중동이 본 동남아 인식: 근대 오스만 제국-동남아 관계를 중심으로

Abstract

It is said that Islam was born in the Middle East, but the place to bring it up and to be deep rooted as a religion of daily life is the South East Asia. Despite geographical distances, ties between the Middle East and Southeast Asia had been extremely important in commercial, diplomatic and military fields, for well over fourteen hundred years. These relations were built up mainly in the 16th and 19th centuries. However, historical linkages between the two regions have attracted little attention, and assessments of their significance are curiously lacking. Southeast Asia and the Middle East address this omission by exploring political, economic, familial, educational and religious bonds connecting these areas, both historically and in the contemporary world. In the pre-modern era, there were in general three main streams of Middle Eastern of South East Asia: First, SEA for ME was the area where Islamic holy teaching was well disseminating. Second, very attractive region which supply high valued commodities including spices and incense. Third, the region being full of ignorance needed very urgent and positive Islamic propagation. Under these understandings, this paper is designed to dig out new illumination on these mutual relations and confluence through historical survey based on travel accounts and some first hand documentations focussing on the Ottoman-Indonesian relations of the 16~19th centuries. From the 16th century onward, foreign traders from Cairo, Aden and Khormuz firstly used to call at the harbour cities of Guzarat in India and then they sailed as far as Sumatra and Malaka. As result of the eastern campaign of the Ottoman Sultan Selim I (r.1512~1520) in Syria and Egypt in 1517, the whole Middle Eastern area was bought under the Ottoman rule. Then the Ottoman continues to advance to the Indian Ocean and SEA region, which inevitably brought the Ottomans into conflicts with the Portuguese. In spite of rivalry with the Portuguese, the Ottoman sultans and the Aceh sultans had initiated a wide range commercial, diplomatic, and military cooperations till early 20th centuries. Of course, these cooperative relations rely on common interest between two Muslim states based on Muslim brotherhood to fight against Christian colonial powers. The relations between Ottoman and Aceh, however, were not equal, but protector-vassal status. As a political tool to extend national interest in SEA, the Ottoman government opened its consulate in Singapore in 1864 and Batavia in 1880 respectively. The last Aceh envoy to Istanbul came in 1873, on the eve of the Dutch's attack on Aceh, which is starting point known as Perang Sabil(1873~1906). This last Aceh envoy was sent by the new Aceh Sultan Mahmud Shah and it was led by Abdurrahman Al Zahir who acted as the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Aceh government. Upon a strong request of Aceh envoy to protect his sultanate from the Dutch, the Ottoman government however could not respond positively to the Acehnese demands under the pressure of the Western states. As a result of long relations with the Middle East, SEA accepted Islam as their daily life and culture, but they reinterpreted it with different faces, that is more or less cultural understanding rather than religious dogma. Moreover, Islam in Southeast Asia is conventionally understood as a synthesis of Middle Eastern and local ideas. The pervasiveness of these influences makes it clear that they will continue to shape political and economic relations, migration patterns, the dissemination of knowledge, and radials of Islamic militancy for a long time to come. Such relationships contribute to regional and global events in many crucial ways, making the present research timely and important not only for scholars but also for anyone interested in the future of Asia and the Middle East. In this sense, SEA shall continue the role as a cultural professor at the present and the future for the Middle East showing how Islamic value can be harmonized with other culture and among different values.