Muntahī

bibliography

text notes

    combined list of words in Hamzah Fansūrī texts

list of words

Bibliography

title:		Muntahī
edition:		Syed Muhammad Naguib al-Attas, The Mysticism of Hamzah Fansūrī, Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1970. Chapter XI, pp.329-353.
manuscript:		Cod.Or. 7291 (3), Leiden University Library.
dates:		text:  ~1580;    manuscript:  ~1907.
provenance:		text:  Aceh;    manuscript:  Batavia > Snouck Hurgronje;  copied by Mohammed Noerdin.
words:		3037 words.
references:		to the pages (111-130) and the paragraphs of Al-Attas’ transcription (1-31), thus:   Munt 130/31.

 

Editorial notes

None of Hamzah Fansūrī’s works is dated, but he lived and flourished from perhaps 1570 to the very early 1600s, giving his works dates in this range.

This text, identified in its colophon as kitab bi 'l-Muntahī, is particularly interesting because it was later used by Al-Rānīrī to demonstrate Hamzah’s pantheism and adherence to the false doctrine of Wujūdiyyah.  He cites Hamzah’s recurring claim that ‘Whosoever knows his self knows his Lord’ (‘Man `arafa nafsahu fa qad `arafa rabbahu’) as evidence of this thniking.   (Al-Attas, p.35).

Al-Attas has carefully edited the manuscript text, correcting it and filling lacunas by reference to the Arabic and Persian sources from which Hamzah Fansūrī made extensive quotations.  It appears that, over time, copyists of the text have omitted some of the Persian quotations, which they no longer understood.  These are included in Al-Attas’ version (and in the MCP text).  Note however that the Arabic and Persian passages are not indexed in the MCP.

Al-Attas aims to create a readable text, rather than to preserve the original text.  To make the text more comprehensible, he interpolates many words and phrases.  In general, these emendations have been omitted from the MCP text, except where they seem quite necessary for the sense of the text.  The policy followed for Asrār al-`Ārifīn has been applied here.  Al-Attas has also sometimes interplotated text from Cod.Or. 1952 and extrapolated from a Javanese version Cod.Or. 5716 (2), and from parallel passages in Asrār al-`Ārifīn.  In the MCP, this imported text is enclosed in angle brackets < >.  Cod.Or. 1952 is an old mansuscript copied before 1717, and probably collected in Batavia.  It contains the early parts of Muntahī.

Al-Attas gives an English translation of his text in Chapter XII (pp.448-472), entitled “The Adept”.  The paragraph numbers provide a means of linking this to the transcription of the text.

Mahayudin Haji Yahaya also gives a transcription of the text in his Karya Klasik Melayu-Islam, pp.73-87, which is not significantly different from that given by Al-Attas.  Passages of the text can be located in this transcription also, as Mahayudin indicates Al-Attas’ paragraphs in his text.

References:

G.W.J. Drewes & L.F. Brakel, The Poems of Hamzah Fansuri .. accompanied by the Javanese translations of two of his prose works, Dordrecht: Foris (for KITLV), 1986 — provides the Javanese text on pp.251-270, followed by comments often comparing the Javanese version to the Malay version in Al-Attas’ transcription, pp.270-277.

Syed Muhammad Naguib al-Attas, The Mysticism of Hamzah Fansūrī, Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1970. Appendix VI, pp.505-526 — facsimile of Cod.Or. 7291 (C).

 

Preparation

Added:  October 2010.

The printed edition was scanned in Canberra by the MCP using Abbyy™ Finereader OCR, and its spelling modernised.