Chronicle
Misa Melayu
Not translated into English
Raja Chulan ibni Raja Hamid · 1760
Synopsis
The chronicle of the sultanate of Perak in the eighteenth century, chiefly under Sultan Iskandar Dzulkarnain: the genealogy of its rulers, the rites of succession and court ceremonies, the exchanges with the Dutch over tin, and the sultan's journey along the Perak river, in which the author took part.
Context
The chronicle was written in the middle of the eighteenth century, during the reign it recounts, at the request of the sultan himself. Unlike anonymous chronicles, it bears its author's name and tells what he saw rather than what tradition handed down, alternating prose and poems. W. E. Maxwell studied it in 1884, and Richard Winstedt published it in 1919 in Singapore, from a manuscript of 1836; this edition is still the reference. The historian Barbara Watson Andaya used it for her history of the Perak of that period.
Who it is for
A chronicle that mixes the two forms, in classical Malay; it has not been translated into French or fully into English.
Prizes and reception
Inscribed in 2023 in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register; it remains a major source on the society of Perak of its time.
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