Commemorating the deeds of Wali Songo

Continuing from "Daulah Melayu" shoot at a dry village in Pasuruan.

In Pasuruan we lodged at a pesantren or traditional religious school owned and operated by a local kiyai or religious master. The main reason we came here was to attend a function held there.

It was a hol function, remembering the deceased Wali Songo, the famous 9 saints of the Indonesian island of Java.

The saints who lived in the 15-17th century AD were responsible for converting most of Java populace to the faith of Islam.

So remembering the deceased in cases like this means also commemorating their deeds.

Gracing the function were many modern day religious masters from Indonesia and Malaysia. 

In fact there is one master who came all the way from Turkey... 

Here's a Malaysian master giving a fiery speech about the deeds of the Wali Songo...

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Here's the Turkey master, Sayyid Sheikh Muhammad Fadhil Al-Jailani al-Hasani. Speaking in Arabic with a local master translating into the Indonesian language, he is descended from the world-famous Sheikh Abdul Qadir al-Jilani, the 11-12th AD century master who is recognised as the Sultanul Awliya, king of saints in the Muslim world...

"Daulah Melayu" shoot at a dry village in Pasuruan

OK. I believed I have talked about my involvement with a documentary project called "Daulah Melayu" at least twice in this blogspot. Look at the articles Boatmaking in progress at Pulau Duyong and Convoy to Pulau Meranti. Well. Here's another one...

Last Thursday 22nd October 2015 me and my documentary team went to Surabaya, Indonesia for our first overseas shoot. The following day we went to a village in Pasuruan and took advantage of a current situation...

The village has vast expanses of ricefields. But due to drought the last 7 months or so the land had dried up.

This gave rise to a rather intreesting background. My director took advantage by calling a number of local youths to participate.

They played the part of students studying religion, discussing and studying among themselves with the dry backdrop providing a quaint view of things...

Me being the documentary host was also part of whole proceeding. But I had no pictures of myself in action to show...

So let's just let the boys play centre stage ya. Earlier, they had to pretend like bumping into me while returning from a religious class...