Brunei and Allah Peliharakan Sultan

Join me as we head to Brunei, a hidden gem nestled on the island of Borneo, where we unravel the fascinating history behind its national anthem, "Allah Pelaherikan Sultan." This episode dives deep into the intricacies of Brunei's unique political landscape as one of the last absolute monarchies, while also exploring how colonial influences shaped its national identity. As we uncover the story of the anthem's creation in the context of Brunei's push for independence (again), we'll examine the lyrics that intertwine themes of reverence for the Sultan and a prayer for the nation’s peace and prosperity. With a sprinkle of humor and a healthy dose of wit, I reflect on my own ignorance of this nation before our dart landed on it, revealing just how much there is to learn about both the anthem and the culture it represents. So, whether you're a geography whiz or just someone curious about the world’s lesser-known countries, this episode promises to be both enlightening and entertaining.

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Foreign welcome to the Anthems Podcast.

I'm Patrick and I'm here to tell you the story of a song that helps to tell the story of a nation Today we are traveling 10,794 kilometers or 6,707 miles. And yes, it's in that common range again. A little arithmetic tells me that it's like 272 marathons.

hat Sifli Anak ahar holds the: 2:43:32

A little more arithmetic tells me that if they were to run the distance and it would be nearly 31 day trip, which is 14 pairs of running shoes if a good pair lasts you 500 miles. So run prepared I guess.

I ran a 5k once, but really I think I'm only going to do it just the one time and it's a vanishingly small chance I'll ever do it again.

It may or may not be the same size of the chance that someone listening right now has a deep knowledge of worldwide marathon runners and new we were going to Brunei. Officially Brunei Dar es Salaam. Today we are headed to one of the very few absolute monarchies left in the world.

Because I wanted to go back to Southeast Asia and this is where the dart happened to land. Seriously, I didn't even know this country existed until it was picked for this very episode.

Continuing the trend of showing you how little I knew about the world before I started the show.

Before diving into this episode, the only thing I knew about Brunei is not even a thing I knew about the country, since knowing that Borneo was the name of an island doesn't really count if I was ignorant enough to think that the world's third largest island was a country. I blame places like Madagascar, Ireland and Australia for that incorrect assumption.

This story is sort of part of the downfall of colonialism, but they invited the British in, so at least it's a little bit different this time. Stuff like this seems inescapable, but at least Napoleon shenanigans have no part in this episode.

In the mind of this amateur history podcaster, that's a pretty good reason to tell you about Allah Pelaherakan Sultan. I'm sure I'd like most food in Brunei since the cuisine is mostly spicy seafood, heavy and halal, which is which are all things that I eat.

Honestly, it's a long list of stuff that I eat. The national dish here is something entirely new to me. It's called ambuya.

It's a starchy goo made from the inner bark of a palm that conceptually reminds me of mochi. You twirl it up in a couple of bamboo skewers and you use that to get delicious sauces into your mouth.

Oddly enough, you also don't need to chew it, so I guess you can chew on that thought while you listen to the song Jam. My first reaction is to sigh.

I don't understand the language, but I was Catholic as a kid and this is a song of praise if I have ever heard a song of praise. That said, I don't actually dislike it. Sure, observant listener.

I do agree that I say that about anthems a lot, but this doesn't really sound like an anthem, does it? We will hear more about that in a bit. For now, I will address the thing that I've heavily hinted at in Islamic country in Southeast Asia.

It sounded weird to me at first too, but it only seemed odd until I read a bunch of history and we have brushed the surface of it in the Philippines, but we will get there a little bit more thoroughly today. There will be more too, in that vein. There is Islamic architecture. So much of it is very old and so much of it is very sophisticated stuff.

And then there is something like the Omar Ali Safudian Mosque, a building that is so beautiful it doesn't even look real in a lot of the photography that is taken of it. It is one of two state mosques in Brunei and also one of the largest in the Far East.

architecture and completed in: 1958

So if I wanted to go see what: 1500

Brunei is one of the three nations that split the island of Borneo and the only one of the three completely contained on the island. Since Borneo is the third largest island in the world, it's easy to find if you head southeast from the Philippines or southwest from Vietnam.

