwuf.

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Indonesia were marked by frequent battles between the colonising Dutch and the Muslim inhabitants of that land.

In the process, the Dutch exiled a number of leaders, who they viewed as a threat to their continuing expansion, to far-flung outposts such as Cape Town.

Tuan Guru was one of these exiles and was incarcerated on Robben Island from 1781 to 1793.

While on Robben Island he wrote his compendium of Islamic knowledge – often called the M‘arifat al-Islām [Knowledge of Islam] – which consists of a number of writings on Hadīth, fiqh, supplications, amulets, transcriptions of parts of the Qur’ān and ‘aqīdah. The compendium is a testament to the Tuan’s phenomenal memory and his tremendous grounding in the classical disciplines of Islām.

Undoubtedly, the most important section of the compendium was its ‘aqīdah component. This component comprised Tuan Guru’s transcription of the Umm al-Barā}:īn [The Demonstrative Proofs] and one of its commentaries

. The Umm al-Barā}:īn was authored by Shaykh Mu}:ammad bin Yūsuf al-Sanūsī [d.1490] of Tlemcen and the commentary was written by one of his students Shaykh ‘Abdullāh al-Malāli. The Umm al-Barā}:īn, also called the Sanūsīyyah, was to fundamentally shape the worldview of the Cape Muslim community for the centuries to come.¹

Upon his release from Robben Island the Tuan industriously set about organizing and educating the then relatively small Muslim community, who were largely composed of slaves but included exiled notables and convicts as well.

The compendium and the Umm al-Barā}:īn in particular constituted the foundational text of the madrasah. The Umm al-Barā}:īn became locally known as the “twintagh siefaats” [twenty attributes] in Cape Muslim Afrikaans, this referring to the number of attributes the text describes to be necessarily predicated of Allāh. Davids notes that the Umm al-Barā}:īn proved most popular and convenient for rote learning, and several copies were transcribed, with Melayu translations, from the original compendium as handbooks and readers for students at the madrasah.³

Davids, who had two copies of such manuscripts in his possession and had seen several others, states that they constitute “…the most extensive examples of the literary exploits of the Cape Muslims prior to emancipation [in 1834].”⁴

 In fact, Davids attributes the “phenomenal success” of the Dorp Street madrasah – which attracted increasing numbers of students with each passing year and was being replicated in a growing number of other madāris [Muslim schools] – to the theological/philosophical base provided by Tuan Guru’s teaching of the Umm al-Barā}:īn.⁵

 Regarding the determinative role it plays in the Cape Muslim worldview he comments: “Its basic philosophical position still forms the approach to aqida (the Islamic belief system) and became the subject of several Arabic- Afrikaans and Afrikaans (in Roman script) publication [sic] in the late nineteenth and throughout the twentieth century.”⁶

And: “…the Sanusiyyah remained the main teaching subject of the madaris in Cape Town until well into the 1950’s-1960’s, when we as children were required to memorize its concepts without fully comprehending them”.⁷

However, it was not only the tremendous educational and social legacy of the Tuan that earned him the title of “Esteemed Master”. In his own lifetime, he was recognized as a walī Allāh – a Friend of Allah and a number of miracles have been attributed to him. He passed away in 1807 and has been honored by a dome over his grave [kramat], located in the Tana Baru Cemetery, Cape Town.

There is no doubt, by the mere fact of its inclusion in the compendium and what we know of the character of traditional Islamic instruction, that within the well-organized, standardized, vibrant system of Islamic education that prevailed in Cape Town in the first half of the nineteenth century⁸, the commentary of the Umm al-Barā}:īn was taught in tandem with its text.

The text was required to be memorized, forming the content of students’ “koples boeke” [memorization workbooks]. However, in traditional Islamic instruction the teacher’s oral commentary explicates an often concentrated text – as is indeed the Umm al-Barā}:īn.

 Tuan Guru’s transcription of the commentary was very likely aimed as a guide for future teachers, serving them well for the large part of the nineteenth century when the compendium was used as a basic reference on religious issues in Cape Town.⁹

Shaykh al-Sanūsī, the author of the Umm al-BarāJ:īn , was born in Tlemcen, Algeria in 1435/1436.

Trained in the traditional Islamic sciences, he acquired a reputation as a precocious scholar and eminent Sūfī. In particular, he was famed for his works on ‘aqīdah, or the Islamic tenets of belief, which were written at various grades of elucidation. The Umm al-BarāJ:īn was aimed at the primary level and thus came to be called the al-ughrā. The al-Wustā and al-Kubrā, as their appellations indicate, were aimed at the intermediate and advanced levels respectively.

An ascetic who gained a great reputation for mystical knowledge and miracles, he was honored with a dome over his grave on his passing away in Tlemcen in 1490.

 His disciple Shaykh al-Malālī, apart from providing a commentary to the Umm al-BarāJ:īn, also penned his master’s biography.¹⁰

The rationally enunciated, considered distillation of the orthodox Muslim creed as represented in Shaykh al-Sanūsī’s writings has had a far-reaching impact on the Islamic world, inspiring numerous commentaries.

The impact of his writings is evident in West Africa, where the Umm al-BarāJ:īn and its commentaries flourished under the Fulani name Kabbe, in Morocco and Egypt, where his various works constituted standard,

graded textbooks of ‘aqīdah, and in South East Asia, where the Umm al-BarāJ:īn – also called there the al-Durra – was, together with its commentaries, taught in the pesantren [Islamic schools/colleges] accompanied by an interlinear Malay or Javanese translation – the same manner in which the Tuan taught it in Cape Town.¹¹

A synopsis of the text

The text provides the rational justification for the fundamental principles held by the Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jamā’ah [The People of the Prophetic Way and the Congregation], or Sunnis.

The formal systematization of the Sunni creed was undertaken independently by two scholars, Imām Abūl-Hasan ‘Alī al-‘Ash΄arī [d 935 c.e] and Imām Abū Mansūr Māturīdī [d. 944 c.e].

These distillations became the dominant ones in Islām – the mainstream of Islām’s scholarly tradition views them as the authentic representation of the structure of beliefs that the community has inherited from the Companions who in turn absorbed it under the guidance of the Holy Prophet, the Salutations and Peace of Allāh be upon him. The Umm al-BarāJ:īn follows the Asharite enunciation of the creed.

The Umm al-BarāJ:īn proceeds by organizing knowledge into three categories – necessity, impossibility and possibility – and then discusses what must, what must not, and what may be, predicated of the Being of Allāh vis-à-vis these categories.

It predicates twenty attributes as necessarily belonging to the Being of Allāh: namely, Existence,