Scope and Content Note
The William Farquhar Correspondence and other Malay Letters spans the years 1812-1832 with the bulk of the letters dating from 1818 to 1823. The collection consists of forty-six letters, mainly from Malay kings and notables to William Farquhar (1774-1839), a key figure in the founding of modern Singapore. This collection of correspondence is found in the Southeast Asian Rare Book Collection of the Asian Division of the Library of Congress, and was among the first Asian items at the Library. Collection material is primarily in Malay (Jawi script) with some English. The letters also showcase examples of original nineteenth-century Malay letter-writing.
This collection consists of 46 letters in 16 boxes. All the letters are originals, except for two, which are copies. Eight have been fully transliterated from Jawi into Romanized Malay and translated into English, and one has been transliterated into Romanized Malay without a translation into English. The sources for these transliterations and translations are indicated in the notes section of the relevant items. Descriptions of items are mainly adaptations of Asma Ahmat’s work on the letters—JAWI 12—found in the Malay-language catalogue, Katalog Manuskrip Melayu di Library of Congress USA (1993).[link] Many thanks to the National Library of Malaysia for use of this work for the current research aid. A brief note on dates of letters: in a few instances, dates of letters given by the Katalog Manuskrip Melayu have been amended (or added when missing) by the compiler of this research aid to reflect his reading of the letters.
In addition to correspondence with Farquhar, the collection also includes a few letters between Malay notables and businessmen, Chinese among them, and thus allows a glimpse into the intercommunal connections that formed the larger context of the world in which Farquhar and Malay rulers operated.
In terms of chronology and geographical scope, the letters cover the period 1812 to 1832 and come from Brunei, Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, Johor, Riau, Lingga, Palembang, Pammana, Siak, Singapore, and as far afield as Cambodia. Two unique items in the collection are a letter bearing Farquhar’s signature (Item 35), unusual in the context of the collection because it is the only letter written and signed by him out of the forty-six, and a letter from Siti Fatimah binti Jamaluddin Abdul Rahman, Sultanah of Pammana (Item 40), which offers a rare instance when one hears the voice of a woman from the Malay-speaking world from almost two hundred years ago. Sultanah Siti Fatimah’s letter is in fact one of the only known extant Malay letters from a reigning female monarch. Other correspondents include Hussein Muhammad Shah, Sultan of Singapore and Johor; Muhammad Kanzul Alam, Sultan of Brunei; Raja Jafar, Yang DiPertuan Muda of Riau; and Tun Ali, Datuk Bendahara Sewa Raja of Pahang.
Notable Scholarship on the Collection
The collection has previously been named “JAWI 12” with the subheading “Koleksi surat daripada raja dan pembesar Melayu kepada Colonel William Farquhar, Residen Singapura,” which can be translated as “A Collection of letters from Malay kings and notables to Colonel William Farquhar, Resident of Singapore.” This designation was given by Asma Ahmat, intern at the Library of Congress in 1989/90, and author of a catalogue of Malay manuscripts at the LC, published in 1993 by the National Library of Malaysia. The catalogue is entitled Katalog Manuskrip Melayu di Library of Congress, U.S.A. (Kuala Lumpur: Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia, 1993).[link] Asma Ahmat’s catalogue is perhaps the most comprehensive description of the collection.
Annabel Teh Gallop’s transliterations and translations of eight letters in the collection are another significant body of work on the correspondence. Gallop has transliterated and translated the following letters in the collection: Items 16, 17, 35, 36, and 40 in Legacy of the Malay Letter=Warisan Warkah Melayu (London: Published by the British Library for the National Archives of Malaysia, 1994).[link] For her transliterations and translations of Items 26, 37, and 38 see her chapter, “Malay Sources for the History of the Sultanate of Brunei in the Early Nineteenth century: Some Letters from the Reign of Sultan Muhammad Kanzul Alam,” in Victor T. King and A.V.M. Horton (eds.), From Buckfast to Borneo: Essay presented to Father Robert Nicholl on the 85th Anniversary of his Birth, 27 March 1995 (Hull: University of Hull, 1995), pp. 207-35.[link]
Gallop has also published a far-ranging study on Malay seals that examines all the seals of the letters in this collection except for two (Items 16 and 35). She provides detailed information on 23 of the 25 seals in the collection including transliterations and translations of inscriptions, dates, images, and bibliographical notes where relevant. The seals examined come from the following places: Brunei (2 seals), Kampar in Pelalawan (1 seal), Kelantan (1 seal), Lingga (2 seals), Naning (1 seal), Pahang (1 seal), Palembang (2 seals), Pammana (1 seal), Riau (5 seals), Siak (3 seals), Singapore (2 seals), and Terengganu (2 seals). The two seals not covered are one from a Malay notable in Cambodia, and William Farquhar’s seal. This study can be found in her book Malay Seals from the Islamic World of Southeast Asia, Content, Form, Context, Catalogue (Singapore: NUS Press, in association with the British Library, 2019). [link]
Another scholar whose work is relevant to the collection is Badriyah Salleh. His transliteration of Surat 111, “Daripada Tengku Pangeran Siak kepada Kolonel William Farquhar” in Warkah al-Ikhlas 1818-1821 (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, pp. 243-4) [link] matches Item 31 in the collection.
Finally, A. Kohar Rony, former Southeast Asia Area Specialist in the Asian Division of the Library of Congress wrote about the letters in his article “Malay Manuscripts and Early Printed Books at the Library of Congress” in the journal Indonesia, No. 52 (Oct., 1991), (Cornell University Press; Southeast Asia Program Publications at Cornell University), pp. 123-134. In this article, Kohar Rony refers to the letters as “a bound volume containing handwritten correspondence and letters with officials seals to the Chief British Resident in Singapore from heads of state in what are now Brunei, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Indonesia,” p. 125.