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‘A history of Ambon’, and ‘A general description of the Islands of Ambon’ Jeuriaen Everhard Rumpf; Georg Eberhard Rumpf Date: 1678 Original Language: Dutch DescriptionThe two works De Ambonse historie, behelsende een kort verhaal der gedenkwaardigste geschiedenissen, zo in vreede als oorlog voorgevallen, sedert dat de Nederlandsche Oost Indische Comp. het besit in Amboina gehadt heeft, and  De generale lant-beschrijvinge van het Ambonese Gouvernement behelsende en wat daaronder begrepen zij, mitsgaders een Summarisch verhaal van de Ternataanse en Port…

BiographyJan Pieterszoon Coen was born in Hoorn, one of the seven towns with a representative in the VOC (Dutch East India Company). His father was a trader, and in 1601 he sent Jan to Rome to be educated in international commerce. The young Coen learned double-entry bookkeeping, a skill that would serve him well in future endeavours.In December 1607, Coen departed for the East Indies on a fleet of 13 ships as a junior official of the VOC. In April 1609, the fleet visited the harbour of the small archipelago of Banda, the sole provider of nutmeg at …

Date of Birth: Place of Birth: Date of Death: Place of Death: Biography Primary Sources of Information Secondary Sources of Information Works on Christian-Muslim RelationsDutch and Malay accounts of the conflicts known as the Banjar War, 1859-1905Karel Steenbrink

'The Acehnese' Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje Date: 1893-4 Original Language: Dutch DescriptionThe sultanate of Aceh (also written as Atjeh or Acheh) in northern Sumatra had remained independent from the Portuguese, Dutch and other powers since the mid-16th century. In the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London of 1824, when Sri Lanka was ceded to the British and Bencoolen to the Dutch, its independence was still guaranteed. However, around 1870 the Dutch wanted to prevent the ‘smuggling’ of pepper and other commodities from Sumatra to the fr…

Date of Birth: Place of Birth: Date of Death: Place of Death: Biography Primary Sources of Information Secondary Sources of Information Works on Christian-Muslim RelationsCorpus Diplomaticum Neerlando-IndicumKarel Steenbrink

Date of Birth: 10 October 1845 Place of Birth: Haarlem Date of Death: 3 March 1927 Place of Death: Delft BiographyLodewijk Willem Christiaan van den Berg was born into a family of artists; his father was a painter and his mother worked as a musician. As a child, he lost the sight in one eye, hit by an arrow while playing. This may have contributed to his calm and very serious character, contrasting with the somewhat Bohemian lifestyle of his parents. He was a brilliant student in languages and law, and in 1868 gained his doctorate with a dissertation on Islamic law ( De contractu 'do ut des' jure…

Jan van Cotwyck, J(oh)an van Cotwijck, Ioannes Cotovicus, Jean Cootwich, Ioan van Kootwyck Date of Birth: Around 1550 Place of Birth: Utrecht Date of Death: 1629 or thereafter Place of Death: Unknown Biography Very little is known about Jan van Cotwyck, who was probably born around the middle of the 16th century. He was a learned Catholic priest from the diocese of Utrecht, where the ‘alteration’ or change to Calvinism took place on 15 June 1580 with a ban on the public practice of Roman Catholicism. In 1609, he published Eenen geestelijke[n] schilt waer mede alle simpele catholijcke…

‘Memorandum to the noble governors about the condition of the Dutch Indies’ Jan Pieterszoon Coen Date: 1 January 1614 Original Language: Dutch DescriptionJan Pieterszoon Coen wrote many letters and reports for the VOC central office in Amsterdam, and the substantial memorandum of 1 January 1614 was known as his vision statement for the VOC. It occupies 24 pages in his biography (Colenbrander,  Jan Pietersz. Coen . Levensbeschrijving, pp. 451-74; all the references that follow are to this edition), and is divided into 14 sections. The first five discuss the VOC…

‘The journey to Jerusalem and Syria’ Jan van Cotwyck, J(oh)an van Cotwijck, Ioannes Cotovicus, Jean Cootwich, Ioan van Kootwyck Date: 1619 Original Language: Latin Description Van Cotwyck’s Itinerarium Hierosolymitanum et Syriacum; in quo variarum gentium mores et instituta; insularum, regionum, urbium situs, unà ex prisci recentiorisq[ue] sæculi usu; unà cum eventis, quæ auctori terrâ mariq[ue] acciderunt, dilucidè recensentur. Accessit synopsis Reipublicæ Venet[a]e runs to 518 pages and begins with an admonition to the reader about the dangers of travel…

‘Official advice of C. Snouck Hurgronje’ Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje Date: 1889-1906 Original Language: Dutch DescriptionFrom 1889 to 1906, Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje was Advisor on Native Affairs in the Dutch East Indies. Even after his return to the Netherlands, he continued as advisor to the Dutch minister of colonial affairs until his death in 1936. Some 1,400 pieces of advice are listed in the Ministry’s archives. Of these, 675 are of minor importance or just repeat earlier texts, 75 are lost, and only …

