Supporting the hajj from a Buddhist kingdom: A Malay letter from Syaikh Salih Daud in Mecca to Bowon Wichaichan, deputy king of Siam, 1875 (Sokongan kerajaan Buddha terhadap ibadah haji: Surat Melayu Syaikh Salih Daud di Mekah kepada Bowon Wichaichan, timbalan raja Siam (1875))

Abstract

Previous scholarship on Southeast Asian Hajj epistolography has treated letters exchanged between Mecca-based Jawi scholars and correspondents in the Malay Archipelago as evidence of an exclusively inter-Muslim network of religious transmission, social relations and economic exchange, occasionally sustained by the trade of Southeast Asian and Arabian goods. A newly identified Malay-language letter in the National Archives of Thailand challenges this model. Found among the papers of Bowon Wichaichan, Siam’s last Deputy King (r. 1868–1885), the 1875 letter from a Malay official in Mecca, Syaikh Salih Daud, acknowledges receipt of valuable trade goods sent via Malay pilgrims, announces the return of Arabian gifts, and requests the donation of white cloth for tents to shelter Muslim pilgrims at Arafat. The correspondence shows that the Siamese Deputy King, a senior member of a Southeast Asian Buddhist dynasty, actively participated in the commercial transactions that accompanied the Hajj, relying on the assistance of Muslim pilgrims and local brokers. It further suggests a legitimate expectation, on the part of the Muslim participants, that this cooperation might translate into royal patronage extended to pilgrims from the Siamese kingdom or its Malay vassal states. This article presents a critical edition, annotated translation, and images of the letter, making this unusual witness to nineteenth-century Siamese Buddhist–Malay Muslim relations available for the first time.