Kiai Bisri Mustofa of Rembang

Javanese kiai and prolific author, head of the pesantren Raudlatut Thalibin in Rembang, who made the Javanese verse translation of al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam used in the pesantren.

Life

Bisri Mustofa was born in Rembang on the north coast of Central Java in 1915. He studied at the pesantren of Kasingan in Rembang under Kiai Cholil Harun, whose daughter he later married, spent a period at Tebuireng in Jombang under KH Hasyim Asyʿari, and in 1936 went to Mecca to study Qurʾān commentary, ḥadīth and law. Back in Rembang he continued his father-in-law’s pesantren, moving it from Kasingan to Leteh as the pesantren Raudlatut Thalibin, and became a well-known preacher and political figure. He died in hospital in Semarang on 17 February 1977.

Martin van Bruinessen calls him ‘a highly prolific Javanese author’, represented in the KITLV collection of kitab kuning by more than twenty works; a later study counts 54 titles, printed above all by Menara Kudus. Most are translations or explanations of standard pesantren texts in Javanese, often in verse, among them his three-volume Javanese tafsīr al-Ibrīz and translations of al-Akhḍarī’s rhetoric poem al-Jawhar al-maknūn, of ʿAqīdat al-ʿawāmm and of Bulūgh al-marām. His only work in logic is a Javanese verse (manẓūm) translation of al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam, which van Bruinessen lists among the logic books commonly found in Indonesia. His son Cholil Bisri published an Indonesian translation of the Sullam in 1989.

Works

• Tarjamah Sullam al-munawraq — üzerine al-Sullam al-munawraqJavanese verse translation of al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam (van Bruinessen; listed as his only logic work in an Indonesian thesis). Printing details not seen.tercüme
• al-Ibrīz li-maʿrifat tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿazīzJavanese Qurʾān translation and commentary in three volumes (about 2,250 pages), his best-known work.eser

Reception

His Javanese version stands beside the Arabic commentaries of al-Damanhūrī and al-Bājūrī in van Bruinessen’s list of the logic books of the pesantren.