THE MELAYU: AN AMAZING RACE… - the most important novel of Malaysia!

By Mansor bin Puteh

'The Melayu: An Amazing Race'. Is this the most important novel of Malaysia? 

It must be!

This novel does not deal with petty social and anti-social issues that many writers and even filmmakers - who are the creators of stories of the digital era! 

This novel which I wrote is based on facts and culled from one of the most important books to be written in the Melayu language called 'Tuhfat al-Nafis' or 'The Precious Gift' written initially by Raja Haji Ahmad until he died age the age of 103 who entrusted the task of completing it to his son, Raja Ali Haji who took four years to do it. 

'The Melayu: An Amazing Race' is book which is described as a historical novel and it is based on facts that tells the history of the Melayu and Bugis. 

(I am not wont to use Malay because historically the Malays were British subjects!)

'Tuhfat al-Nafis' was written and seven copies of the manuscript that was written in the jawi Arabic script is about four hundred pages and it is written in fine jawi style that will take a long while for the two authors to do.

As for me, 'The Melayu: An Amazing Race' which is in four volumes and two thousand words, only took me three months and one week to complete because I have typing speed and can write up to ten to twenty thousand words per day, using research that took forty years to do and in the first version of the book that takes the form of a television drama serial.

The advantages that the two original authors of the book did not have is travel, the internet and computers, that I have managed to get. 

I have been to forty countries and most of the countries and cities and areas that are mentioned in 'Tuhfat al-Nafis', including the two European colonial powers, Britain and Holland which have on their own device caused the reshaping of the Melayu World and the shifting of the center of the Melayu World from Sumatera in Indonesia to Malaysia and Brunei where ten Sultanates still exist.

The only places I have not been to are some cities in Kalimantan and Batam and Pulau Penyengat in Indonesia. 

'Tuhfat al-Nafis' has been  published in few editions and also in its English translation and also in Russian, but not in the other languages.

But these are mere translations of the books that do not have much or analysis and critical observations and commentaries in them.

Whereas in 'The Melayu: An Amazing Race' I have managed to look at the story of the Melayu and Bugis and the intentions of the characters in a more critical and colorful fashion.

There are many interesting facts that can be found in 'Tuhfat al-Nafis' and here are some of them.

The first Malaysians to study English are those in Penang, followed by those in Malacca, and the first Malaysian scholar of the English language is Munshi Abdullah who first studied the language when Stamford Raffles came to Malacca in 1805, from Penang where he contacted malaria and was asked to go to Malacca where the weather is said to be fine.

Raffles got Abdullah to be his scribe who with his uncle, Ibrahim, later translated works in Melayu into English and vice versa. 

The most important works by Abdullah were written when he went to Singapore and met with Raffles who is by then the first Resident of Singapore who singularly got Temenggong Abdul Rahman to allow Tengku Long or Tengku Hussain Shah to be installed the first Sultan of Singapura (sic) in the Padang on 6 February, 1819, which allows the British to gain control of a piece of land in Singapore as their 'trading post'.

Unfortunately, Sultan Hussain Shah was forced to flee to Malacca with the Sultan of Kedah then offering him the use of the sultan's ship called 'Julia' in 1834 to flee to Malacca where he died a year later.  

(Sultan Hussain Shah's descendant, Tengku Shawal bin Tengku Abdul Aziz is now the 'Pretender to the throne' or the 'Pemangku Adat' of the Sultanate of Singapura, who often organizes cultural activities to celebrate the history of his royal family and if he is in Malacca he will not fail to pay a visit to the grave of Sultan Hussain Shah which is in the compound of the Masjid Trengkerah in Malacca City to hold a 'tahlil' ceremony for the deceased.)

The first English language school to be established in Malaysia and Singapore is called the 'Institution' in Singapore.

It was not Raffles' idea but Sultan Hussain Shah.

Raffles had suggested that the sultan allowed his first son, Tengku Ali Iskandar and the Temenggong Abdul Rahman to go to India to study English and arithmetic, but the sultan and temenggong declined to accept the offer.

On the other hand, Sultan Hussain Shah suggested to Raffles for the English to establish a school in Singapore. Raffles took the idea and managed to raise donations from the sultan and some Chinese towkays with Raffles himself donating some money.

However, the amount collected was still not enough.

Raffles was later lied by William Farquhar and John Crawfurd, his successors as Residents of Singapore who told their English Office in London that Raffles had committed bribery by using the East India Company (E.I.C.) money for himself when the truth is that he used the money for the building of the school which is now known as the Raffles Institution that still exists in Singapore.

Raffles was recalled to London where he was sidelined. He died of brain tumor at the age of forty-five when his wife, Olivia found his body on the floor at the staircase of their house in Highwood Hill, Hendon in Middlesex, London that he bought because his good friend a British member of parliament William Wilberforce asked him to buy it so that he can be close to him in case if he needed help, etc.

(Recently, Raffles' residence which has eight rooms is now called Highwood House is being offered for sale for around fourteen million ringgit.) 

Raja Haji, the famous Bugis warrior was killed when he and his men were having a rest after attacking the Dutch at their fort in Malacca, and the Dutch took his body and buried it in a pig sty. It take a long while before his body was exhumed and taken to Pulau Penyengat where it is laid which I hope to visit soon. 

The other interesting fact that one can find in 'Tuhfat al-Nafis' is how the Dutch threatened to level or raze Riau that forced its sultan to fleet to Lingga with some of his followers with the rest going to Johor, Pahang and Terengganu.

So we can say many of the people from these three states in the Peninsula have their ancestors who are from Riau in Sumatera.