That country is much of the coast of the Indochina peninsula.

There was a time when much of Borneo was held by Brunei, but now the nearly half a million people there occupy the 164th largest country in the world pretty small that is split into two parts and bordered by just the Borneo portion of Malaysia and the South China Sea.

They are financially well off place due to the discovery of oil there and are a comfortable number seven in the world as far as GDP per capita goes with the citizens fairly well taken care of. Most of the country is tropical lowlands with an equatorial climate.

It is around 72% forested with nearly 70% of that forest completely untouched by humans and chiefly consisting of rainforest.

In the smaller western portion of the bifurcated country just around 10,000 of the residents live and there are some mountains like it's all mountain. It's what I would consider pretty consistently hot in Brunei with an average year round temperature of 89.2 Fahrenheit 31.8 Celsius.

Couple that with the rainforest level rain that tops 114 inches a year and I will probably not be spending any time on this island. Humidity is not my favorite thing in the world world even though the country gets very few earthquakes or typhoons.

The Southern hemisphere version of hurricanes because I had to look up what the difference was so I could be able to tell you and it turns out it's just a hurricane in the Southern hemisphere.

Anyway, for today's geology diversion I'm going to throw a curveball and talk about a settlement called Kampong Air, a name that literally means water village.

That's because this traditional settlement is the so called Venice of the EAS east and it is entire section of the capital city of Brunei that sits on stilts in the middle of the Brunei River. I've never seen anything like this outside of some of the more creative role playing games that I've played.

Except they have the Internet here through a centralized subscription, WI FI system, electricity, city water and sewer. They are even fire departments, schools and a mosque.

An extremely interesting place that unfortunately and even worse predictably has been on the decline despite having been here for like a thousand years. An increasingly modern and increasingly busy lifestyle threatens to leave many traditional ways of life by the wayside.

ei before magellan arrived in: 1519

We know that people were on Borneo by around 3,000 before Common Era, but not much is known outside of notes from Chinese traders.

So all that we really do know for sure is that it is considered a reliable source of very pure camphor in actually useful in limited ways, compound that had important applications in folk medicine and then later as a topical medication for insect bites, minor skin irritation or joint pain. It's this fun new category of thing that I just learned about called a counter irritant. But I digress.

We're going to skip Brunei's official version of history, I. E. The national poem called Siar Awang Saman, because have you heard the tale of Romulus and Remus or the founding myth of most any long lived people? It's impossible to parse out what's myth and what's real in that format.

I will note that back in the: 1300

However, Islam reached the empire of Brunei on the boats of Indian and Arab traders, and this religion gradually spread throughout the region as trade did throughout the 14th century. By the 15th century, the king had converted to Islam and became the Sultan in concert with declaring independence from the Majapahit.

We heard a little bit about what happened between Brunei and the Spanish when I talked about the Philippines, because when Milan was captured by a fleet based in Mexico, it was captured from Brunei and they were the unidentified Muslim influences in the south that I referred to. If I had already done the reading for Brunei, I'd have said that. But anthems get me focused on oddly specific pathways through time.

That happened in: 1571

Despite not being taken over by Spain, the extended conflict did help to precipitate the decline of the Bruneian Empire.

rd Sultan of Brunei in: 1839

Plus Sarawak, which is now a Malaysian state, a British adventurer named James Brooke arrived just in time to help the Sultan put down a rebellion in Sarawak and was granted governorship of the territory.

Then he tried to take over the rest of the country, resulting in a war that granted him rule of the independent Sarawak as the impossible to not point out as racist ruler the White Raja.

That's something that I don't need to elaborate on here, other than to note that it shrank Brunei to almost its current size and put the country on a path to becoming a British protectorate. This precipitated another financial and territorial decline as Brooke chipped away at the territory and the Crown chipped away at economic interests.

Things did not start to turn around until the turn of the 20th century during the reign of the 26th sultan. But we're gonna put a pin in that and talk about a poet.

