Of Haj and Hardships
More substantial factual accounts about Haj pilgrimage in the Malay Archipelago started to appear in the 19th century. According to Michael Laffan in Islamic Nationhood and Colonial Indonesia, the first actualised account that mentions journey to Mecca is Munshi Abdullah’s Kisah Pelayaran Abdullah (The Story of Abdullah’s Voyage). Munshi Abdullah, whose literary contributions had earned him the title the father of modern Malay literature, made his journey in 1854. His Haj account stopped shortly before his death in Jeddah. There is also information that points to an even earlier Haj pilgrimage, made by Sayyid Muhammad bin Zainal al Idrus, a Trengganu ulama who is known as the father of Trengganu’s literature. Sayyid Muhammad went to Mecca around 1815 at the age of 20 and spent several years there pursuing his studies. Yet another account in the 19th century relates the story of Muhammad Yusof bin Ahmad better known as Tok Kenali Kelantan who went to Mecca in 1886 at the age of 18.
Two of these intellectuals, Munshi Abdullah and Tok Kenali, described a Haj journey that departs from the pompous-fleet-of-ship and entourage-full sailing found in Hikayat Hang Tuah and even Sultan Mansur’s Haj preparations. They wrote of hardships and gave readers a more realistic version of Haj, as if to warn them of its mental and physical exertions. Munshi Abdullah drew up a will before he left, accepting the fact that he might not survive the Haj.
In the actualised accounts, we learn of the many stops Haj pilgrims had to make. The pilgrims also waited for ships, which in turn waited for the right winds to depart. In the days of sailing ships, the Indian Ocean and the lands along its coast lay in wait for the ‘trade wind’. The phrase ‘trade wind’ is ancient and is derived from an old use of the word ‘trade’ to mean a fixed track. In navigation, it refers to any wind that follows a predictable course. As such winds are instrumental to merchant ships making long ocean voyages, the term evolved to mean in the 18th century as winds that favour trade. In the Indian Ocean, the monsoons are the famous trade winds. They are particularly beneficial to long distance merchants because they change direction at different seasons of the year. The northeast monsoon blows from October to March and the southwest monsoon from April to September. As the change in the monsoon winds take months, traders and pilgrims alike had to stay in the various ports of call for the right wind to carry them to their next stop.
Pilgrims would seek out trading ships to book their passage. As trading ships had their own destination, the pilgrims had to change ships to ensure that they boarded the right ship. Their journey would bring them to various ports in the Archipelago where ships would load up on water and other supplies. The last stop in the Archipelago was Aceh and here the pilgrims would wait for ships bound for India. From India, the pilgrims sailed on ships that would bring them to Hadhramaut, Yemen or directly to Jeddah. The perils of sailing for months were many. The ships could sink or be stranded in unknown islands. The pilgrims could be robed by pirates or even by the ships’ crew. They were vulnerable to diseases while both at sea and on land. Having set foot in Arabia, they could be attacked by the Bedouin tribes. In the Netherlands Indies, between 1853 and 1858, less than half of the pilgrims who went to Mecca made it back safely. This high attrition rate was attributed to mainly death at sea or being sold as slaves.
For Tok Kenali who went on his pilgrimage in 1886, he could only embark on his journey after securing contributions for the voyages’ fare. His friends in Kelantan gave him $50 and his mother topped it up with $22. The cost of his journey was $100. He set out from Kelantan in an ailing ship which had its sail broken in the middle of the ocean. As a result, a journey that was expected to take 3 months extended to 6 months. The delay also depleted the supply of fresh water onboard and Tok Kenali had to survive on salt laden seawater.
Haj and Arab shipping in Singapore
The rise of Hadhrami shipping in the Malay Archipelago in the mid 19th century boded well for pilgrims in this region. Hadhrami Arab shippers hailed from Yemen and competed successfully with the Europeans and Chinese in trade and shipping in the Indian Ocean. The Alsagoffs, a prominent Arab family in Singapore, established the firm Alsagoff & Co. in 1848 to conduct trade within the islands of the Archipelago using their own vessels.
In the 1850s, Sayyid Ahmad Alsagoff extended the realm of his family business by starting a profitable business of transporting pilgrims between Southeast Asia and Jeddah. Using Singapore as the base, the Alsagoffs’ position in the pilgrim trade was tremendously strengthened by the Dutch restriction on the flow of pilgrims from Indonesia. Pilgrims from the Netherlands Indies during the first half of the 19th century numbered a few hundreds only as the Dutch imposed a tax on prospective pilgrims. This is to discourage the return of religious fanatics who, the Dutch feared, would be groomed while performing the Haj and deepening Islamic knowledge in Mecca. Singapore, thus, became the hub of an expanding pilgrim trade from Southeast Asia partly because of this restriction, as many would bypass it by beginning their Haj from Singapore. This tax was removed in 1852.
When steamship arrived in the late half of the 19th century, the Arab shipping merchants capitalised on the speed and capacity of these vessels. By 1871, the Alsagoff-owned Singapore Steamship Company had ferried pilgrims to Jeddah by steamers steered by a European captain and a Chinese hand. Another Arab shipping merchant who ran steamer services for pilgrims was Syed Mohsen Al-Joofree. Towards the end of the 19th century, he was locked in fierce competition with 2 Dutch steamers for pilgrims. But his business flopped some time before his death in 1894.
Conclusion
By the early 20th century, the Haj had become a competitive business with serious investments by international shipping companies. The waves had been tamed by large steam-powered vessels custom-built to combine pilgrim and cargo transport. While the duration to get to Jeddah had improved tremendously, the well being and safety of Haj pilgrims still lagged behind. The number of pilgrims had swelled to a point where effective sanitation, hygiene, administration and guardianship of pilgrims could not adequately addressed by purely commercial concerns. The British and Dutch colonial governments introduced regulations to protect Haj pilgrims but tales of extreme overcrowding in pilgrim ships and of Haj pilgrims getting stranded without a return ticket after being manipulated by shipping agents and brokers continued to be heard. The comfort that Haj pilgrims experience today is a result of decades of reforms by various parties, helped by the advances of transportation. For a journey that is deeply spiritual, Haj pilgrimage in the Malay Archipelago cannot be divorced from its social and economic dimensions.
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