A 'Promotion' by Blogger Indonesia, A. Fatih Syuhud

I am really surprised when A. Fatih Syuhud, who is known as the Father of the Indonesian Blogger, includes my blog as one of the Blogger Indonesia of the Weeks on April 20 last. As far as I know, this is one of Fatih’s most popular features that is weekly presented to acknowledge and promote an English or at least bilingual blog by Indonesian Blogger.

Of course this acknowledgment is so meaningful for me, since Fatih is a person who has been “inaugurated” as Dubes Blogger Indonesia (the ‘ambassador’ of Indonesian blogger) by Tempo, one of the most respected and popular magazines in Indonesia, and also acknowledged as one of the Top Five Blog Indonesia by Kompas, one of the largest Indonesian daily selling newspapers.

To be honest, I never imagine looking at my “Naskah Kuno” blog in this promoted position, for I just try to write and write to encourage, as I mentioned in the title of my blog, studying old Indonesian manuscripts, a field that only few people have interests so far, and also to be as “microphone” to endorse appreciating Indonesian local Islam (Islam “pribumi”).

Fatih is certainly a great inspiration of my personal hobby to develop a “good blog”, not only regarding the technical performance through his tutorial blog, but also his repeatedly suggestion to express the ideas in English, in order to get international readers, and to tell to the world anything written by Blogger Indonesia. I frequently think his nice words: “…Don't let your voice echoes only in your backyard…”.

Besides, I also indebted to one of my best friends, Dadi Darmadi, a PhD student on anthropology at the Harvard University, who for the first time proposed me to have an academic blog.

In fact, blogging is really effective to widely disseminate our thoughts and ideas. I should be proud that some scholars on the Malay world have acknowledged this blog through their various ways. Ian Proudfoot for example, has provided a special link to my blog in his fascinating site on Malay Concordance Project. As Ian said, his project aims to help scholars share resources for the study of classical Malay literature. In the last year it has been consulted by scholars from more than 30 countries world-wide, who made over 17,000 searches.

Nicholas Lawson Heer's Home Page provides a link to this blog as well, besides other interesting sites and his downloadable articles, especially those relate to Sufism.

Another scholar I wish to mention here is Annabel Teh Gallop, Head of South & Southeast Asia section, The British Library, London. Through email sent to her colleagues who have interests in the study of the Malay world, Annabel recommends them to visit what she called as more interesting sites, including my blog. She thought that it’s too rarely now to find a blog specifically dedicated to the field of old manuscripts.

In addition, I also have received respects and acknowledgments regarding the benefit of this kind of blog from other prominent and senior scholars, through their email correspondence to me, such as Anthony Johns, Ulrich Kratz, Azyumardi Azra, Edwin Wieringa, and others. My best regards for you all, and thanks for your great supports.

Finally, I would like to thank again to Fatih Syuhud, for his precious “promotion”, hopefully it could open more eyes to see Indonesian wealthy heritage such as manuscripts, one of the products of traditions that involve a wide range of competences and social behaviours, which I believe contain much more than literature taken in the narrow sense; they include as well material relating to many other disciplines like religion, history, law, customs, medicine, technology and a lot more.

Of course I could not forget supports from all of my readers; some of them put their nice words and blog address in my Guestbook. I mostly list their blog names, especially if it closely relate to my filed. I greatly appreciate your attention in this matter...