Islamic Law and Society 27 (2020) 411-438

From ʿAlid Treatise to anti-Shiʿi Text: the Riṣāla fī

ibṭāl bidaʿ munkarāt of ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar Bin Yaḥyā
(d. 1265/1849) and its Afterlife in Indonesia

Ismail Fajrie Alatas

Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, New York University,
New York, NY, USA
ifalatas@nyu.edu

Abstract

This article examines a little-known treatise on the commemoration of ʿĀshūrāʾ (the

martyrdom of al-Ḥusayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muḥammad) written by a scholar
from the Ḥaḍramawt, ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar Bin Yaḥyā (d. 1265/1849). Entitled Risāla fī ibṭāl
bidaʿ munkarāt (Treatise on Nullifying Reprehensible Innovations), the text was composed
in response to the ʿĀshūrāʾ commemorative processions introduced by South Asian
Muslims in early nineteenth century Malay-Indonesian Archipelago and witnessed by
the author during his travel there (1832-1835). In this treatise, Ibn Yaḥyā defines a lawful,
regulated, and emotionally restrained way of commemorating al-Ḥusayn’s martyrdom
while stressing the imperative of ʿAlid leadership of the umma. I then discuss the recent
resurfacing of a redacted summary of the Risāla in Indonesia. I show that in the context of
an increasingly intense Sunni-Shiʿi sectarian contestation that characterized contemporary
Indonesia, the redacted version of this ʿAlid treatise circulates as an anti-Shiʿi text.

Keywords

Shiʿism – ʿĀshūrāʾ – Southeast Asia – Alid Piety – bidʿa – Ḥaḍramawt – kutub al-bidaʿ –
Rāfiḍa

In his monumental History of Sumatra – first published in 1783 and expanded

in 1811 – the English orientalist and pioneer in the modern scientific study of
Indonesia, William Marsden (d. 1836), made the following comments regard-
ing the religion of the Malays:

©  koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/15685195-00260A16

412 alatas

The Malays, as far as my observation went, did not appear to possess much
of the bigotry so commonly found amongst the western Mahometans, or
to show antipathy to or contempt for unbelievers. To this indifference is
to be attributed my not having positively ascertained whether they are
followers of the sunni or the shiah sect, although from their tolerant prin-
ciples and [from] frequent passages in their writings in praise of Ali, I
conclude them to be the latter.1

While this passage can be read as Marsden’s misapprehension of the religion

of the Malays, it also points to the absence of sharply defined sectarian iden-
tity among Malay Muslims in the late eighteenth century.2 Scholars have high-
lighted the widespread veneration of the family of the Prophet Muḥammad,
the ahl al-bayt, in local literary tradition and ritual practice – including the
commemoration of ʿĀshūrāʾ, that is, the martyrdom of the Prophet’s grandson
al-Ḥusayn at the battle of Karbala (61/680) – across Southeast Asia.3 Such lit-
erary and ritual practice does not necessarily point towards the dissemination
of Shiʿism – let alone Shiʿi political, theological, and legal ideas – in the region.