First, a couple quick notes about Malay names, since you're gonna hear a couple of them coming up and you might also be interested in learning this one. Malay does not mean Malaysian and it is a distinct cultural group that is spread across several countries. 2.

The structure is not what you might expect.

They use a patronym naming system consisting of a personal name of 1, 2 or 3 or 4, even followed by bin for men and binti for women, meaning son of or daughter of respectively. So for instance, Yasmin has a son named Tomas who is called Tomas bin Yasmin.

In modern everyday practice, the bin or binti, a convention inherited from the Arabic traders that brought Islam to Southeast Asia, is generally dropped, but it does still exist. So my fictional Bruneian would be called Tomas Yasmin. Interesting stuff.

That means that if I had a Malay name, it might be Patrick bin Patrick and that people would know me as Patrick Patrick. I'd be squared. I'm sorry about the math joke. Moving on.

in: 1914

As a child, his parents moved to North Borneo, which is now part of Malaysia, so he could complete his secondary education at the Sandankin Roman Catholic School.

By the time he graduated, his father had recognized his musical talent and set him off to learn from Filipino band leader Ga Alberto Bessar does not appear in the historical record all that much, and I don't mean like up to a point. We're back in the situation where one of the men involved just didn't leave much of a footprint.

he Public Works Department in: 1946

. He did that sometime before: 1954

In: 1961

The poet passed sometime in: 1988

ng as part of World War II in: 1941

th in: 1945

So after suffering radiation poisoning and I just can't even imagine, he returned to Brunei the next year to participate in the post war political cleanup there.

Before the Japanese occupation and during his training, Yusuf was a teacher at a Malay school and after returning he was one of the founding members and Vice president of Berez and Bermuda.

The group wanted Brunei independence, but tried to get there by uniting the youth against immigration and getting the British to come back and administrate the country mainly to protect Malay interests. I'm not super sure how that jives with advocating for independence though, but we can't get into all that here.

song that became an anthem in: 1947

In: 1954

nstitution was promulgated in: 1959

In: 1961

his tenure in office ended in: 1963

retirement from government in: 1973

After retirement, he held other positions including a Royal Customs Council, Director of the Brunei Press, a Bank Director, a Security Director, and briefly the Ambassador to Japan.

in: 2016

Now, in order to get the anthem, we have to jump back to where we left the timeline at the turn of the 20th century when Brunei and Great Britain formalized British control of non Muslim or Malay matters in the country.

The Sultan agreed to this because as a protectorate they were in a slow process of diminishment and this enabled an increase in rubber and oil trade leading to the current economic advantages there. Then World War II happened and Japan occupied the country.

er from Brunei On December of: 1941

British envoy Malcolm McDonald became the new Resident for the country, which is the person who's in charge, and he advocated for maintaining Brunei as its own colony, which allowed the Sultan to begin consolidating power and working towards independence.

In: 1947

s much as the British. And by: 1959

The constitution said and did many things, but most importantly for my show, it lets me say that with that we have our anthem and I can go on to discuss the song itself. Musically speaking, we have a ceremonial feeling. Piece generally played.

Mastoso thinks stately, kind of slow, it's 44 time with a quarter note emphasis that gives it a little bit of Marchiness. Originally written in the key of C major and generally played in that key.

Couple that with a diatonic stepwise tune that has roughly one octave range and this song is quite singable for pretty much everybody.

The sources tell me that the song has a homophonic texture through its use of melody, chord accompaniment and full disclosure, I do need to read more about that because I don't exactly know what it means. This is of course arranged for many different voices and bands and etc.

Since anthems are played by people in many circumstances, lyrically speaking, this is a rather short affair and quite different from what I would expect in an anthem.

It's way closer to what I think a royal anthem would be like, given that Brunei is in fact run by a sultan, which is not the same as a king in ways that are important but too complicated for me to treat properly here.

The piece is originally written in Malay because that is the national language of Brunei and as you may guess, is in a different language family than English. That means that the most commonly used English translation is again, a translation that relies on contextual, poetic and cultural adaptation.

