Abdul Rahman Limbong

Haji Abdul Rahman bin Haji Abdul Hamid (1868–1929), known as Haji Abdul Rahman Limbong, was a Malay ulama of Terengganu. He took his nickname from Limbong in Kemaman, where he taught Islam and traded. From 1922 to 1928 he led the resistance to the land laws the British introduced in Terengganu, arguing that land belongs to God and ultimately to those who work it. After the rising of May 1928 he was exiled to Mecca, where he died the following year. ^{1 2}

He was born in 1868 — the Malay article gives the year as about 1285 H — at Telemong in Hulu Terengganu; his forebears came from Patani and Terengganu. He received his early Islamic education as a child at Mecca, where one of his teachers was his uncle Haji Tun Muhammad; back in Terengganu he studied under Haji Ya'qub and Haji Musa at Paya Bunga and then under Tok Ku Paloh. The Malay article adds that, like his teacher Tok Ku Paloh, he was a practitioner of the Sammaniyah order; what that single attestation means for his recorded faith is set out below. ^{2 1}

He taught widely in Hulu Terengganu, above all at Limbong in Kemaman, from which his nickname spread. The Malay article lists the books he taught: Arabic grammar works including al-Ajrumiyyah, and theology texts including Matn Umm al-Barahin, Faridah al-Faraid and al-Durr al-Thamin; in fiqh, Kitab Tahrir; and in Sufism, Hidayah al-Salikin and al-Durr al-Nafis, the last two in Malay. He travelled to spread Islam — to Beserah and Kuantan in Pahang, Kelantan, Patani, Kedah, Sambas in Kalimantan, and Jambi and Riau in Sumatra, and to Brunei — sailing with his students in large Terengganu-built boats. ^{2 1}

Before the British came, Terengganu was governed under Islamic rules and people opened land for farming freely. The new British land laws required a tax to be paid and government permission letters and passes before land could be opened, which bore hardest on poor farmers. In 1922 he represented one of 43 farmers put on trial for farming without permission, through hearings that reached no conclusion; in 1925 some 300 to 500 farmers cleared Tengku Haji Nik's land without permission. ^{1 3}

In May 1928, after a series of restrictions and crackdowns, he assembled about 1,000 people at Kampung Buluh and attacked and captured the police station at Kuala Berang, raising a red flag in its place, then set out for Kuala Terengganu to persuade the Sultan to endorse the rising. A second group formed at Kampung Pelam in Telemong. At Padang Kachong the police stopped the advance; most of the fighters there were killed and the rising broke. ^{1 2}

The leaders were found and tried — the Malay article places the trial at Istana Maziah and gives sentences of five to fifteen years, while the English article says most received life sentences; the two accounts are left as they stand. He himself was not imprisoned: on the Sultan's order he was exiled, first to Singapore on 13 June 1928 and then to Mecca, arriving on 19 August 1928, with a monthly allowance of $50 paid by the Terengganu government. He continued teaching at Mecca and died there on 14 Jumada al-Akhirah 1348 H, 16 November 1929, a date the Malay article takes from a telegram sent from Jeddah; the English article gives only the year 1929, and Wikidata carries both the November date and a stray 1 January 1929 value. A road, a mosque, a residential college and a school in Kuala Terengganu now bear his name. ^{2 1 4}

His faith is recorded as unknown, and the case is flagged. One text names a personal Sufi practice: the Malay article says he was, like his teacher Tok Ku Paloh, a practitioner of the Sammaniyah order. That is a single text family. The English article and its Urdu translation name no school or order, and Wikidata records no religion at all. The Sufi books he taught are his teaching, not an attested affiliation, and a teacher's order is the teacher's. One text family short of the two-source bar, the Sammaniyah reading stands in the record's note, unresolved. ^{2 1 4}

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