Table of Contents
Be sure you accept correctly the meaning of the One and the mirror. Understand this in its proper sense. Do not accept it in a mistaken [way]. Understand these metaphors. And the meaning of ‘return’. Do not [claim yourself] to become God (Tuhfa, Johns 1965)
In the previous chapters, three different types of narratives functioning in the village have been identified: the narrative of the ancestors, the narratives of space, and the body of narratives relating to Sufi silsilah. While the previous chapter discussed the tradition behind the silsilah of the Shattariyyah order, this chapter will discuss the teaching of the Wali, Shaykh Abdul Muhyi.
In the village, what it is called the ‘teaching’ of the Wali is not as clear as we might imagine. Various spiritual teachings in the village are often ascribed to Shaykh Abdul Muhyi. These are scattered and may range from only a proverb dealing with the Shaykh to the whole metaphysical doctrine of Shattariyyah or Qadiriyyah-Naqshabandiyyah. The distance from the Wali to contemporary Pamijahan has created a fuzzy perception of what should be properly called the Wali’s teaching. Furthermore, there is the question of whether the teaching of Shaykh Abdul Muhyi can be designated as a single doctrine, such as that of the Shattariyyah, or as a combination of various mystical teachings.
It is possible for a Sufi to be initiated into various orders. In the 17th century, for instance, the master of Shaykh Abdul Muhyi, Abd al-Rauf al-Singkel, was reported to have had more than two ijazah or Sufi accreditations (Riddell 1984; Fathurhman 1999; Azra 2001). Abd al-Rauf’s master, al-Qushashi, was also a member of various tarekat in Mecca. In fact, most tarekat do allow their followers to embrace more than one order. There are of course exceptions, but they are not dominant. For example, the tarekat Tijaniyyah forbids its followers to become members of other orders (Muhaimin 1995:336). However, in the case of Shaykh Abdul Muhyi, the ambiguity of his teaching is partly caused by the fact that no manuscript has been found in the village, or in any library, that is written directly by him. Most manuscripts giving us a clue to his existence appear to have been written by his followers in later periods (E. Kosim 1974; Rinkes 1909; Krauss 1995).
On the other hand, as I mentioned in Chapters 3 and 7 (see also Christomy 2002), there is significant evidence that Shaykh Abdul Muhyi initiated many followers from Java into the Shattariyyah, or, at least, silsilah through his name even reach as far as Trengganu, Malang, Surakarta, Cirebon and various small villages in West Java.
The number of manuscripts in the library of Leiden University in The Netherlands is more than thirty. Therefore, it is not surprising that a number of scholars have questioned the role of Shaykh Abdul Muhyi in originating or delivering his teaching. For example, Krauss (1995) set out to clarify Muhyi’s historical identity. Even before Krauss wrote his article, in 1974 important preliminary research had been conducted by a team of historians from the University of Padjajaran. (Kosim 1974)
It is important here to recall their findings. The research focused on the advance of Islam into the interior of the highlands of Sunda. One of their discoveries that is important here is their identification of the Wali’s teaching. According to Kosim (E Kossim 1974)
Dalam hubungan ini ternyata Tarekat Shaykh Abdul Muhyi termasuk dalam Tarekat Shattariyyah. Keterangan yang menjelaskan bahwa Shaykh Abdul Muhyi menganut Tarekat Shattariyyah, bersumber dari Kitab Shaykh Nursada dari Sumedang Kulon sebagai murid kelima. Kitab ini ditulis pada tahun 1842. Sebaiknya kita harus mengambil sumber langsung dari kitab yang ditulis oleh Shaykh Abdul Muhyi sendiri, tetapi sayang bahwa sampai kini kami belum mendapatkannya. Yang tersebar di Jawa Barat kebanyakan adalah ajaran Shaykh Abdul Muhyi yang dituliskan oleh murid-muridnya yang diangkat sebagai Khalifah atau pengganti-penggantinya. (p. 129)
In relation to this (what has been discussed above), the tarekat of Shaykh Abdul Muhyi comes under the Shattariyyah order. The evidence that he followed the Shattariyyah is based on the Kitab Shaykh Nursada from West Sumedang who was a fifth generation student (of Shaykh Abdul Muhyi). The book was written in 1842. Naturally we should take as our source the writings of Shaykh Abdul Muhyi himself, but unfortunately, up to the present time, none has been found. What we do have circulating in West Java are mainly the teachings of Shaykh Abdul Muhyi written by those of his students, promoted to the rank of Khalifah (Deputy) or of their successors.
