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Mosques and surau

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Mosques and surau

Scope and Historical Definition

Mosques and surau (village chapels) constitute the principal built forms of Islamic worship across the Malay Peninsula and the wider Archipelago, their architectural typologies reflecting centuries of cultural transmission between Java, Sumatra, the Thai borderlands, and the Chinese diaspora. The earliest hard evidence of a Muslim presence on the Peninsula is a tombstone dated 291 AH (903 AD) found at Kedah [1, p. 73], yet mosque building itself is argued to date back to the seventh century, when multinational communities of Arab, Persian, and East African traders established themselves along the coasts of Southeast Asia in accordance with the Prophet’s instruction that wherever forty or more adult male believers lived together they should build a mosque [1, pp. 72–73]. The distinction between the masjid (obligatory congregational or Friday mosque) and the surau (a smaller neighbourhood structure not used for Friday prayers) is fundamental to understanding the built landscape: the former proclaimed the primacy of Islam in a newly converted polity, typically sited adjacent to the ruler’s palace, while the latter served the daily devotional needs of individual kampongs (villages) [1, pp. 75].

Architectural Typologies and Cultural Transmission

The dominant congregational type in the Archipelago evolved from earlier Hindu architectural traditions in Sumatra and Java, as evidenced at Masjid Agung Demak in Java’s first Islamic kingdom, usually dated 1478 AD. This structure, the oldest surviving congregational mosque in Southeast Asia, features a 20-metre-square prayer hall, a three-tiered pyramidal shingle-tiled roof crowned with a decorative finial, a split gate facing east, and a surrounding moat and wall [1, pp. 75–76]. The roof form, with its emphatic central group of four wooden pillars supporting the topmost tier, is not derived from the Chinese pagoda as once supposed, but rather illustrates, in the words of Al-Attas, “the continuity of pre-Islamic into Islamic periods” [1, p. 77]. Tjandrasasmita points to similar buildings shown in ancient East Javan temple reliefs, confirming the indigenous origin of the tiered roof [1, p. 77].

This Javanese congregational type was introduced to fifteenth-century Melaka, then the most important port in Southeast Asia and a centre for Islamic learning, whence it spread along the west coast [1, pp. 75]. On the east coast, however, the Javanese style met an indigenous peninsular type based on Thai Buddhist and local domestic architecture. Bougas’s studies of the Patani type show that the masjid is sometimes low set while the surau is always raised on tiang (posts) which have the floor beams morticed into them and continue upwards to support the roof; mosques are generally rectangular with a single roof ridge on a three-tiered roof, and walls of wooden planks punctuated by full-length shuttered windows [1, p. 78]. Bougas identifies a Thai Buddhist wat prototype, specifically its wihan (prayer hall), as the source of this east coast form [1, p. 78].

Masjid Kampong Laut, now restored and standing at Nilam Puri near Kota Bharu, is widely believed to be Malaysia’s oldest mosque, oral tradition attributing it to builders who came from the sea and subsequently travelled on to Melaka and Demak [1, p. 78]. Built entirely of timber with a square plan and three-tiered tiled tangkup roof, it exemplifies a fusion of the Patani and Javanese (or Melakan) styles that became the commonest type in Kelantan and Trengganu up till the British period [1, p. 78]. Its chances of surviving five centuries, however, are extremely remote given the short life expectancy of organic building materials in the tropical climate [1, pp. 75].

The Eighteenth-Century Melakan Style and Chinese Influence

The earliest extant Malaysian mosques belong to eighteenth-century Melaka, with Masjid Peringgit (c. 1720) claimed as the earliest and Masjid Trengkera and Masjid Kampong Hulu (both 1728) among the finest [1, pp. 78–79]. These square, low-set structures are supported on stone perimeter walls and echo the Javanese style with a three-tiered pyramidal roof, the topmost supported on tiang seri (four great columns of imported ulin or belian wood) [1, p. 79]. The interior is considerably more highly decorated than its east coast counterparts, with carpets, painted surfaces, carved lunettes, and sometimes elaborate affectations such as European tiles and chandeliers [1, p. 79].

Two features distinguish this style dramatically: the decorative tiled roof and the minaret. The roof departs markedly from Javanese prototypes by having a proportionately deeper, steeper top tier crowned with an elaborate multi-level finial of carved stucco, and the four faces of each roof are separated by sinuous raised ridge mouldings which sweep down before curling upwards at the bottom of each level. Zakaria Ali likens these som-som to stylised elephants’ trunks ending in “floral gargoyles” and correctly identifies the roof style as Chinese, claiming the same builders were employed to construct Melaka’s nearby Buddhist and Daoist temples [1, p. 79]. The minarets, often disproportionately large and separate from the main structure, are usually octagonal, storeyed, and tapering with a roofed open arcade on top; those of Masjid Trengkera and Masjid Kampong Kling have six storeys [1, p. 79]. Bruce argues that the builders of these eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Melakan mosques were almost certainly Chinese, drawing on Yatim’s identification of a pagoda prototype for all but the minaret of Masjid Kampong Hulu, which resembles a lighthouse [1, pp. 79–80].