1 William Marsden, The History of Sumatra, containing an account of the government, laws,
customs, and manners of the native inhabitants, with a description of the natural productions,
and a relation of the ancient political state of that island (3rd ed. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees,
Orme, and Brown, 1811), 346.
2 R. Michael Feener and Chiara Formichi, “Debating ‘Shiʿism’ in the History of Muslim Southeast
Asia,” in Shiʿism in Southeast Asia: ʿAlid Piety and Sectarian Constructions, ed. Chiara Formichi
and R. Michael Feener (London: Hurst & Company: 2015), 4-5.
3 S.Q. Fatimi, Islam Comes to Malaysia (Singapore: Malaysian Sociological Research Institute,
1963); L.F. Brakel, The Hikayat Muhammad Hanafiyyah: A Medieval Muslim Malay Romance
(Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1975); Baroroh Baried, “Shi‘a Elements in Malay Literature,” in Profiles of
Malay Culture: Historiography, Religion and Politics, ed. Sartono Kartodirdjo (Jakarta: Ministry
of Education and Culture, Directorate General of Culture, 1976), 59-65; Vladimir Braginsky,
“Jalinan dan Khazanah Kutipan: Terjemahan dari Bahasa Parsi dalam kesusastraan Melayu,
khususnya yang berkaitan dengan ‘Cerita-Cerita Parsi’,” in Sadur: Sejarah Terjemahan di
Indonesia dan Malaysia, ed. Henri Chamber-Loir (Jakarta: Gramedia, 2009), 59-118; Edwin
Wieringa, “Does Traditional Islamic Malay Literature Contain Shiitic Elements? Ali and
Fatimah in Malay Hikayat Literature,” Studia Islamika: Indonesian Journal for Islamic Studies, 3:
4 (1996), 93-111; Christoph Marcinkowski, “Shiʿism in Thailand: From the Autthaya Period to the
Present,” in Shiʿism in Southeast Asia, 31-49; Ronit Ricci, “Soldier and Son-in-law, Spreader of
the Faith and Scribe: Representation of ʿAlī in Javanese Literature,” in Shiʿism in Southeast Asia,
51-62; Wendy Mukherjee, “Fāṭima in Nusantara,” in Shiʿism in Southeast Asia, 63-78; Faried F.
Saenong, “ʿAlid Piety in Bugis Texts on Proper Sexual Arts,” in Shiʿism in Southeast Asia, 99-114.
For a bibliographical survey of literature on Shiʿism from the late nineteenth century to the
present, see Majid Daneshgar, “The Study of Persian Shiʿism in the Malay-Indonesian World: A
review of literature from the nineteenth century onwards,” Journal of Shiʿa Islamic Studies, 7: 2
(2014), 191-229.

Islamic Law and Society 27 (2020) 411-438

from ʿalid treatise to anti-shiʿi text 413

Nevertheless, it does allude to the presence of what has been described as

“ʿAlid loyalism” or “ʿAlid piety” that centered on forms of reverence towards the
ahl al-bayt among Southeast Asian Muslims.4
In the course of the nineteenth century, however, certain forms of ʿAlid piety
came under censure. L.F. Brakel, followed by Edwin Wieringa, describe this
process as the de-shiʿitization of Islam in Southeast Asia, which left Shiʿi traces
in local Islamic literature and practices “generally not recognized as such by
the common (Sunni) believer.”5 Brakel suggests that Shiʿism “must have played
a definite (and most likely quite considerable) part in the moulding of early
Indonesian Islam” before becoming more Sunnified.6 Building on Brakel’s
argument, Wieringa attributes the de-shiʿitization process to the intensifica-
tion of contact between Southeast Asia and Arabia brought about by (1) the
rising number of Southeast Asian pilgrims and students in the Hejaz, and (2)
the increasing prominence of Ḥaḍramī sāda (sg. sayyid, i.e. a descendant of the
Prophet Muḥammad) in Southeast Asia. In Wieringa’s view, both phenomena
resulted in the purging of “elements of Perso-Indian origin” from the articula-
tions of Islam in Southeast Asia.7
Responding to Brakel and Wieringa, Michael Feener and Chiara Formichi
have recently suggested that if indeed there was a de-shiʿitization, such a pro-
cess “was not pursued in a comprehensive or totalizing manner” and that “ele-
ments of ahl al-bayt devotion were incorporated in a doctrinally Sunni body of
literature.”8 This intervention by Feener and Formichi opens up new ways for
thinking about the nineteenth-century reconfiguration of Islam in Southeast
Asia, in two ways. First, rather than positing the existence of hard sectarian
boundaries that hinged on stable Sunni and Shiʿi identities, we should instead
recognize the centrality of ʿAlid piety, together with the absence of clearly

