The Mboi collection of Atma Jaya Catholic University in Jakarta

Since 2018 the private collection of Ben Mboi (1935-2015), who is best known as Governor of East Nusa Tenggara – NTT – from 1978 to 1988, has been part of the Library of Atma Jaya Catholic University in Jakarta, where it is publicly accessible under the name of Ben Mboi Research Library. The collection totals 22,890 items; the majority of the books are written in English, Indonesian, and Dutch. After briefly introducing the life and work of Ben Mboi, this article first discusses the phenomenon of private libraries in Indonesia, making it clear that Mboi’s collection is highly unusual. The main part of the paper explores the question as to what is specifically “Mboian” about the library and what it tells us about his mindset. Mboi’s library functioned as a collection for a working mind and the essay focuses on his books dealing with good governance, which increasingly occupied Mboi’s mind after he entered the world of politics. Special attention is paid to reader’s marks and annotations: Mboi read his books from a decidedly Indonesian perspective. This is particularly evident in the case of Dutch books written by Dutch academics on contemporary Dutch society, which Mboi studied intensively in order to reflect upon the situation in post-Suharto Indonesia. Mboi’s own political thinking, which advocated elitism and organicist statecraft, conformed to mainstream ideological discourse in the New Order, but is still de rigueur in post-Suharto Indonesia, showing a remarkable overlap with colonial ideas about leadership in the period of Dutch high imperialism

Malay graffiti in a nineteenth-century lithographed Bombay Qur’an

A lithographed copy of the Qur’an, printed in Bombay (Mumbai, India) in 1881, was bought in Sumatra a few years later by a certain K. Bijls, a Malay-speaking Dutchman who made several markings in it which may be regarded as a form of “graffiti”, in the sense of markings asserting his ownership. This same person most probably also added a marginal calligraphic composition to the text, in a manner that is typical of Malay epistolography, perhaps prompted by an element on the printed page that was unfamiliar to him, hence catching his eye and imagination. Keywords: Qur’an, Bombay Islam, Marginalia, Arabic Script. Sebagai tanda untuk menegaskan kepemilikannya terhadap naskah tersebut. Orang yang sama ini mungkin saja juga menambahkan komposisi kaligrafi marjinal pada teks tersebut yang menunjukkan bahwa hal tersebut adalah tipikal epistolografi Melayu yang mungkin diminta oleh halaman yang tidak dikenalnya sehingga menarik pandangan dan imajinasinya. Dengan demikian tanda tanda khusus dan ruang kosong lainnya yang digunakan dalam naskah quran tersebut mungkin merupakan ciri khas dari pembacaan orang orang barat yang tidak pernah dikenal atau didengar oleh orang orang Indonesia. Kata Kunci: Al-Qur’an, Islam Bombay, Marginalia, Kitab Arab