Islamic Revivalism in Minangkabau at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century

The revivalist movements which developed in so many Muslim communities at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries are well known to students of Islamic history. The Fulanijihādof Usuman dan Fodio, the Sanūsīyah movement in Libya, the rise of the Wahhābīs in Arabia, the reforms instituted among the Volga Tatars, the Mujāhidīn movement in Northern India and the Fara'idis of Bengal have all been the subject of study to a greater or lesser extent. Scholars have pointed out that movements which aimed initially at internal reform in a particular Muslim community often developed the added dimension of attack on what was conceived as an external, generally foreign, threat to that community, this being most clearly the case with the Wahhābīs and the Mujāhidīn. A contemporary movement which has features in common with all those mentioned above, that of the Padisr among the Minangkabau of West Sumatra, has on the contrary received scant scholarly attention. This is all the more surprising since a European state—the Kingdom of the Netherlands—became involved in a war with the Minangkabau while the Padri movement was still in its full vigour; but although Dutch records and memoirs deal more than amply with this war, they have remained ignored for what they can tell us about the Padris themselves. This is not to deny that scholars who have attempted a brief characterization of the Padri movement have recognized that its complexity goes beyond the mere epithet ‘Islamic revivalism’, and the more perceptive have tried to link it to certain changes taking place within Minangkabau society, depicting the movement as ‘a social revolution’, ‘a coup d'étai’or, by implication, as a revolt of the intellectuals. In the later stages of the movement, after European intervention had gathered momentum, a French scholar has characterized the war fought by the Padris as a ‘war of independence’.