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| Shaykh Yusuf karamat in Cape Town. Copyright Shafiq Morton |
ONE of
the most fascinating aspects of historical enquiry is its investigative component.
And as a story-teller, it means I look for markers to contextualise events and
to define personalities. There is no guarantee where you will find yourself.
As one
sifts through the archaeological framework constructed by books, maps, old
pictures, journals, interviews and diaries, it’s as if the fragments come to
life. I call it ‘forensic biography’. Recently, I’ve been looking at Shaykh
Yusuf of Makasar, an Indonesian exile, a pioneer of Cape Islam and a 17th
century mujahid against Dutch imperialism.
The late Dr Achmat Davids – the
doyenne of local historians trying to raise community awareness – cleverly placed
him at the centre of our political struggle in 1994. This inspired the Shaykh
Yusuf Tricentenary Commemorations, just weeks before the country’s first
democratic elections.
However, the person who
initiated local academic discourse on Shaykh Yusuf was Prof Suleiman Dangor of
the University of KwaZulu Natal. He wrote
a thesis on Shaykh Yusuf in 1981, and translated his Ibn ‘Arabi influenced
manuscript, the Zubdat al-Asrar (The
Essence of Secrets) in 1990.
An Indonesian scholar of Shaykh
Yusuf, Prof Abu Hamid of Hasanuddin University in Sulawesi, visited South
Africa in 1994. And in his 2005 UNISA thesis, Shaykh Seraj Hendricks of the
Azzawia in Cape Town fleshed out Shaykh Yusuf’s spiritual and academic influence.
Shaykh Yusuf – who uniquely has
shrines in Colombo, Makasar and Cape Town – was born in Gowa in 1626. Legend claims
that Shaykh Yusuf’s father, Abdullah, was the mystic Al-Khidr. Another more
likely legend – and Shaykh Yusuf is surrounded by them – is that his wet nurses
saw a light from his navel.
Shaykh Yusuf was groomed for
scholarship from an early age. In his pre-teen years he was schooled in the
Islamic sciences by Sayyid ba ‘Alawi ibn ‘Abdullah Tahir, and after the age of
fifteen by Shaykh Jalal al-Din al-‘Aydid. Both of these scholars were from the Hadramaut
in Yemen.
When he was eighteen, Shaykh
Yusuf embarked upon a search for knowledge. In 1644 he landed in Aceh, where he
was introduced to the Qadiriyyah Sufi Order by the paternal uncle of the famous
Indonesian Shaykh, Nur ul-Din Raniri. In 1649 he landed in Yemen.
There he was initiated into the
Naqshbandi Sufi order by Shaykh ‘Abd al-Baqi al-Mizjaji, a keen proponent of
the mystic, Ibn al-‘Arabi. The
next Sufi tariqah he was initiated
into was the Ba ‘Alawiyyah. He was inducted by Shaykh Sayyid ‘Ali of Zabid.
It was in Yemen that he crossed
paths with Imam ‘Abdullah ibn ‘Alawi al-Haddad, the great saint of the
Hadramaut and author of the Ratib
ul-Haddad. According to the late Maulana Yusuf Karaan, Shaykh Yusuf met
Imam ‘Abdullah in the city of Ta’iz.
In a treatise Imam al-Haddad
writes the following: “…rajal min ahlul
‘ilm wa sufi yamani yusuf jawi” (a man of the fraternity of knowledge and
Yemeni Sufihood, Yusuf from Java…).
Arriving in the Hijaz, Shaykh
Yusuf then sat at the feet of Ibrahim al-Kurani, an expert in chains of
transmission and the works of Imam al-Ghazali and Ibn ‘Arabi. Shaykh al-Kurani
also accorded Shaykh Yusuf ijaza,
permission to teach and guide, in the Shattariyyah Sufi Order.
Most auspicious mantle
However, it was in Damascus
that Shaykh Yusuf was given his most auspicious mantle, the Taj al-Khalwatiyyah (the Crown of the
Khalwatiyyah Sufi Order) by the teacher in Ibn al-‘Arabi’s mosque, Shaykh
‘Abdul Barakat. The most auspicious of Shaykh Yusuf’s scholarly achievements,
though, were his appointment to a kursi,
or a chair of teaching, in the Makkah sanctuary – a very rare privilege.
When Shaykh Yusuf returned home
in 1664 after 20 years abroad, he encountered a homeland divided by the Dutch.
He settled in the court of Sultan Tirtayasa Ageng in Banten, where he became
the resident scholar.
But in 1682 the bubble burst
when the Sultan’s son – who’d become enamoured of the Dutch – indulged in court
intrigue, jailing Shaykh Yusuf for alleged treason. In the same year Sultan
Ageng was compelled to besiege the crown prince, whose pro-colonialist stance
was beginning to threaten the Sultanate. The crown prince called in Dutch
reinforcements to rescue him.
Forced to seek refuge in the
jungle with 1,300 troops faithful to Sultan Ageng, Shaykh Yusuf managed to
survive for a year, despite a heavy attrition rate. Battle weary, starving, and
left with a handful of followers, Shaykh Yusuf was enticed to hand over his kris, his ceremonial dagger, when Van
Happel – a Dutch officer – used his captured daughter, Asma, as bait and failed
to keep his promise of freedom upon surrender.
Already regarded as a living
saint, Shaykh Yusuf was a headache for the Dutch, who in 1683 exiled him to
Colombo in Sri Lanka. However, when calls for his freedom began to resound from
the royal families there, the Dutch dispatched him to the Cape of Good Hope in
1693. His ten years in Ceylon is an unknown chapter to us in South Africa.
En route from Ceylon to the
Cape, Shaykh Yusuf displayed the saintly qualities for which he was renowned. When
the fresh water supplies were exhausted on the boat, the Voetboog, it is said
that after he dipped his foot into the sea, the water turned fresh.
Space precludes further
commentary on Shaykh Yusuf’s time spent at the Cape. It is the topic of another
article. But suffice it to say that his influence in three centres, Colombo,
Banten and Cape Town, is immense.
But in Cape Town, where certain
elements like to rubbish our holy flag-bearers, I wonder whether we always
realise that the extraordinary man who was exiled to the Cape was not just a
master of the traditional Islamic sciences, but also an authority on the mystic
Ibn ‘Arabi and a Shaykh who carried the mantle of five Sufi Orders.
A giant of his time in the
Muslim world, he was subjected to betrayal, treachery and unspeakable hardship
and yet, remarkably, he expressed no rancour. None of his writings dwell on
jihad.
In my view it is this
indominatable spirit that Shaikh Yusuf brought to us; the ‘ilm ul-yaqin (the certainty of knowledge), the ‘ain ul-yaqin (the firmness of the
heart) and the haq ul-yaqin (the
ultimate realisation of Divine truth). And had it been any other way, Islam
would never have survived at the tip of Africa.
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This was published in Muslim Views, February 2017.
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This was published in Muslim Views, February 2017.
