아프리카ㆍ중동

It is said that Islam was born in the Middle East, but the place to bring it up and to be deep rooted as a religion of daily life is the South East Asia. Despite geographical distances, ties between the Middle East and Southeast Asia had been extremely important in commercial, diplomatic and military fields, for well over fourteen hundred years. These relations were built up mainly in the 16th and 19th centuries. However, historical linkages between the two regions have attracted little attention, and assessments of their significance are curiously lacking. Southeast Asia and the Middle East address this omission by exploring political, economic, familial, educational and religious bonds connecting these areas, both historically and in the contemporary world. In the pre-modern era, there were in general three main streams of Middle Eastern of South East Asia: First, SEA for ME was the area where Islamic holy teaching was well disseminating. Second, very attractive region which supply high valued commodities including spices and incense. Third, the region being full of ignorance needed very urgent and positive Islamic propagation. Under these understandings, this paper is designed to dig out new illumination on these mutual relations and confluence through historical survey based on travel accounts and some first hand documentations focussing on the Ottoman-Indonesian relations of the 16~19th centuries.