Indic, Islamic and Thai Influences

Abstract

This chapter describes Patani’s Indic, Islamic and Thai pasts. The argument is that the Malay kerajaan of Patani was similar to—rather than distinct from—other port city-states on the peninsula and islands of Southeast Asia where a Sanskrit cosmopolis existed for a millennium before the earliest chapters of Islam’s Southeast Asian expansion. Islam also circulated east and west of Patani through trade between the Middle East and China via the Indian Ocean. This created a range of Indian/Arab/Malay creole communities whose members played key roles in the adoption of, or adhesion to, Islam in Southeast Asian port city-states like Patani. India’s importance to the arrival of Islam to the Thai/Malay peninsula relates to what Islam came to, where Islam initially came from, and who Islam came through. Rather than refer to conversion, I refer to an adhesion to, or adoption of, Islam. The impact of Thai and Islamic influences in Patani/Pattani following its defeat in 1785 is described. The details of the process through which the Malay Kingdom (SM. kerajaan) of Patani became the Thai Province of Pattani, including Bangkok’s legislative and administrative initiatives are also provided. A central concern of this chapter is to highlight the fact that these developments coincided with a period of revolution and reform in the Hijaz. I describe how these developments impacted local religious life and thought through local luminaries such as Shaykh Daud Al-Fatani, Shaykh Ahmad Al-Fatani and Haji Sulong. The methodologies and contributions of present-day reformist revivalist movements are also described.