Proceeding from a philological framework, it is difficult to identify manuscripts that are directly written by the Wali. Alifya Santrie (1987: 107-113), however, has tried to speculate that the name of Shaykh Muhyidin in the manuscript of the Shattariyyah is none other than Shaykh Abdul Muhyi. Now, my evidence from the village and the Shattariyyah manuscripts suggests that Shaykh Muhyidin is the grandson of Shaykh Abdul Muhyi. In one of his findings, Kosim (1974: 1), states that the teaching of Shaykh Abdul Muhyi is a combination of Shattariyyah doctrine and the kabuyutan teachings of the pre-Islamic period, such as were used by the Wali Sanga to attract local Javanese to Islam.
Doa-doa yang diajarkan Tarekat Shaykh Abdul Muhyi sering menggunakan percampuran doa antara “ajaran kabuyutan” dan ajaran Islam. Adapun yang dimaksud dengan ajaran kabuyutan ini meliputi ajaran kabuyutan Sumedang, Cirebon, Karang Kamulyan dan beberapa tempat lain dari Jawa Barat. Doa kabuyutan terdiri dari susunan kalimat yang sulit difahami. Mungkin ini yang disebut sebagai ‘jangjawokan”. Doa-doa ini meliputi hampir seluruh keperluan kehidupan yang pokok, antara lain: pertanian, hubungan seksuil, penolak dan penyembuh penyakit, perdagangan, kekebalan supaya tidak mempan akan peluru atau senjata tajam. (p. 137)
The prayers taught by the tarekat of Shaykh Abdul Muhyi often employ a mixture of those from kabuyutan or the ‘teachings of the ancestors’ and from Islam. What is meant by the ‘teachings of the ancestors’ here includes the sources from the ancient centres of Sumedang, Cirebon, Karang Kamulyan and a number of other places in West Java. Their prayers are couched in words difficult to understand. Perhaps they come under the term ‘jangjawokan’. These prayers cover almost every basic need in life, including farming, sexual relations, the prevention and the curing of disease, trade and the state of invincibility whereby one cannot be touched by bullets or sharp weapons.
Even if speculation about Abdul Muhyi’s fusion of two traditions can be verified, there are still problems concerning the evidence to hand. The University of Padjadjaran’s team explored what had been learned by an owner of manuscripts in Sumedang, Shaykh Nursada. This figure is identified as a fifth generation student of Shaykh Abdul Muhyi, based on the silsilah of the Shattariyyah. One manuscript of Shaykh Nursada, the Kitab Shaykh Nursada written in 1842, (Kosim 1974) not only contain Shattariyyah teachings derived from Shaykh Abdul Muhyi but also other mystical teachings and mantra from the sources called kabuyutan. The argument still needs to be explored. According to the Kitab Shaykh Nursada, the Shattariyyah followers of Muhyi learned kabuyutan from different sources. The team speculates that the kabuyutan teaching could also have been followed by Shaykh Abdul Muhyi.
The team argues, “
Kalau Sheykh Nursada di sini dijelaskan mendapat Ilmu Kawaliannya dari Sunan Gunung Jati. Apabila pada urutan silsilah guru di atasnya disebutkan dari Shaykh Abdul Muhyi, maka dapatlah ditarik kesimpulan bahwa ajaran Shaykh Abdul Muhyi pun bersumber dari Sunan Gunung Jati. Memang kalau kita hanya menggunakan fakta di atas sukar untuk mencari keguruan antara Shaykh Hamzah Fansuri Singkil dengan Sunan Gunung Jati, atau hubungan antara Shaykh Abdul Muhyi dengan Sunan Gunung Jati. Tetapi kalau kita telaah lebih lanjut ajarannya yang bercampurkan doa-doa “kabuyutan Cirebon”, jelas di sini ada pengaruh yang kuat dari ajaran Ilmu Kawalian yang hidup di Jawa Barat. Ajaran ini meliputi pandangan politik atau pun hal-hal yang menyangkut pada masalah pertanian, perdagangan dan gerakan mengebalkan diri.
Regarding Shaykh Nursada, it is explained that he received his Wali teachings from Sunun Gunung Jati. If the order of the silsilah of the teachers goes back to Shaykh Abdul Muhyi, we may draw the conclusion that his teaching also derives from Sunan Gunung Jati. Of course, if we restrict ourselves to the facts above, it is difficult to find a student-teacher relationship between Shaykh Hamzah of Singkil and Sunan Gunung Jati, or a relationship between Shaykh Abdul Muhyi and Sunan Gunung Jati. But if we examine more closely the teachings with their admixture of ‘kabuyutan of Cirebon’, is it clear that there is a strong influence from the teachings of the walis’ knowledge which is still alive in West Java. These teachings embrace political vision and even things pertaining to farming, trading and the movement to make oneself invincible to weapons.
We need additional evidence as to whether Shaykh Abdul Muhyi actually taught the teachings of the ancients (ajaran kabuyutan). The researcher from the University of Padjadjaran attempted to establish a relationship between the teaching of Shaykh Abdul Muhyi and that of Sunan Gunung Jati; and between the Islam which came to Pamijahan and the Islam propagated by the missionaries of Gunung Jati, who often used ajaran kabuyutan.
