History to legend: cultural memory, myth, and heroic resistance in Arab and Malay traditions

Legendary heroes occupy a critical position at the intersection of history, literature, and cultural memory, functioning as symbolic figures through which societies articulate moral values, collective identity, and resistance to social or political domination. This article offers a comparative literary and cultural analysis of Antarah ibn Shaddad, a pre-Islamic Arab poet-warrior, and Mat Kilau, a Malay anti-colonial resistance figure, to examine how historical individuals are transformed into enduring legendary icons. Anchored in cultural memory theory and myth studies, the study approaches legend as a culturally meaningful mode of remembering rather than as historical distortion. Employing a qualitative comparative methodology, the research analyses literary texts, biographical narratives, historical accounts, and cultural representations associated with both figures. The findings demonstrate that legendary status in both traditions is constructed primarily through moral legitimacy, foregrounding values such as courage, resistance, loyalty, and ethical endurance rather than empirical completeness or military success. Antarah’s poetic self-representation and later sīrah traditions foreground the transformation of social marginality into heroic authority, while Mat Kilau’s resistance to colonial power is narratively elevated into a symbol of moral and communal justice. Across both cases, legend operates through selective narrative amplification, enabling heroic figures to function as stable moral exemplars within collective memory. By placing Arab and Malay heroic traditions in dialogue, this study contributes to comparative literature and cultural studies by revealing cross-cultural patterns in mythic hero-making and resistance narratives beyond Eurocentric frameworks.