Mediating the maulid: Interlinear translations of the Maulid Syaraf al-Anām across the Indonesian-Malay world

The article explores five Maulid Syaraf al-Anām (‘The birth of the best of mankind’) manuscripts produced in the Indonesian-Malay world. The five manuscripts all include the Arabic text of this well known and highly popular panegyric recited on the anniversary of the Prophet’s birthday as well as on other auspicious occasions, with the Arabic translation into either Malay or Javanese written between the lines. Each manuscript was inscribed at a different site between the late 18th and late 19th centuries: one is from Aceh, another from the so-called ‘Malay’ diaspora in colonial Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka), a third from Patani, in today’s southern Thailand, while a fourth was copied in Mecca. These four include interlinear translations of the Arabic into Malay. The fifth manuscript, from Java, has a Javanese translation. Through a close reading of one narrative section of the Arabic Maulid and its translations, and their comparison with a vernacular telling, the article engages in a preliminary manner with questions of standardisation, creativity and cultural particularity within the wide, yet little-studied realm of interlinear translations from the region.