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Muslims merchants and traders in Penang, 1860s–1970s. Mahani Musa and Badriyah Haji Salleh

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Muslims merchants and traders in Penang, 1860s–1970s. Mahani Musa and Badriyah Haji Salleh

Mahani Musa and Badriyah Haji Salleh (2013) examine the economic role of Muslim merchants and traders in Penang from the 1860s to the 1970s, arguing that despite the mid-nineteenth-century influx of Chinese immigrants that overshadowed Muslim dominance in large-scale oceanic trade, Muslim businesses continued to flourish in George Town’s inner commercial districts and maintained significant contributions to the island’s socioeconomic development well into the twentieth century.

Summary

The article addresses a clear historiographical gap: Nordin Hussin’s study of Muslim trade in Penang stops in the 1830s, and Salina Haji Zainol’s work on the Penang–Aceh trade ends in 1871, leaving the period from the mid-nineteenth century through the twentieth century largely unexplored (pp. 33–34). Musa and Salleh fill this void by tracing the evolution of Muslim commercial activity through its business types, geographic concentrations, family-based organisational patterns, and social contributions, using a combination of colonial administrative records, business directories, contemporary newspapers, the personal diary of Sheikh Omar Basheer, and oral history interviews with descendants of merchant families.

A central argument is that the narrative of Muslim commercial “decline” is an oversimplification. While Chinese immigrants did overtake Muslim traders in the large-scale pepper and tin trades by the mid-nineteenth century, Muslim merchants adapted by concentrating in niches where they retained advantage: the hajj pilgrimage business, barge and lighter services at the port, money-changing, retail textiles, and food services (pp. 38–39). The authors demonstrate that family and clan ties functioned as the primary organisational principle of Muslim commerce, with businesses typically passed through generations and expanded through kinship networks from the same village or region of origin (pp. 43–44). The hajj business, in particular, is presented as the one sector in which Muslim merchants held undisputed dominance, generating an entire ecosystem of ancillary services—accommodation, trunk-making, sewing, book-selling, and transport—that sustained the Acheen Street–Lumut Lane enclave as a commercial hub until the 1970s (pp. 45–49).

The authors also emphasise the social dimension of Muslim mercantile wealth, documenting how profits were channelled into mosque construction, wakaf endowments, educational institutions such as the Al-Mashoor School, and charitable works that benefited the broader community regardless of ethnicity (pp. 50–52).

Key Findings

  • The Malayan Directory of Commerce, Retailers & Residents (1936) recorded 86 types of Muslim businesses in Penang, with major concentrations at Chulia Street, Penang Street, Pitt Street, and Acheen Street (p. 41).
  • Hajj pilgrim departures from Malaya peaked at 11,707 in 1911 and fell to just 45 in 1940 due to World War II; sea travel to Jeddah was officially terminated by 1977 after the introduction of air travel in 1970 (p. 46).
  • In 1964 there were 26 registered pilgrim brokers in Penang, compared with 25 in Selangor, four in Terengganu, three in Kedah/Perlis, two in Perak, and one in Kelantan, confirming Penang’s pre-eminent position as a hajj departure point despite its smaller Muslim population (p. 47).
  • Cauder Moheedin Merican, appointed Kapitan Keling in 1801, had an estimated wealth of 50,000 Spanish dollars by 1834; his brother Mohamed Merican Noordin dispatched 17 trading ships to ports across the Bay of Bengal and Sumatra in November 1838 alone (pp. 37–38).
  • P. K. Shakkarai Rawther owned 44 lighters at the height of his cargo boat business, while T. M. Shaikh Mohammad operated 15–20 barges with a workforce of 30–50 Tamil-Muslim workers (pp. 42–43).
  • The Kapitan Keling Mosque, built in 1801 on an 18-acre site granted by Lieutenant Governor George Leith, had lost all but one-eighth of its original land by 1903 due to encroachment and mismanagement after Cauder’s death (pp. 50–51).

Conclusion

Musa and Salleh conclude that Muslim merchants and traders were not simply displaced by Chinese competition but sustained a distinct and resilient commercial presence in Penang for nearly two centuries. Their contributions to the island’s transformation into a regional entrepôt, their role in building religious and educational infrastructure, and their social welfare activities ensured that the Muslim mercantile community remained a defining feature of Penang’s urban landscape until the discontinuation of sea-based hajj travel in the 1970s effectively ended the Acheen Street era (pp. 53–54).

Context

  • The study draws on primary sources from the Penang State Museum, Arkib Negara Malaysia (including the PSU Kedah and SUK Kedah series), the SOAS collection in London (MS 40320), Colonial Office records (CO 273 series), the Pinang Almanack and Directory (1869, 1876), the Malayan Directory of Commerce (1936), multiple editions of the Pilgrims’ Guide/Pemandu Jemaah Haji (1964–1973), and over twenty oral history interviews conducted between 2010 and 2012.
  • Historiographically, the article extends the narrative of Muslim commerce in Penang beyond the 1830s–1870s period covered by Nordin Hussin (2007) and Salina Haji Zainol (2005), and builds on Joceline Tan’s 1991 bibliographic survey which identified the near-absence of scholarship on Muslim merchants in Penang literature.

References