Nuruddin ar-Raniri

Who was Nuruddin ar-Raniri?

Nuruddin ibn Ali ar-Raniri was an Islamic scholar from Gujarat, India, who worked for several years in the court of the sultan of Aceh in what is now Indonesia. He was the most prolific of the authors of the Acehnese court, and helped contribute to its international reputation as a center of scholarship.

Ar-Raniri was born into a Gujarati family of Hadhrami lineage. He arrived in Aceh in 1637 and enjoyed the patronage of Iskandar Thani. He denounced his predecessors at the Acehnese court, Hamzah Pansuri and Syamsuddin of Pasai, for what he saw as their heresy in violation of the Islamic belief that God was unchanged by his creation. He ordered their books to be burned, while he wrote numerous works setting what he insisted were orthodox religious standards.

His most notable work was the Bustan as-Salatin, begun in 1638 and written in Malay based on Arabic sources. It is a seven-volume encyclopedic work, covering the history of the world from the creation through the period of prophets of Islam and the Muslim kings of the Middle East and the Malay area, as well as several sciences.