Once Upon a Time in Riau: People and Society in the Documents of the Riau-Lingga Shariah Court (Early 20th Century)

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The collection of documents of the Riau–Lingga Shariah Court (Mahkamah Syariah Kerajaan Lingga), preserved in the local museum of the administrative center of Daik (Lingga Island, present-day Indonesia), constitutes a corpus of judicial verdicts concerning various types of commercial transactions, financial obligations, and property disputes. The collection comprises approximately 350 documents written in Malay Jawi script and dating from the early 20th century (1905–1908).

Among the materials preserved in the collection are debt obligations, verdicts imposing fines, claims for maintenance payments, petitions, property disputes, documents on the sale and purchase of real estate and goods, waqf deeds, and others.

A preliminary examination of the texts reveals that both Muslim and non-Muslim individuals participated in judicial proceedings, with Chinese names being particularly prominent. A number of European names also appear. The analysis of these documents provides valuable insights into the socio-economic and cultural dimensions of public life in Johor, since the Riau–Lingga Shariah Court exercised jurisdiction not only over Muslims but also over other population groups.

The application of a comprehensive source-critical approach to this newly available body of material is certain to yield significant insights into the economic and legal history of the region, while also enabling the reconstruction of multiple dimensions of social life within the multicultural, multiethnic, and multireligious society of the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.