Sufism, Miracles and Oceanic Fatwas: The Beloved of North Jakarta

This article examines stories, hagiographies, fatwas, and treatises related to the grave of a sayyid miracle worker (keramat) buried in North Jakarta. It is a product of research that began in 2008 when I first visited the Sufi shrine of the eminent keramat, Habib Hussein al-ʿAydarus (d. 1169/1756), in the village of Luar Batang. Herefrom, I enjoyed access to a series of documents, oral traditions and miracle stories, along with invaluable information via conversations with Sufi elders, devotees, and Habib Hussein’s kinsmen. This article begins by introducing the Luar Batang shrine and stories of the keramat’s apparitions that continue to be told in the village. It discusses a twenty-first century moment when the keramat was seen by some to resist urban redevelopment and collude with controversial Islamists and Sunni vigilantes. His apparitions and miracle stories reminded votaries of his immortal history of resisting colonialism, secularism, Islamophobia and ‘Christianisation’. From this contemporary moment, the article turns its attention towards hagiographies produced in twentieth-century Java by the historians of Sufi networks, before analysing fatwas on the keramat produced in the late nineteenth century by Islamic scholars (ulama) from Yemen, Mecca, Medina and Java concerning revenue, inheritance, and the legality of customs at the Luar Batang shrine. The article works backwards from a contemporary moment in order to introduce readers to the keramat, village and grave and his historical and peripatetic life in Gujarat, Hadramaut and Java, before highlighting how the shrine of a seemingly peripheral village in Jakarta has been a key concern for authorities across the Islamic world and an Indian Ocean-wide devotional community. Miracle stories and hagiographies praising the keramat as the exemplar of Sunnism and Shafiʿism, as well as fatwas defending the customs of his shrine as being inviolable ones, encourage us to discard the still-regnant academic divisions of Sharia/Custom and Sufis/Ulama. Together, they tell a story of miraculous narratives, devotional cultures, social memories and sacral places that are often pushed to the margins of religious studies but refuse to fade into oblivion.