Events

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Matthew Reeder, Department of History, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

This presentation explores networks of devotion across time and space, by tracing one Islamic prayer and its Malay prescriptions across the Indian Ocean world. Pious sensibilities manifested themselves in manuscripts that contained a combination of vernacular prescriptions and the sacred prayer of ‘Akasah, in localities where “Malay” communities developed, most notably in South Africa and Sri Lanka, as early as the seventeenth century and as late as the twentieth. This presentation demonstrates how fragmentary similarities and differences between four select prayer books were linked to centuries-long diasporic and generational connections, indirect linkages that impelled subtle and drastic change while retaining themes of protection in health, livelihood, and war, especially under colonial rule. Analyzing these manuscripts together in a close reading of their convergences and divergences, this presentation traces a trans-local and trans-temporal history of networks of power from one oceanic rim to another, from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. As I argue, their fragmentary yet pervasive presence across these oceanic spaces speaks to the historical emergence of an indirect yet undeniable network of power through religious practice, a connection that mobilized the power of Islamic prayer and supplication, and the explication of their uses and efficacy, in the language of the homeland’s vernacular lingua franca.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Genie Yoo is Postdoctoral Fellow for the Mellon Foundation-funded Sawyer Seminar at Indiana University-Bloomington. She works at the intersection of history of science, medicine, and religion, and is trained in the early modern and modern history of island Southeast Asia, with a focus on Maluku in eastern Indonesia. She received her PhD in History at Princeton University in Fall 2022.

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed, and instructions on how to participate in this hybrid talk has been sent out to registered attendees. Please write to aritm@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the event.