The Surau: Pre-Islamic Origins and Regional Variations

The surau is a simple wooden structure raised on posts with a tiered roof, a serambi (open pavilion), and often a mihrab (prayer niche) extension, found throughout Southeast Asia [1, p. 77]. Its origins extend well before Islam. Kern (1956) argues that the Malay surau is a linguistic and architectural continuation of a pre-Islamic Batak pagan temple called suro or parsuroan [2, pp. 179–180]. He marshals evidence from Hagen’s 1883 observation of a small elevated spirit-house at Nagasaribu and, more substantially, from Bartlett’s fieldwork in the Pardembanan district, which documented a pasuroan — a small structure on very high posts, entered only by the datu (ritual specialist) for offerings to debata (deities) and padju-padjuan (ancestral spirits) [2, pp. 179–180]. Kern traces the word suro across the region: in Minangkabau it became surau; in Mandailing it names the village mosque; in Palembang the old spirit-house (rumah dewa) was replaced by the Muslim surau; and in Banten the Old-Sundanese balaj (mountain-top ancestor sanctuary) became the modern bale (village mosque) [2, pp. 180–181]. He extends the etymology to Fijian soro and Toraja suru’, both relating to supplication and offering, and concludes that the Malayan surau likely had a pre-Islamic predecessor connected with ancestor worship [2, p. 181].

Bougas’s principal case study, Surau Aur in Patani, claimed optimistically to be over 150 years old, is 8 by 5 metres in plan with a mihrab, side windows decorated with carved wooden grilles, a carved ventilation panel over the curved lintel, and a carved kala-makara (protective Hindu-Buddhist monster mask) which has metamorphosed into a lotus design [1, p. 78]. Bougas feels that the “Patani style” can be traced down the east coast to Kelantan and Trengganu, where carved floral motifs gave way to Qu’ranic inscriptions in Jawi (a modified version of the Arabic script used for Malay) [1, pp. 75].

Decorative Arts and the Mimbar

The mimbar (pulpit) is the major decorative focus of mosques throughout the Archipelago. In the eighteenth-century Melakan style, it is entered through an open doorway with an elaborately carved bow-shaped lintel, its steps flanked by baluster-topped carved wooden panels, and the preacher’s throne is surmounted by an elaborately carved and crowned canopy [1, p. 79]. At Masjid Agung Demak, the mimbar is an elaborately carved structure balanced to the left by an enclosed prayer structure possibly deriving from the Middle Eastern maqsura [1, p. 76].

The tradition of fine mosque woodcarving continues into the modern era. In 1993, the Kelantanese woodcarver Latif Long, described as the best-known Malay woodcarver in Peninsular Malaysia, was commissioned to carve a new pulpit for the National Mosque (Masjid Negara) in Kuala Lumpur, opened in 1965 [3, p. 95]. Born in Kampong Raja, Besut, as the seventh son of a boatbuilder and woodcarver of the seventh generation, Latif learned in his father’s workshop from age seven and won first prize in national carving competitions at sixteen [3, p. 95]. The new pulpit was carved from over three and a half tons of chengal timber, the hardest and most durable Malay wood, which Latif had to procure personally from the forest; the work occupied over six months, with Latif drawing every panel himself and supervising a workshop of young Malay carpenters in Kelantan [3, pp. 96–97]. Sheppard notes that Latif re-introduced traditional leafy designs from Kelantan and Terengganu timber architecture to the pulpit’s panels, and that the finished work would be viewable by thousands, unlike many other examples of fine Malay woodcarving seen only by a few [3, pp. 96–97].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on mosques and surau reflects a progression from brief ethnographic notes to comprehensive architectural-typological surveys. Kern’s 1956 note in JMBRAS represents an early attempt to establish the pre-Islamic linguistic and architectural antecedents of the surau, drawing on Batak ethnography to challenge the assumption that the Batak had no temples [2]. The more substantial treatment came with Bruce’s 1996 article, which attempted to draw together the fragmentary literature, establish a historical framework, and argue a number of interlocking theories regarding the sequence of cultural transmission from Java through Melaka to both coasts of the Peninsula [1]. Bruce’s approach is explicitly synthetic, drawing on architectural surveys, colonial records, Chinese annals, and Arabic chronicles rather than on a single archival collection; its historiographical contribution lies in linking the architectural evidence to a proposed chronology of stylistic development [1].

Key debates documented in the literature include the dating of the earliest mosques on the Peninsula (with the Kedah Annals claiming a mosque on Mt Jerai in 1071, while Bruce argues for a presence three centuries earlier) [1, p. 77]; the question of whether Masjid Kampong Laut is genuinely Malaysia’s oldest mosque (Bruce concludes it is not, but does exemplify a fusion of styles) [1, p. 78]; and the identification of the builders of the eighteenth-century Melakan mosques, where Bruce sides with the Chinese-builder hypothesis on the strength of the pagoda-like roof forms and the known expansion of Melaka’s Chinese community under Dutch administration [1, pp. 79–80]. The physical fragility of the subject matter presents a persistent challenge: as Raja Bahrin insists, “No organic materials survive for more than a few years and even masonry tends to disintegrate in decades rather in centuries” [1, p. 75], meaning that the architectural record is necessarily incomplete and much of the earliest evidence must be inferred from textual sources, traveller accounts, and the typological analysis of surviving structures.

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. A. Bruce (1996). Notes on early mosques of the Malaysian Peninsula JMBRAS 69(2): 71–82. Read on JSTOR
  2. R.A. Kern (1956). The origin of the Malay surau JMBRAS 29(1): 179–181. Read on JSTOR
  3. Mubin Sheppard (1994). Malay woodcarving and the new pulpit in the National Mosque JMBRAS 67(1): 95–97. Read on JSTOR