Stories from my mother and my father continues. In the book Roots Living Heritage (University of Malaya Press, 2022), I narrated on my grandfather, Ahamad Marican Othman Labbai Marican. This time, more of Ahamad Marican in the context of Tanjong. Note that the spelling as in official documents is ‘Marican’, not ‘Merican.’ My father’s father was born in Tanjong, and stayed in a bungalow exactly opposite Padang Brown, Datuk Keramat Road. He is a descendant of the Kapitan Keling. To be exact, the cape was identified by the name Tanjong Penaga. The place has been known by that name in collective memory. The British had other ideas.

The place was usurped as ‘George Town’ on 11th August of 1786 by Francis Light who falsely declared that Pulau Pinang was ceded by the Sultan through a ‘lease agreement.’ There was no lease nor agreement in 1786. Kadir Mydin Marican originated from Porto Novo – a port in Tamil Nadu named by the Portuguese, finally landed in Tanjong Penaga. Then it was also called Pudukarrai by the Chulias.

Today the Portuguese port portrays another name – Parangi Pettai (literally Foreigner’s Port), where Parangi is a variation of our Ferringhi/Perringgi/Pringgi. Firangi is the Hindi/Urdu name. Farang is Siamese for foreigner borrowed from the Farsi Farangih; Barang in Khmer; Paranki in Malayalam; Parangiar in Tamil. Pettai in Tamil means place. Hence Parangi Pettai means “abode of the Parangiars” – refering to Europeans, the Franks in the Germanic tribe. I digress.

The Marakayars developed an expansive maritime trading network spanning the Indian Ocean. The Kapitan Keling was involved in the network, trading in a range of commodities from textiles, elephants and spices. Apart from Bangkok, Yangon, Phuket and Pedir, Singapura and Batavia, the coastal areas of the Hadhramaut and eastern Africa, some family members were also trading elephants in Trang, some 180 kilometres north of Perlis.

The first thing I heard about my father’s ancestors was that they traded in textiles all over the region. My father shared the story more than five decades ago. He would repeatedly remind me of the extent of his ancestors’ trading network in the region. It was only later in life that I managed to place things in context and perspective. And the business runs through my grandfather’s siblings too.

My grandfather himself, who was an inspector with the Penang City Council, ‘returned’ to the textile business in the late 1920’s and 1930s. He passed away in 1934. My father’s birth certificate stated Ahamad Marican’s occupation as ‘textile merchant.’ And in birth certificates of his children, the description in the column ‘Nation’ (equivalent to Race/Keturunan) is Jawi Pekan. This is common in Tanjong until about the 1930s when more from the community opted to identify themselves as Malay.

I have never met Ahamad Marican. The other thing I know is that he was a polyglot. Apart from Bahasa Melayu, English and Tamil, he was at ease with Arabic, Urdu and Hokkien. I would always imagine the kind of society – social, cultural and intellectual life – that Tanjong had, and the milieu in which my grandfather thrived on. He would have interacted much with the different communities. Certainly, al-Imam and other major newspapers and periodicals in Tanjong were his reading staple.

Apart from Singapura, Tanjong from the early years of the publication of the Jawi Peranakkan in Singapura in 1876 to al-Imam (1906) through World War Two, was the centre of Malay-Muslim social and intellectual life in the region, and this especially beginning in the late 1800s. The two Singapura-based periodicals were also available and read in Tanjong. It was connected through a network of correspondents in Batavia, Deli, Manila and Pontianak. This was especially so for Jawi Peranakkan and subsequently other perodicals such as al-Imam, and Saudara. Those were truly cosmopolitan. There was an audience, a vibrant readership and society in Tanjong and other port cities.

Hence, my grandfather and his Tanjong kinsmen were connected to various places throughout the archipelago, and the rest of the West. Periodicals arriving from Europe via steamships would be enthusiastically read. And there were Reuters dispatches too. The impending demise of the Ottomans and the politics of theology, change and modernization in the Malay world were topics of Tanjong discourse. Syed Shaikh al-Hadi’s Singapura-based al-Imam, circulated and consumed in Tanjong created the social and intellectual milieu for my grandfather and his kinsmen. It was worldly, at the same time spiritual.

The literature on the Marican/Merican in Malaysia have been quite visible but not quite sufficient in depth and perspective. And these were also not representative of the group in Malaysia; nor did it stretch further to Marakayar history and society in India, the Markab – people from the wooden boat as the story goes. A number of books have been published giving us some ideas of the larger family, histories and genealogies. The history of the Merican clan in Malaysia, as told, retold; and generally narrated by those who know, did not go much earlier than the 1750s. And have not been engaged in the ethno-genesis of the Marakayar community mainly in Tamil Nadu. Many are anecdotal; appearing to be ambivalent on their southern Indian origins. The Marakayars in Tamil Nadu are grouped as Arabized-Tamils.

Identity is a choice, based on individual, and/or collective consciousness. And most likely, the collective consciousness in the larger family would have influenced individual consciousness as well. My mother is a strong influence on my lineage and consciousness. My late father’s narratives were pale compared to my mother’s. But the ‘sound bytes’ got louder over the decades. In the last 30 years of his life, I managed to gather a more connected and constructive sense of his lineage in the cultural geographical landscape of Tanjong and its regions.

My paternal grandmother, Wan Saleha bin Haji Yassin, was a Melayu Deli from Medan. That is another huge family tree. I must mention that my paternal great grandmother by the name of Rahmah was a regular commuter of the ferry MV Kedah plying from Tanjong to Belawan and back. Belawan was the port for Medan and what is now north Sumatra. And she would commute alone from the family house in Kinta Lane, between Burmah Road and Macalister Road in a horse carriage, carrying a small luggage with a kain batik covering her hair. Plying from Tanjong to Belawan, according to my father, was her weekly routine.