ABSTRACT
Frontiers are a productive site–geographically and metaphorically–for considering world literature and world history. This chapter considers the frontiers of Southeast Asian Islam, of the Malay language and its poetic genres, and of colonial wars and expansion. The most common languages to appear alongside Malay are Arabic and Tamil. Additional languages including Javanese, English and Sinhala have also been documented. Sri Lankan Malay manuscripts and books survive in several libraries and private collections, and most have not been studied by scholars. Baba Ounus Saldin, author of the Syair Faid al-Abad, was a central figure in the Malay community of his time. In Saldin's retelling of Malay history and of soldiers dispatched to the front people encounter the frontiers of colonial power, which transform in the telling also into frontiers of a Malay-Muslim presence on the stage of contemporary world events.
