Article

Some early Islamic tombstones in Patani

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Some early Islamic tombstones in Patani

Wayne A. Bougas (1986) examines two pairs of early Islamic tombstones at Kubo Barahom, the oldest surviving Islamic cemetery in Patani, South Thailand, arguing that one grave belongs to the first Patani king to convert to Islam and that the stones belong to the ‘Batu Aceh’ class originating in North Sumatra. The article’s central thesis is that the Hindu-Buddhist lotus and Mount Meru motifs carved on these stones were not simply decorative survivals but carried a coherent cosmological meaning—death as cosmic destruction and regeneration—that was reinterpreted within an Islamic framework during the transitional period of Patani’s Islamization.

Summary

Bougas approaches the tombstones at Kubo Barahom from multiple angles: physical description, iconographic analysis, epigraphic reading, and the intersection of oral tradition with written historical sources. The cemetery, located approximately six kilometres east of present-day Patani near the site of the 16th-century town, contains two elevated, walled graves each marked by a pair of intricately carved sandstone tombstones. The unusual spacing between the stones in each pair, Bougas notes, is characteristic of graves marking persons of exceptional importance in the Malay world.

The core argument proceeds in two directions. First, Bougas identifies the Indian motifs—lotus (padmamula) and Mount Meru—on the stone crowns as deriving from Hindu-Buddhist funerary art associated with cremation rites, drawing on F.D.K. Bosch’s The Golden Germ and comparative evidence from Thai royal crematoriums (Phra Mane Thong), Balinese cremation towers, and Thai chedis. He invokes Jonathan Parry’s analysis of Hindu cremation as a sacrificial act effecting cosmic regeneration to explain why these symbols were originally attached to death: the body is the cosmos, and cremation ritually enacts the universe’s cyclical destruction and rebirth. Second, Bougas demonstrates that the Arabic inscriptions—repetitions of the shahadah and Qur’anic verses describing Allah’s attributes—are directed inward toward the grave, functioning as prayers to be recited by visitors for the benefit of the deceased, consistent with Malay and Indonesian practices of ziarah kubo and kenduri.

The synthesis of these two elements is explained through three factors: the accommodating character of early Islam (which offered no elaborate instructions on tombstone production), the endurance of traditional rites of passage relating to death, and Islam’s failure to provide a competing graphic symbolic vocabulary for death. Bougas draws on A. Day’s observation that Hindu-Buddhism possessed a far richer symbolic system than early Islam, and argues that rather than replacing Indian motifs, Islam re-legitimated them within a new theological framework—rebirth became union with Allah in Heaven.

Key Findings

  • The tombstones at Barahom measure 59 cm × 19.5 cm × 9.5 cm (Set A) and 45 cm × 19.5 cm × 9.5 cm (Set B), are made of fine-grained sandstone, and are divided into three parts (crown, stem, base) consistent with the ‘Batu Aceh’ typology first identified on the tombstones of Sultan Malik as-Saleh of Pasai (d. 1297) (pp. 90, 96–97).
  • Bougas dates the Patani tombstones to a transitional stage between Othman bin Mohd Yatim’s Period 1 (1297–1520: small, stele-like, lava, no sex differentiation) and Period 2 (1520–1606: non-stele, fine-grained sandstone, shahadah inscriptions without names or dates), placing their production prior to or around 1520 (pp. 96–97).
  • The Hikayat Patani records that King Phaya Tu Nakpa, suffering from a skin disease, was converted to Islam by Sheikh Said of Pasai after three cures; upon conversion he was named Sultan Ismail Syah Zillullah Fil Alam-Alam, though Ibrahim Syukri gives the name Sultan Muhammad Syah (pp. 94–95).
  • The Portuguese d’Eredia (writing in Malacca, 1613) states that “Islam was adopted in Patani and Pahang before being introduced in Malacca,” implying Patani’s conversion may have occurred around 1400 rather than c. 1500 as the Hikayat Patani chronology suggests (p. 95).
  • The Set B headstone bears two Qur’anic inscriptions—Al-Baqarah 2:255 (or Al-Imran 3:2) and Al-Ikhlas 112:1–2—which are carved inverted and must be read upside down; the Set A stones bear repeated shahadah text on three faces each (pp. 93–94).
  • The cemetery’s name ‘Barahom’ is a corruption of ‘Marhum’ (the honorific prefix for a deceased king), and the Hikayat Patani locates a royal cemetery to the east of ancient Patani where Sultan Patik Siam (r. 1572–73) and Sultan Bahdur (r. 1573–84) were buried, corroborating the royal character of the site (pp. 85, 88).

Conclusion

Bougas concludes that the tombstones at Kubo Barahom represent a material record of cultural transition: Hindu-Buddhist cosmological symbols of death and rebirth were retained and reinterpreted within an Islamic mortuary context during the early period of Patani’s Islamization, and that one of the two graves almost certainly contains the remains of Patani’s first Muslim sultan, buried around the turn of the 16th century.

Context

  • The study draws on the Hikayat Patani (Wyatt & Teeuw ed., 1970), Ibrahim Syukri’s Sejarah Kerajaan Melayu Patani, and direct field observation at Kubo Barahom, with epigraphic assistance from Dr. Othman bin Mohd Yatim (Museum Negara) and Dr. Hasan Ambary (Department of Islamic Archaeology, Jakarta) (pp. 93–94, 102).
  • The article contributes to the historiography of Islamization in Southeast Asia by providing a concrete case study of symbolic continuity and transformation at the moment of conversion, and by linking Patani’s early Islamic material culture to the broader Batu Aceh tradition centred on Pasai.

References