2023 - Keramat: Islamic Shrines in the Malay World, by Sumit Mandal

Keramat are Muslim shrines in the Malay world. Due to netion-centred history writing, they have received far less attention than they deserve. This project studied these fascinating structures as the architectural heritage of popular Islam, examining five locations in the Indian Ocean.

Keramat were sites of interactions between diverse faiths and ethnic groups as well as the commemoration of outstanding leaders, bearers of knowledge about novel natural resources (such as coffee in Aceh) and technology, scholars of Islam, pioneers of Sufism, and more. The shrines were the final resting places of cosmopolitan figures, Arabs, Indians, Chinese people, and others, who were not foreign to the region but familiar strangers. Their gravesites do not mark a sacred geography alone but signified the Malay world’s many transregional links with places across the oceans.

The project focused on the research, documentation, and mapping of seven keramat, namely Habib Noh (Singapore), Luar Batang and Mbak Priok (Jakarta, Indonesia), Dato Koyah (Penang, Malaysia), Syiah Kuala (Banda Aceh, Indonesia), as well as Tuan Guru and Shaykh Yusuf (Cape Town and its environs, South Africa). The research involved an examination of the architecture, the site and its location in the landscape, the nature of the tombs, the contents of the space (imagery, texts, and paraphernalia related to prayer), interviews with caretakers and pilgrims, as well as archival research into the histories and hagiographies associated with it.

This project reoriented the Islamic history of the Malay world by pointing to an ubiquitous and significant material legacy of interactions across the Indian Ocean that had barely gained recognition beyond their local communities.

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