4 On the term “Alid loyalism,” see Marshall Hodgson, “How did the Early Shiʿa become Sec-
tarian?,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 75 (1955), 1-13. On the term “ʿAlid piety,” see
Feener and Formichi, “Debating ‘Shiʿism,” 4-5. ʿAlid piety is not unique to Southeast Asia.
Scholars have documented forms of ʿAlid piety among Sunni Muslims of Morocco, Egypt, and
South Asia. See Vincent J. Cornell, Realm of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroccan Sufism
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998); Valerie J. Hoffman-Ladd, “Devotion to the Prophet
and His Family in Egyptian Sufism,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 24 (1992), 615-
37; idem, Sufism, Mystics, and Saints in Modern Egypt (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 1995); Muhammad Qasim Zaman, “Sectarianism in Pakistan: The Radicalization of Shiʿi
and Sunni Identities,” Modern Asian Studies, 32 (1998), 689-716.
5 Wieringa, “Does Traditional Islamic Malay Literature Contain Shiitic Elements?,” 106; Brakel,
Hikayat Muhammad Hanafiyyah, 59.
6 Brakel, Hikayat Muhammad Hanafiyyah, 58- 59.
7 Wieringa, “Does Traditional Islamic Malay Literature Contain Shiitic Elements?,” 106.
8 Feener and Formichi, “Debating ‘Shiʿism,” 9.

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414 alatas

articulated sectarian boundaries, in Southeast Asian Islam. Secondly, instead

of de-shiʿitization, we should comprehend the shift that occurred in the
nineteenth century as a gradual transformation of certain forms of ʿAlid piety
brought about by the flow of “diverse lines of ʿAlid transmission.”9
In this article, I revisit Brakel’s and Wieringa’s hypothesis about de-shiʿiti-
zation – as well as Feener’s and Formichi’s rejoinder to it – by observing the
response of an itinerant Ḥaḍramī scholar to the commemoration of ʿĀshūrā⁠ʾ in
the mid-nineteenth century Malay-Indonesian Archipelago. I do this by exam-
ining a little-known legal treatise on the observance of ʿAshūrā⁠ʾ written by ʿAb-
dallāh b. ʿUmar Bin Yaḥyā (Ibn Yaḥyā) (1209-65/1794-1849), who hailed from the
Bā ʿAlawī sāda lineage of Ḥaḍramawt.10 Entitled Risāla fī ibṭāl bidaʿ munkarāt
(Treatise on Nullifying Reprehensible Innovations), the text was composed in
response to the ritual commemorations of ʿĀshūrāʾ witnessed by Ibn Yaḥyā
during his sojourn in the Subcontinent and the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago
between 1832 and 1835.
The Risāla presents juristic arguments against what Ibn Yaḥyā perceived
to be unlawful and erroneous practices performed by those who observe the
ritual commemoration, while simultaneously chastising those who joyfully cel-
ebrate the martyrdom of al-Ḥusayn. Ibn Yaḥyā does not criticize the commem-
oration of ʿĀshūrāʾ itself. In his view, commemorating ʿĀshūrāʾ is an acceptable
expression of Islamic piety as long as it does not involve emotionally-charged
practices like wailing and excessive grieving, which he posits as vestiges of rep-
rehensible pre-Islamic Arab customs practiced by those he calls rāfiḍa (rejec-
tors). 11 Ibn Yaḥyā defines a lawful, regulated, and emotionally restrained way

