Rum and Jawa: The Vicissitudes of Documenting a Long-Distance Relationship

Abstract

The relationship between the two great hinges of Eurasian maritime commerce, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, is a very ancient one in both commercial and religious domains.I will seek here to trace the uses that have been made of these past connections by successive generations of writers, as a background to the unprecedently clear record provided by contemporary researchers. Ottoman records have proved indispensible in documenting the connection historically, even though for centuries it bulked much larger in the Southeast Asian than the Turkish imagination. Show more