Hikayat Abdullah (1882) (3rd edition)

S$1,800.00

Hikayat Abdullah (1882) (3rd edition)

S$1,800.00

The 3rd Malay edition of the Hikayat Abdullah, and the 1st edition of  Klinkert’s commentary (in Dutch).

Title: Hikayat Abdullah bin Abdul Qadir Munshi/Aanteekeningen op de Hikajat Abdouellah bin Abdelkader Moensji

Author: Munshi Abdullah, H. C. Klinkert (commentary, annotations)

Publisher: E. J. Brill, Leiden, 1882.

Condition: New 1/4 leather binding, raised bands to spine. Ex-library book with only 2 small library stamps, and in excellent condition. Original Jawi text with Dutch commentary. Extremely scarce. 

About the book (from Wikipedia):

Hikayat Abdullah was a major literary work by Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir, a Malacca-born Munshi of Singapore. It was completed in 1845 and first published in 1849, making it one of the first Malay literary texts to be published commercially. Abdullah’s authorship was prominently displayed in this text and the contents were conveyed in simple, contemporary Malay. Unlike typical classical Malay literary works that contain mythical and legendary stories, Abdullah’s work dealt with social realism.

The work has been described as Abdullah’s autobiography and contains his personal but perceptive view of Singapore and Malacca society at the beginning of the 19th century. It recounts a glimpse of his early childhood in Malacca, his own experiences, including an operation performed upon him by an English surgeon, his visit to an encampment of the Tiandihui, a Chinese secret society in the interior of Singapore, and events such as the founding of Singapore Institution, the demolition of the old A Famosa fort in Malacca, and the visit of Lord Minto, a Governor-General of India to Malacca. Most of the work also contains his personal observations of the personalities of his time, the officials of the British East India Company like Sir Stamford Raffles, Colonel Farquhar and John Crawfurd, Sultan Hussein Shah of Johor Sultanate, European and American missionaries and traders, and the Chinese merchants of the early Singapore. The book was published in Roman script in 1915 by William Shellabear.