In contemporary Pamijahan there are indications that any spiritual teachings other than fiqh, or jurisprudence, and those of the tarekat Shattariyyah are also attributed to Shaykh Abdul Muhyi. However, if we follow Vow (1980) and Azra (2001), the sanad in legalistic teaching and the silsilah in Sufism can be used as historical evidence behind the ulama and the Sufi networks respectively. Of course, we have to allow higher priority to the Shattariyyah silsilah for describing Muhyi and his teaching. Nevertheless, it is imprudent to exclude materials other than the Shattariyyah teachings found in contemporary Pamijahan as unrelated to Muhyi’s teaching. Hence, my position is to look at all material, not in the spirit of finding historical evidence but rather to find the best description of how people orchestrate all of the symbolic materials available in their culture to make meaning of their contemporary lives.
I will therefore first describe in general terms the meaning of the teaching of the Kitab Wali. I will then discuss other variants that are believed to be part of the Wali’s teaching. The discussion will focus on the doctrine of creation. This doctrine is the starting point of the mystical journey for the Sufi but it is also the most crucial point of debate between legalists and Sufis. While Sufis hold the view that it is possible to travel into the inner world of Reality, the legalist holds that this view is unprecedented in Islamic tradition. I will not discuss here the conflict between these groups. Rather I will attempt to unveil the most basic metaphysical doctrine of Shattariyyah and its meaning in society. It is difficult to describe a Sufi order without first determining its metaphysical doctrine, since this has significant implications for theorising the distance between the Creator and His creation.
In Sunda, the doctrine is clearly adopted from Abd al-Rauf’s work (Azra 2001; Johns 1955 and 1965; Rinkes 1910). Yet the manuscripts from Pamijahan and neighbouring areas in the Priangan rarely refer explicitly to particular works of Abd al-Rauf, such as the Dakaik al-Huruf (cf. Johns 1955). This tradition can be traced back to Ibn Fadhilla’s teaching expounded in the Tuhfa al-Mursala. (: 1965:8)
Johns (1965) states that the Tuhfa is the most significant source whereby Shattariyyah followers in Java comprehend the concept of the seven grades of being. Johns also gives an interesting commentary regarding the circumstances of the composition of the Tuhfa. He states that the manuscript recording Ibn Fadhilla’s work was written in the Grand Mosque in Tegal Arum by a ‘famous religious affairs officer’ (Johns 1965:23). Unfortunately, the scribe did not reveal his name. Thus although we do not have hard facts here, as I mentioned earlier, the local story of Pamijahan places Shaykh Abdul Muhyi’s son, Paqih Ibrahim in Tegal (cf. Rinkes 1910). Furthermore, in the texts it is reported that he taught relatives of the Sultan of Cirebon and the Sultan of Surakarta who continued their studies on Shattariyyah in Mecca. From my discussion of the silsilah in Chapter 6, there are many indications that Muhyi’s followers penetrated these regions (Rinkes 1910; see also Christomy 2001). To some extent this possibility was also indicated by Rinkes when he wrote about Abd al-Rauf’s teaching in Java (1910).
There is room for us to speculate that Abdul Muhyi, or his followers, copied Ibn Fadhilla’s works and distributed their versions of them along the north coast of Java (personal communication M.A. Ricklefs 1997). Johns does mention a relationship between Shaykh Abdul Muhyi and the scribe of the Javanese Tuhfa. It is also possible that one of Muhyi’s sons, Paqih Ibrahim, who according to local lore settled in Tegal, had links with the Tuhfa. Furthermore, according to a Shattariyyah silsilah that is affiliated with the village of Safarwadi or Pamijahan, Paqih Ibrahim initiated Kiai Nida Basyari from Cirebon, Tuan Shaykh Abdurrahman from Kartasura, and Kiai Muhammad from Suci Garut (Christomy 2001, see also Chapter 6). Until the present day, the family of Paqih Ibrahim makes a yearly visitation to the shrines of Pamijahan.
These notions remind us that the history of Shattariyyah in Indonesia, particularly in Java, remains obscure. This is illustrated by the process of transmission of the Martabat Tujuh in Java in which, according to Johns (1965), the Javanese showed themselves to be more interested in practical matters and applications of the doctrines rather than in theoretical speculation. Here I will present a general outline of Shattariyyah doctrine as it appears in the manuscripts associated with Shaykh Abdul Muhyi. My general comments on the contents will follow. It is also my major theme that the manuscripts of the Shattariyyah, like the manuscripts of the Pamijahan Babads, provide significant space for the defining of identity and strengthening the latent power of barakah.