Javanese mystical Qurʾān interpretation: Kyai Saleh Darat’s (d. 1903) Fayḍ al-Raḥmān and the Javanese mystical world

Abstract

In this thesis, I examined Fayḍ al-Raḥmān fī tarjamat tafsīr kalām Mālik al-Dayyān (The Grace of the Merciful in the Interpretative Translation of the Words of the King and the Judge), a Sufi interpretation of the Qurʾān authored by a prominent Javanese scholar Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ b. ʿUmar al-Samārānī (d. 1321/1903). I investigated the Fayḍ al-Raḥmān within its historical and hermeneutical contexts. I aimed to tackle two issues: 1) How did the work emerge as a Sufi exegesis, and 2) Which interpretive strategies and conceptual frameworks does the author employ in engaging with the Qurʾān?

Situating Ṣāliḥ within the Javanese mystical world and the Meccan-Javanese intellectual networks, the findings demonstrate that Ṣāliḥ composed the Fayḍ al-Raḥmān in response to the pervasive influence of the Akbarian mystical school that had primarily shaped Javanese Sufism. These findings highlighted that the interpretation of the Qurʾān is a dynamic, dialogical enterprise embedded in the interdiscursive world of nineteenth-century Java, where Islamic scholarship, vernacular mysticism, and pedagogical traditions intersected.