But like I said, this one is very short and with just six lines we can in fact wade through a literal line by line translation without getting in over my head.

So here it is O Allah, lengthen the life of His Majesty, the one under whose dust we bow, the most glorious, just and sovereign, sheltering the nation, leading the people to lasting happiness. May there be peaceful life for the country and the Sultan. O Divine One, protect Brunei, the abode of peace.

Allah Pelaherikan Sultan is a devotional hymn that unites religious invocation, royal reverence, and a national affection, essentially as a prayer.

As I said, it is quite different from what we've heard before, despite having heard other songs that are literal hymns as well on the Anthems podcast. The opening lines now please excuse my Malay because it's pretty bad.

The opening lines ya allah lanju kanla usia kebawa duli young mahi mulia are deeply ceremonial, calling upon Allah to extend the Sultan's life and address him with the phrase kebab duli, literally under the dust, an idiom that expresses humility. The people are less worthy than the mere dust of the ruler, is what that's saying.

This situates the Sultan as both a political and spiritual authority figure and is supposed to be understood as a divinely sanctioned individual.

The following verse reinforces this idea by portraying the Sultan as Adil Berdalit Muangi Noosa, a sovereign protector who justly shelters the nation, blending rulership with the tenderness of care. I'm not sure that's how ruling a country works, but I have never done that, and I have no interest in doing so.

This is not something written in the language of conquest or command, but that of stewardship, where legitimacy flows from moral virtue and divine blessing, and it flows only through the person the writer is praising. The latter half of the anthem broadens its focus to the collective life of the people in the land itself.

Sort of Mempan Rakal Bahajia prays for the sultan to lead the populace into enduring happiness, while Hirup Sentasa Nagara Dan Sultan petitions for mutual peace between the state and the throne, a harmony envisioned as a personal and national goal.

The final plea Lahi Selamat Khan Brunei Darasalam anchors the song in a tone of sacred guardianship, asking Allah to preserve Brunei, whose name itself completes the circle between faith, rule and identity, because Darussalam translates as literally abode of peace.

Across the verses, the lyrics weave Malay, Islamic piety, monarchical devotion and communal well being into a single vision of order, that is a nation safeguarded by justice, guided by divine will, and eternally at peace under its ruler. I gotta tell you that I think this one misses the mark for me lyrically. It's just that it's not like about the country.

It's a clearly devotional piece written just for the Sultan, and in my opinion it does little to capture Brunei as a country in the way that I appreciate a national anthem, and I tend to expect that it would. Rulers come and go, but countries persist. Despite actually liking the song itself, I think it misses most of the marks that I like anthems to hit.

At least the country is interesting and it helps to round out a little bit more what I know and got to tell you about Southeast Asian culture slash history. It also gets us to the end of yet another edition of the show, although this felt slightly shorter than usual. Although who knows?

Either way, I learned much and hopefully conveyed at least a portion of that to you. Now here are the credits. The writing, recording and production for the show are done by me and I wrote and played the theme music.

I used that music with my permission. Unless otherwise noted, the anthems I play are free to play because most anthems are.

This time, despite my sustained effort, I have been unable to identify the group that sings this version of the anthem. But I did try.

My sources are in the show notes and they live@anthemspodcast.com I can be found on Facebook and WhatsApp as the Anthems podcast I post about the show and the rare anthem relevant news story, but mostly I'm depending on word of mouth for getting this thing into ears. That means I'm asking you to help me by using the hashtag anthemspod.

It would be cool if you shared this content and maybe it will lead to Brunei dropping the portion of its penal code that makes it illegal to be gay because being who you are shouldn't ever be illegal. You can email me corrections, comments, concerns, suggestions, ideas, instructions.

mspodmail.com call or text at/: 1203

-: 4255

Maybe you've been stymied about the state of your own country, so you try to put it in context by talking about the context of other countries and use that as a chance to quote facts from this very episode. Or maybe you use it an excuse to not talk about current events because yikes. Folks like yikes for real.

Either way, I will be paying attention and paying the price for doing that. I will also see you next month. Listener Sam.

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