2020 Volume 94 Issue 2 Pages 109-135
Patani and Kedah in the middle of the Malay Peninsula are said to have been the earliest states of Islamic kingship in the Malay Peninsula around the fifteenth century. The region's prosperity as a trade center reached its peak in the seventeenth century, before its economic significance began to decline. Instead, Patani emerged as a center of Islamic learning in Southeast Asia from the end of the nineteenth century. Sheik Daud al-Fatani, an Islamic scholar from Patani, studied in Mecca in the middle of the nineteenth century and wrote many translated books on Islam in the Patani Malay language. They were brought back to Southeast Asia by his disciples to be used as textbooks in pondoks, or traditional Islamic schools.
Pondok schools have spread to Pattani, Kelantan and Kedah in the present-day Thai-Malaysian border region, and their impact should not be considered in the framework of the present nation-state borders. Pondok schools serve as places of preliminary education for study in Mecca. They are therefore also sometimes called the “verandahs of Mecca.” The academic networks between pondok schools and Mecca became active in the first half of the twentieth century; at a time when ordinary Muslims engaged more actively in Islamic practices.
