Terengganu Inscription Stone: earliest Malay text in Jawi script
Piedra de Terengganu: primer texto malayo en escritura yawi
- Date
- 1303 (o 1322-1387, discutido) · confidence low
- Place
- Kuala Berang, Terengganu, Malaysia
- Credited to
- Court of the Terengganu sultanate
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
A granite column inscribed with Islamic laws in Classical Malay written in the adapted Arabic alphabet (Jawi). It is the oldest evidence of Jawi script and of Islam as legal norm in the Malay world.
The date of the text is disputed: most read 702 AH (1303), others 722 AH (1322) or 1387, because of an eroded fragment. Some authors propose even as late as c. 1470.
What it led to
- spread of Jawi script in Malay literature and administration
- substrate of the legal texts of the Malacca sultanate
- debate on the Islamisation of the Malay Archipelago