Abd al-Samad al-Palimbani

'Abd al-Samad al-Palimbani was a religious teacher from Palembang in Sumatra who spent most of his life in Arabia and wrote in both Arabic and Malay. He was a pupil of the founder of the Sammaniyya Sufi order, who died in 1190/1776 (the encyclopaedia writes his name as "Mamma al-Sammi"). The encyclopaedia's entry, signed by P. Voorhoeve, is headed only "Bani" in the printed page's running text; the subject is named within the entry as 'Abd al-Samad. ¹

His best-known work is a very free Malay translation of al-Ghazali's Lubab Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din, under the title Siyar al-Salikin ila 'Ibadat Rabb al-'Alamin. It was begun in 1193/1779 and finished at Ta'if in 1203/1788-9, and it adds many passages from other sources, which the author lists in its third book. The translation also includes a recommended reading list of Sufi literature for three stages of disciples. ¹

Another Malay work, Hidayat al-Salikin fi Suluk Maslak al-Muttakin, adapts al-Ghazali's Bidayat al-Hidaya and was finished at Mecca in 1192. An earlier Malay treatise, Zuhrat al-Murid fi Bayan Kalimat al-Tawhid, on logic and the principles of religion, was based on notes taken at a lecture by Ahmad al-Damanhuri at Mecca in 1178. ¹

In Arabic he compiled a collection of litanies, 'Urwat al-Wuthqa wa-Silsilat uli'l-Ittiqa', a rātib, and a treatise, Nasihat al-Muslimin. The encyclopaedia notes that Nasihat al-Muslimin contains fervent calls to holy war against unbelievers, and that it inspired the Achehnese poem Hikayat prang sabi, which circulated in Aceh during the wars against the Dutch in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. ¹

The encyclopaedia says that the tract Anis al-Muttakin is not the work of an Indonesian author, although a lithographed edition adds the epithet al-Palimbani to its author's name. Two of 'Abd al-Samad's works were often printed in the nineteenth century, including Siyar al-Salikin. ¹