Islam Behind the Court Wall

Politics and Aesthetics of Javanese Islam in Babad Tanah Jawi

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.220206.010How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Islam; Yasadipura I; Politics of Aesthetics; Babad Tanah Jawi

Abstract

The babad studies on Islamisation in Java are commonly based on historical analysis, but rarely on its ideological author or aesthetical strategy. This article figures out R. Ng. Yasadipura I’s strategy of describing Islam in the Babad Tanah Jawi is based on allegorical (in Javanese term, pasemon) technique, a playful literary method of writing that reveals and conceals the events and characters in the manuscript. This strategy is ‘political’ as it presents a prophetic future, which possibly unveils a prophetic interpretation of Javanese courts. Using Levi Strauss’s structural approach, this study aims to understand the structural model of Islam in Javanese worldview based on a series of events in Babad Tanah Jawi. The representation of Islam in Babad Tanah Jawi is at the position of ‘in-between’ space’, intertwining between Javanese Islam and Arabian Islam, between peripheral Islam and central Islam. This unidentifiability is a logical consequence of Yasadipura I’s multiple roles during Pakubuwana II to Pakubuwana IV, ranging from santri (Islamic student) to menteri (royal advisor) impact on his depiction of Islam in terms of illusion and allusion.

Copyright

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.

Open Access

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Achmad Fawaid
AU  - Wening Udasmoro
AU  - Sri Margana
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/02/17
TI  - Islam Behind the Court Wall
BT  - Proceedings of the International Symposium on Religious Literature and Heritage (ISLAGE 2021)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 76
EP  - 84
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.220206.010
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.220206.010
ID  - Fawaid2022
ER  -