Pursuing Knowledge to the Country of Sheikh Surkati
Sudan has a unique way of reciting the Quran in a style called Al-Duuri. Some Indonesian Muslims like to watch videos of Sheikh Nourin Siddiq, a Sudanese scholar who often recites verses from the Quran in that style.
People attend Eid al-Firtr prayer in Khartoum, Sudan, Friday, April 21, 2023. Eid al-Fitr holiday, that marks the end of the holy Islamic month of Ramadan, is marked by faithful as gunshots rang out across the capital of Khartoum and heavy smoke billowed over the skyline.
Essentially, Sudan and Indonesia had ties long before the two countries became independent. The arrival in October 1911 of Sheikh Ahmad Surkati and Sheikh Muhammad bin Abdul Hamid, two clerics from Sudan, was the beginning of Indonesia-Sudan relations. Sheikh Surkati and Sheikh Muhammad were invited by Jamiatul Khair to teach in Batavia, the Dutch colonial government’s name for what is now Jakarta.
Sheikh Surkati later became one of the founders of Al Irsyad, which was inaugurated by the Dutch East Indies government in 1915. Surkati was known as a reformer of Islamic education in the Dutch East Indies.