Roundtable: Indian Ocean Exchanges and the Malay Archipelago

Date: Thursday, 24 November 2022
Time: 12noon – 1:30pm; (Lunch is served 1:30-3:00pm.) 
Venue: AS8 04-04, National University of Singapore

Welcome by A/P Maznah Mohamad (Head, Malay Studies, NUS) and Dr Nancy Um (Getty Research Institute)
Introductions and Moderated by Dr Imran bin Tajudeen (NUS)

Speakers:
Simone Struth, Museum of Islamic Art, Doha
Jessica Rahardjo, University of Oxford
Faisal Husni, Asian Civilisations Museum
Ali Akbar, National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN).

Simone Struth will introduce the new galleries at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha which are dedicated to the Indian Ocean trade and the spread of Islam to China and Southeast Asia. The objects selected for this talk will demonstrate the close trade connections throughout the Indian Ocean with the Malay Archipelago.

Jessica Rahardjo will discuss an outline of the emergence and development of Batu Aceh (“Aceh stones”), a group of Islamic carved tombstones dating between the 15th and the 19th centuries found across maritime Southeast Asia, as a vernacular expression of Islam, which reflected an inextricable link to the Indian Ocean world but remained distinctly localised.

Faisal Husni will talk about graves that have been elevated to the status of keramat in Singapore, and how these sites were informed not only by the larger Islamic traditions but also the beliefs and practices rooted in cultures of the Malay Peninsula and the wider Southeast Asian region.

Ali Akbar will present the findings, based on several years of field research, of mid-19th to mid-20th century printed Qur'ans circulating in maritime Southeast Asia, when a number of local printers began substantial production of the Qur'an, surveying chronologically the examples from Palembang (Indonesia), Singapore, India (Bombay and Lucknow), Turkey, and Egypt.

This panel session is free. Seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis. No registration is required.

This event is hosted by the Department of Malay Studies of the National University of Singapore and held in association with the Indian Ocean Exchanges Program, which is made possible with support from the Getty Foundation through its Connecting Art Histories initiative.