VOC treaties with Muslim rulers of Indonesia Frederick de Houtman Date: 1605-20 Original Language: Dutch DescriptionFrederick de Houtman attracted most attention for his second trip to Indonesia, while his two periods as colonial administrator, in Ambon and the Moluccas, are only documented in his own official reports. These are stored in the National Archives of the Netherlands in The Hague and published partly in the collected works of Jan Pietersz. Coen ( Bescheiden omtrent zijn bedrijf in Indië, ed. H.T. Colenbrander, The Hague, 1919-34, 6 vols).One report of 1607 gives a s…

- L.W.C. van den Berg Date: 1873-95 Original Language: Various languages Description De beginselen van het Mohammedaansche recht, volgens de imāms Aboe Hanīfat en asj-Sjāfe‘ī ‘Handbook of Muslim law according to the Ḥanafī and Shāfiʿī schools’ Published in 1874, this book was written in 1871-2 when the author was teaching Islamic law at the Gymnasium Willem III in Batavia (xv + 269 pages long). The only comparable work in European languages at the time was N. von Tornauw’s  Das moslemische Recht (Leipzig, 1855), though his book concentrates on Shīʿa law. Van den Berg’s boo…

Date of Birth: Place of Birth: Date of Death: Place of Death: Biography Primary Sources of Information Secondary Sources of Information Works on Christian-Muslim RelationsJavanese court chronicles on the rising power of the DutchKarel Steenbrink

Jacob Corneliszoon van Neck Date of Birth: About 1564 Place of Birth: Amsterdam Date of Death: 15 March 1638 Place of Death: Amsterdam BiographyJacob Cornelisz. van Neck was born into a prominent family in Amsterdam. Very little is known about his youth except that his father died when he was two years old and his mother when he was about 11. He received a good general education and then special training in nautical sciences, and he became involved in various forms of trade.The oldest company for trade with Southeast Asia selected him as the admiral for its second fleet of ei…

‘Daily account of what has taken place here in Batavia since 1 January 1624, as well as some reports about other settlements’ Dagh-register Date: 1624-1799 Original Language: Dutch DescriptionOn 6 December 1621, Governor General Jan Pieterszoon Coen ordered all settlements of the VOC to keep a diary ( Dagh-register) of important events. This was to include reports about local politics and trade rivals, especially the British but also the French, Danish, Portuguese, Gujarati and others. An account was entered for every month, detailing the shi…

‘Travels’ Nicolaas de Graaff Date: Unknown; before 1688 Original Language: Dutch DescriptionThe first 100 pages of this book (its full title is  Reisen van Nicolaus de Graaff, na de vier gedeelten des Werelds, als Asia, Africa, America en Europa, mitsgaders sijn Oostindische spiegel) contain brief and concise reports of de Graaff’s first 13 voyages. The following 130 pages cover his last three voyages.  Oost-Indise spiegel (98 pages) is re-printed with new pagination in the same volume. On his first voyage, de Graaff arrived in Aceh, Sumatra, where he saw th…

- Dutch and Malay authors on the Paderi Wars in west Sumatra Date: First half of the 19th century Original Language: Dutch DescriptionDuring the 17th century, the west Sumatran coastal town of Ulakan was a significant catalyst in the spread of Islam in the region through its famous mystical teacher Syaikh Burhanuddin (1646-1704). In the later 18th century, students from Ulakan promoted religious study in the mountainous central regions of west Sumatra, targeting perceived deviations from the pure practice of Islam. These included the four major vice…

'The Moroccan woman' Willem Bilderdijk Date: 1805 Original Language: Dutch DescriptionThis didactic poem of 33 quatrains is a dialogue between a Christian prisoner in Morocco, who is waiting for his ransom to arrive, and a Moroccan Muslim woman. She expresses her love for him, but also fears that he despises her religion. She asks: ‘Why do you honour Allāh, but do not include Muḥammad?’ The Christian responds that he believes in Allāh, the One, but also honours His only born son, Issa. The woman declares that Muslims know the stories about Jesus, like Christians, and respect him.After they…

Biography Primary Sources of Information Secondary Sources of Information Works on Christian-Muslim Relations Dagh-register van ‘tgene hier in Batavia ‘tsedert Primo January 1624 gepasseert is gelyck mede verscheyden tydingen van andere Qartieren becomen et cetera Karel Steenbrink

‘The Ripangi poem’ Repen Ripangi Date: 1886 or before Original Language: Javanese Description Repen Ripangi is a poem written in the style of traditional Javanese literature, following strict rules in which the length of each line and the rhyme are fixed, and suited for sung performance. It is divided into seven cantos, and occupies 60 pages in the printed edition. The first three cantos describe the religious teacher Ripangi, the familiar name for Aḥmad al-Rifaʾi, who successfully establishes a  pesantren or boarding school in the village of Kalisalak in central Java. H…