Abd al-Rauf al-Sinkili

'Abd al-Rauf al-Sinkili was a religious teacher, born about 1620 at Singkel, north of Fansur on the west coast of Sumatra. He died after 1693 and was buried at the mouth of the Aceh river. The encyclopaedia's entry is signed by P. Voorhoeve. ¹

He studied for nineteen years in Arabia. There he was initiated into the Shattariyya order by Ahmad al-Qushashi, and then by his successor Ibrahim al-Kurani. He returned to Aceh about 1661. From Aceh the order spread through Indonesia, especially Java, through his pupils. The order's practice of the dhikr is the main subject of his writings, most of which are in Malay, with a few in Arabic. ¹

His mysticism rests on a theory of seven grades and of man as the image of God, set out in works such as Kifayat al-Muhtajin, Daqa'iq al-Huruf and Bayan Tajalli. The encyclopaedia describes his "Umdat al-Muhtadin ila Suluk Maslak al-Mutridin", whose introduction gives a summary of doctrine similar to al-Sanusi's Umm al-Barahin. The article says that he kept his teaching within the bounds of orthodoxy: he rejected the extreme mysticism that flourished in Aceh at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and he did not join the polemics of al-Raniri. ¹

The encyclopaedia lists further works: a Malay handbook of Shafi'i fiqh on transactions (mu'amalat), intended as a supplement to al-Raniri's Sirat al-Mustaqim, which covers worship; the Mir'at al-Tullab on fiqh; and Tarjuman al-Mustafid, a Malay translation of the Qur'an with a concise commentary drawn from Arabic exegetical works (printed Istanbul, 1302). It adds that his Malay translations are so literal that they are hard to follow without Arabic, and that not all the works ascribed to him are his. ¹

After his death, as Teungku di-Kuala, he was greatly venerated, and he was said to have brought Islam to Aceh. The encyclopaedia cites C. Snouck Hurgronje's The Achehnese and D. A. Rinkes's study of him (1909), and Voorhoeve's 1952 edition of Bayan Tajalli with a list of his writings. ¹