Böcker av Isaac Donoso

This book focuses on the written heritage of Muslims in the Philippines, the historical constitution of chancelleries within the Islamic sultanates, and the production of official letters to conduct local and international diplomacy. The standard narrative on Muslims in the Philippines is one that centres political and armed struggles within the region. However, two important aspects remain unattended: the cultural and intellectual production of the sultanates, and the Moro involvement in Southeast Asian Islamic civilization. This book connects the development and personality of the Philippine sultanates into the regional context of local communities that adopted an international faith. Political alliances and religious missions altered different ethnolinguistic groups and furnished them with the Word, the Qur¿anic message, and the Arabic script. Indeed, customary orality and Adab shaped a way of being and acting modelled after what was called the Bichara. Particularly, the book studies the Moro Letter as cultural craft with political meaning, and Jawi heritage in the Philippines. A general catalogue of Jawi manuscripts from the National Archives of the Philippines is provided as appendix.

"Philippine literature is a mosaic of oral and written traditions in various Austronesian languages. It is in the Spanish language that the idea of the Philippine nation, and the first Republic of Asia, emerged at the end of the 19th century. As an allegory of this genetic process, Tâindalo de sinamay threads the life and death of Josâe Rizal, writer, hero and martyr of the Pearl of the Seas, as he lives and suffers it, from early childhood games and popular festivals to conscious resolution of one who gives his life for the sake of an ideal"--