Hikayat Amir Hamzah (حكاية أمير حمزه) is a Malay literary work that chronicles the hero by the name Amir Hamzah. This book is one of the two Hikayat mentioned in Sejarah Melayu as one of the Hikayat used to encourage Malay warriors in their fight against invading Portuguese in Malacca in 1511. The manuscripts were originally written in the classical

Malay language Malay (; ms, Bahasa Melayu, links=no, Jawi: , Rencong: ) is an Austronesian language that is an official language of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, and that is also spoken in East Timor and parts of the Philippines an ...

on traditional paper in old

Jawi script Jawi (; ace, Jawoë; Kelantan-Pattani: ''Yawi''; ) is a writing system used for writing several languages of Southeast Asia, such as Acehnese, Banjarese, Kerinci, Maguindanaon, Malay, Minangkabau, Tausūg, and Ternate. Jawi is bas ...

. Hikayat Amir Hamzah was originally written by a Persian writer with title ''Qissa’i Emir Hamza'' or

Hamzanama The ''Hamzanama'' (Persian Language, Persian/Urdu: ''Hamzenâme'', Epic of Hamza) or ''Dastan-e-Amir Hamza'' (Persian/Urdu: ''Dâstâne Amir Hamze'', "Adventures of Amir Hamza") narrates the legendary exploits of Amir Hamza, or Hamza ibn Abdul ...

. It was translated into

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

as ''Sirat al-Amir Hamzah''. Later, possibly in the fifteenth century, it was taken from

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

Malacca Malacca ( ms, Melaka) is a States and federal territories of Malaysia, state in Malaysia located in the southern region of the Malay Peninsula, next to the Strait of Malacca. Its capital is Malacca City, dubbed the Historic City, which has bee ...

(Melaka) during the Malacca Sultanate and translated into Malay in

. The Malay text, however, came directly from the Persian, particularly because it maintains the identity of Amir Hamzah as uncle of The Prophet. An edition in Latin script was published by A. Samad Ahmad, based on two texts in the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka collection ''Hikayat Amir Hamzah'' diselenggarakan oleh A. Samad Ahmad, Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1987 Manuscripts are also found in other languages i.e., Javanese as the ''Serat Menak'', Sundanese as ''Amir Hamjah'', Bugis, Balinese, Acehnese, Turkish and

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...

. The story is performed in the Sasak shadow puppet theatre (''wayang sasak''), the Sundanese stick-puppet theatre (''wayang golek'') and in other traditional Indonesian performances.

External links

malay concordance project

PDF - Aksara: The Passage of Malay Scripts.
* http://www.dawama.com/index.php?ch=20&pg=138&ac=7110&tpt_id=11

References

* The Encyclopedia of Malaysia: Languages & Literature, edited by Prof. Dato' Dr Asmah Haji Omar (2004) {{Authority control History of Malaysia Malay-language literature Jawi manuscripts