9 Ibid., 12.
10 Claiming direct descent from the Prophet Muḥammad, Bā ʿAlawī sāda have lived in the
Ḥaḍramawt valley since the tenth century. Most sāda in Ḥaḍramawt are descended from
ʿAlawī b. ʿUbaydullāh (d. beginning of the fifth/eleventh century), whose grandfather,
Aḥmad b. ʿĪsā b. Muḥammad al-Naqīb b. ʿAlī al-ʿUrayḍī b. Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 344/956) migrated
to the Ḥaḍramawt from Basra in 319/931. From the Ḥaḍramawt, the Bā ʿAlawīs migrated to
Southeast Asia, the Malabar Coast of South Asia, and the Swahili Coast of East Africa. By
the late eighteenth century, they had integrated into Southeast Asian kin networks, taking
on prominent roles as court advisors, religious teachers, judges, merchants, ship owners,
pirates and even sultans. See Engseng Ho, The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility
across the Indian Ocean (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); EI3, s.v. ʿAlawīyya (in
Ḥaḍramawt) (Ismail Fajrie Alatas); EI3, s.v. Ḥabāʾib in Southeast Asia (Ismail Fajrie Alatas).
11 The term rāfiḍa (pl. rawāfiḍ) refers to the proto-Imāmiyya and Twelver Shiʿa who rejected
(rafḍ) the caliphates of Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, and ʿUthmān. The term was also used to denote the
Kufan followers of Zayd b. ʿAlī, who deserted him due to his refusal to reject the authority
of the first two caliphs. Note that the term tends to be used pejoratively by Sunni scholars.
See EI2, s.v. al-Rāfiḍa (Etan Kohlberg); Maria Massi Dakake, The Charismatic Community:

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from ʿalid treatise to anti-shiʿi text 415

of commemorating al-Ḥusayn’s martyrdom.12 Insofar as Ibn Yaḥyā associates

such emotionally-charged commemorative practices with customs attributed
to the rāfiḍa, however, he made it possible for his treatise to be used for sec-
tarian boundary-making. Since the 1980s the term rāfiḍa has gained currency
in an increasingly intense Sunni-Shiʿi contestation in Indonesia that resulted
from the transregional impact of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. In this context, a
redacted summary of Ibn Yaḥyā’s Risāla has resurfaced on social media and is
used for anti-Shiʿi polemics.
The article begins by acquainting the readers with forms of ʿĀshūrāʾ com-
memoration in the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago before introducing Ibn
Yaḥyā. I then provide a translation of the Risāla fī ibṭāl bidaʿ munkarāt, followed
by my analysis of the text. I then trace the afterlife of the Risāla in Indonesia.

Commemorating ʿĀshūrāʾ in the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago

Colonial observers in Southeast Asia began to describe festive commemora-

tions of ʿĀshūrā⁠ʾ in the mid-nineteenth century. These observers suggested
that the practice was introduced in the early nineteenth century by South
Asian Muslims who had arrived in the West Sumatran coast and the straits
settlements of Malaya as part of British colonial migration.13 However, in
their published studies of Malay culture, British scholars/administrators like
William Marsden and T.S. Raffles made no mention of ʿĀshūraʿ commemo-
rative processions in places like Bencoolen (West Sumatra). These scholars/
administrators chose to focus on what they regarded as indigenous cultural
expressions and omitted any reference to “imported rituals of the South
Asian migrants.”14 Only after the Dutch took control of Bencoolen in 1825 did
Dutch scholars such as S.A. Buddingh (1861), O.L. Helfrich (1888), Th. Delprat
(1889), P.J. Veth (1890), and P.S. van Ronkel (1914) begin to discuss ʿĀshūrā⁠ʾ

Shiʿite Identity in Early Islam (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007), 103-8; Nebil
Ahmed Husayn, “The Memory of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib in Early Sunni Thought” (Ph.D Dissertation,
Princeton University, 2016), 57-72.
12 Similar calls for emotional restraint in commemorating ʿĀshūrāʾ are frequently voiced by
Shiʿi scholars. See Lara Deeb, An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shiʿi Lebanon
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 129-64.
13 R. Michael Feener, “ʿAlid Piety and State-sponsored Spectacle: Tabot Tradition in Bengkulu,
Sumatra,” in Shiʿism in Southeast Asia, 188-9. South Asian soldiers and indentured laborers
also introduced similar ritual commemorations of ʿĀshūrāʾ to Trinidad. See Gustav Thaiss,
“Muharram Rituals and the Carnivalesque,” ISIM Newsletter, 3 (1999), 38.
14 Feener, “ʿAlid Piety and State-sponsored Spectacle, 189.

Islamic Law and Society 27 (2020) 411-438