Chronicle
The Precious Gift
Tuhfat al-Nafis
Raja Ali Haji · 1865
Synopsis
A chronicle of the Malay and Bugis kingdoms of Riau, Johor and Selangor, which follows over more than a century the alliances, wars and successions of the two houses that shared power. The author descends from one of them and writes as a witness as much as a historian: he names his sources, discusses the accounts he reports and intervenes in his own name, which the earlier royal annals did not do.
Context
The work was begun by the author's father, who left a first short version; the son took it up, rebuilt it and brought it from eighty-eight thousand to more than one hundred and twenty thousand words, writing between 1865 and 1867. A twin text, genealogical in nature, had been written in parallel. Long neglected by colonial education in favour of older texts, the chronicle is known only from a small number of copies, one of which escaped the fire in a descendant's house.
Who it is for
A dense dynastic chronicle, accessible without prior knowledge of the Malay sultanates of the nineteenth century.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the most accomplished Malay historical work before the twentieth century, translated into English and cited by all studies on Riau and Johor.