Poetry
Syair Rakis
Not translated into English
Synopsis
The poem is a letter in verse addressed to Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien II. In it the author advises the sovereign to govern well, to see to education, to keep harmony between the people and the nobility and to consult before deciding. He warns him against the English, the Chinese and the other foreigners, friendly in appearance, and laments the loss of Labuan, ceded to the British in 1846.
Context
Written in rhymed quatrains in the Malay form of the syair, the poem was composed, according to most datings, in 1847 or 1848, on the return from a voyage towards Brunei. Copies were handed to the sultan and to his son Pengiran Anak Abdul Momin, and it was read at court as well as among the people. It responds to British expansion and to Brooke's rise in Sarawak. Historians of Brunei literature see in it the beginning of the country's modern Malay literature, because of its critical gaze turned towards the outside world.
Who it is for
For reading the voice of a small sultanate of Borneo facing the British Empire, in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Prizes and reception
Read from its composition by the court and people of Brunei; reissued in the twentieth century and still studied by historians of the sultanate.