This paper is examined the development history of the yellow book (kitab kuning) as Islamic textbooks in Indonesia from the perspective of philology. First, from the codicology perspective, the yellow book scattered in Indonesia since the 16th to 21st century had a consistent increase in terms of variations of scientific disciplines, the title of the book and media. The purpose of the yellow book originated from da’wah (Islamic call) material. It then became a lesson material in pesantren (Islamic boarding school) before being a reference in Bahtsul Masa’il (solving religious issues), lectures, legislation and the MUI (The Indonesian Council of Ulama) fatwa. Before being written by the Indonesian, the yellow book were originally written by foreigners, especially from the Middle East (Arabs, Persian). Second, from the textology perspective, the number of yellow book scripts has implications for the significance of the plural text criticism. The yellow book which has long been used by academic society, especially pesantren, shows the pragmatic side, reception aesthetics and reception dynamics in the text edition context. Third, transliteration and translation of the yellow book started from the hanging translation (terjemah gandul) method to interpret its original Arabic language by using the archipelago languages (Malay, Javanese, Sundanese, Madura) in the form of Arabic script (Pegon). Furthermore, transliteration and translation of yellow book are growing rapidly, especially from Arabic scripts to Latin script and from Arabic to Indonesia
