TUAN GURU-BASED ISLAMIC EDUCATION:RECONSTRUCTING LEARNING EPISTEMOLOGY FROM SHAYKH ARSYAD AL-BANJARI TO THE PRESENT

Abstract

This article reconstructs the epistemology of learning in the Banjar tuan guru tradition, from Shaykh Muhammad Arsyad al-Banjari in the eighteenth century to Guru Sekumpul in the late twentieth. It asks how knowledge is sourced, acquired, authorised, and directed across four periods. The study uses qualitative library research and thematic analysis of published scholarship on Arsyad, on Banjar scholarly networks, and on later tuan guru, coded along five dimensions: source of knowledge, mode of acquisition, the teacher’s adab, authority (sanad), and purpose. The findings show a stable core: revealed text comes first, knowledge passes through personal companionship (shuhbah) and plural chains of authorisation, and learning aims at practice and at reproducing teachers. They also show change in institutions, from a fenced village to an open congregation. The article offers a model of tuan guru-based learning for pesantren research.