All Things To All Men: Reimagining the intellectual life of Raja Ali Haji of Riau

Abstract

Raja Ali Haji was one of the foremost Malay writers of the nineteenth century with works in a variety of fields including history, law, jurisprudence, language, grammar, statecraft, and Malay verse and poetry. Notwithstanding a paucity of information, biographical and otherwise, there is a substantial amount of scholarship about Raja Ali Haji which focuses on his intellectual life. Scholars debate whether he was an Islamic thinker, or an exponent of Malay literary culture who embellished Malay cultural practices with Islamic thought. In the last decade some letters between Raja Ali Haji and a colonial officer have been discovered. By applying the oft-neglected work of Amin Sweeney concerning authors and audiences in the Malay World, these letters allow for new understandings of Raja Ali Hajia??s intellectual life that reflect not only what influenced him but also his ability to craft his writings with the needs of a particular audience in mind.