Batik Quran Fuses Religion, Tradition in Indonesia
Sarwono was gently stroking hot wax from a canting (spouted pot) on a sheet of white cloth measuring 90 cm by 70 cm.
"Unless [the wax] fully penetrates, the batik designs won’t appear perfectly,” he said while working at the Batik Mahkota Workshop in Laweyan village, a tourist zone in Surakarta, Central Java, known for producing batik.
The 62-year-old, better known as Nono, was not drawing the traditional batik motifs of Surakarta or other regions of Java. Instead, he was completing a batik-inspired Quran that is being created by a group of batik craftspeople based in Laweyan. Verse by verse, he scribed the Islamic holy book using the Kudus khat (calligraphy) system, which is more difficult than the Uthmani method.
"The Uthmani method needs only one stroke per letter, while the Kudus system, with certain parts being thicker, can take two to three strokes to complete,” he explained, adding that the latter takes longer and requires five days for the Laweyan team to create one page of Quranic verses.
Before applying the wax, Arabic letters are drawn with a pencil according to standards provided by the Religious Affairs Ministry. These are then checked by members of the production team and further processed when no mistakes are found.
"There can be no mistakes when writing out Quranic verses, so after the letter are traced with wax, we examine them once again before passing the material along to be dyed,” Nono said.
In the dyeing process, the sheet is immersed five times in a dark-red solution containing soga wood to produce Surakarta’s signature, brownish batik color.
Crafting of the batik Quran started during Ramadhan last year. So far, the group has completed 90 pages.
"The work has reached juz [section] 6,” said Nono, who has been making batik since 1985.
His team is targeting to complete the batik-style Quran by 2021.
The project was initiated out of fear from batik artisans and Laweyan community figures that Indonesia might lose sight of the Quran’s values in its fast-paced progress toward modernity.
"This effort serves as a reminder to the public not to ignore the requirements of the Quran as our holy book,” said another member of the Laweyan-based team, Taufan Wicaksono.
The team plans to involve students from an Islamic school in Surakarta to complete the project.
"We hope the craft of batik Quran will turn into an expanding movement that includes many other parties,” Taufan said.
The method in which the team writes Quranic verses in wax was inspired by a method called Follow the Line, which follows specific learning stages for students to master reading and writing Arabic letters.
"At first, people are expected to at least be able to read the Quran, then later, write the verses. After that, they would grasp the meaning behind the verses and implement them in their daily lives,” Taufan said.
He added that writing the Quran certainly means reading its verses; the action of writing while reading also stimulates the right brain and promotes one’s intellect and creativity.
"The order to read and write is also contained in this holy book,” he said.
When every sheet of the batik Quran is completed, they will be bound into a book.
"Then, the batik book will be handed over to the Laweyan Mosque, where it can be enjoyed by the public as a piece of our cultural heritage,” Taufan explained.
Laweyan community leader Alpha Fabela described the project as the acculturation if Islam and Java. The Quran’s verses are decorated with traditional Javanese motifs produced in conformity with strong batik-making traditions, making the batik Quran a manifestation of harmony between Islamic teachings and traditional values.
Laweyan has long been steeped in Islamic tradition. Laweyan Mosque, a landmark of Islamic propagation in Java, was built in 1546 by Ki Ageng Henis, the ancestor of Islamic Mataram kings and a close friend of Sunan Kalijaga, one of Java’s early Islamic preachers. The mosque is even older than the Grand Mosque of Surakarta built in 1763.
In the 1540s, the tourist zone now called Laweyan used to be known as a lawe(weaving yarn) industrial center in the Pajang Kingdom era. It has since been developed into a textile and batik village.
With the Bengawan Solo River passing the village, it was a major trading area in Java that grew into an elite zone in the Islamic Mataram era.
"Laweyan has long been a center of Islamic eminence in Java,” Alpha said.
Source; The Jakarta Post
