Heer's Handlist of Jawi Authors and Their Works

Once an internet searching brought me to find a Home Page of Nicholas L. Heer, a Professor Emeritus at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization, University of Washington. Physically, the performance of his Page is quite simple actually; however you might be interested to look at and download some contents he provides.

One article that I think to have a significant contribution to the study of the Islamic Malay world is his “A Concise Handlist of Jawi Authors and Their Works”. As Heer mentioned in his Preface, this Handlist is ...an attempt to provide references to the information available for each of the Jawi authors and works included in the list... For the beginners in this field especially, this Handlist will guide them to find out the Jawi authors and their works scattered in many books and articles.

Certainly, this Handlist doesn’t involve yet all Jawi authors and their works, especially those live after the nineteenth century. As far as my research concern, there are local Malay ulamas ('Malay' here refers to all regions, including Java), whose Jawi works have significant role in their societies and not listed yet in Heer’s Handlist.

Anyway, I suppose that we should appreciate what Heer done, and supply him with any additional information regarding the Jawi authors and their works we may have, since this Handlist is presented as an ‘opened’ document that available to modify, copy, and distribute.

In addition, finding Heer’s Page has surprised me since he also includes this blog in his listed links to sites in Jawi Literature, aside from other interesting sites such as Proudfoot’s Malay Concordance Project, Khazanah Fathaniyyah, which mostly publish the works of the late Wan Mohd Shaghir Abdullah, Jawi Study Group in Japan, Bruinessen's site which provide his downloadable articles, and others.

Of course, Heer’s Page also makes available his various articles on his major concern, Islamic Sufism. Many thanks Prof. Heer for your contribution.