Tuhfat al-Nafis (The Precious Gift)

Winstedt had described the Tuhfat al-Nafis as the most important work of Malay historical literature after the Sejarah Melayu. Tuhfat-an-Nafis is indeed a ‘precious gift’ not only to Malay history but also, even more importantly, to Malay historiography.

The book provide us with genealogies of Malay, Buginese, Siak and Johor kings down to the founding of modern Singapore by Raffles. The book offers a realistic and accurate narrative of events and personalities of the Malay archipelago - in particular of the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and West Kalimantan - from the late seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century.

Specifically, it detailed the fortunes of the Johor-Riau Empire during the 18th century vis-a-vis the various participants in the Malay Archipelago – Malay, Bugis, Minangkabau, Dutch and English. The events narrated are given exact dates.

Details about the expansionist deigns of the Dutch, another major player in the Malay Archipelago, are featured including Anglo-Dutch relations to the mid-nineteenth century.

The authorship of the Tuhfat is clear and undisputed: Raja Ali Haji Ibn Raja Ahmad (1809-1869). Raja Ali Haji himself wrote theological and didactic prose and poetry, A ‘linguistic’ study of Malay also stands to his credit. However, his most famous work, the Tuhfat-al-Nafis, is the first historical work in Malay which not only sets out its sources with previously unknown precision but also covers a world much larger than the one known form most Malay historical texts.
Tuhfat al-Nafis (The Precious Gift)

Malay Empire of Johor-Riau

The foundation of Johor-Riau empire can be date at soon after the fall of the Malay sultanate of Malacca to the Portuguese in 1511.

The royal family was frequently on the move, shifting from a site on the Johor River to the island of Bintan in the Riau-Lingga archipelago.

The royal family then settled in a new capital that alternated between a site on the Johor River and another on the island of Bintan.

For 300 hundred years it was the center of Malay civilization.

In the sixteenth century, the Portuguese in Malacca and the North Sumatran kingdom of Aceh posed a continuing threat to Johor-Riau.

The 16th and 17th centuries witnessed the triangular struggle between the Malays of Johor-Riau, the Portuguese at Malacca and the Acehnese of northern Sumatra for domination of the Straits of Malacca.

Stability was finally achieved by courting the friendship of the Dutch in the 1640s; and toward the close of the 17th century, Johor-Riau became a major entrepot.

The empire had leaped to prosperity on the basis of the expanded junk trade from Southern China, the settlement of Chinese pepper and gambier planters, and the growth trade in the archipelago.

By the end of the century, though the rule of the wayward and tyrannical Sultan Mahmud had halted Johor’s preeminence among the Malay kingdom, the piracy was causing a decline in trade.

In 1699, Sultan Mahmud was killed by his own nobles and with the Malacca-Johor dynasty finally finished, successive power struggles crippled the kingdom.

By the 1780s, the Dutch had come to see the port at Tanjong Pinang in Riau, as a major threat to their political and economic position in the Malay world. This fear led them to dispatch a punitive naval expedition from Holland to destroy Riau.

The 1824 Treaty of London between the British and the Dutch put an end to the Johor-Riau Empire, partitioning it between the two European powers. The Riau side became known as the Sultanate of Lingga, while the Temenggong was left to wield Malay power.
Malay Empire of Johor-Riau