"We said that we came from Jawa, he was very amazed": a Sumatran pilgrim in late Ottoman Palestine

This article examines a Sumatran pilgrimage account to Egypt and Palestine in 1883, and argues Southeast Asian pilgrims were already moving through developing, professionalised Muslim pilgrimage networks that linked Sumatra, the Hejaz, Egypt, and Palestine, creating an emerging, routinised transregional Islamic world and a shared devotional geography. The pilgrimage account was written in Malay by Syekh Muhammad Arsyad from Batuhampar in West Sumatra, who travelled from Mecca to Egypt and Palestine in Spring 1883. Journeying through Egypt in the aftermath of the British invasion and occupation, and on from Jaffa to Ramlah, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Hebron, this is perhaps a unique account of a Muslim pilgrim from colonial Indonesia in late Ottoman Palestine. This article shows the importance of transnational Muslim networks outside of Mecca in facilitating other kinds of pilgrimage. The sites that Muhammad Arsyad chose to describe in more detail and what he found interesting or impressive provides an insight into how he experienced his pilgrimage and what he considered important to highlight to his reader. The focus on his itinerary in Palestine allows for a discussion of Muslim pilgrimage infrastructure in the form of organised guides, and bringing together Muhammad Arsyad’s notes with published guidebooks in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish enables a reconstruction of his route around Palestine and inside Jerusalem together with the spiritual experience. The aim of this article is not only to bring this important source to a wider audience, but also to consider the professionalised nature of the Muslim pilgrimage industry in the late-nineteenth century Levant, and to explore the value of pilgrim accounts as a way of writing global Islamic history.