Determining the Birth Date of Ternate Part II

II.  THE SOURCES OF HISTORY

      The history of Ternate should meet the historical criterions stated above,which is actions done consciously by the Ternatan in the past. It should be admitted that,our historians themselves have not been able to write a comprehensive and complete history of Ternate until today. The academics in ternate need to be reminded for that.

      Actually to write a comprehensive history of Ternate,even the history of North Moluccas,we have plenty of historical resources. Basically.the sources of history could be break down into (a) literatures written in "jawi" alpabets and Ternate languange,and (b) reports and official letters of the westerners (achrival documents) written in Portuguese or Dutch.

 a.  First, the literatures written by the officials of Ternate Kingdom in the past. We have at least two    hand-written manuscripts on the history of Ternate :

• "Hikayat Ternate (Tale of Ternate)" written by Naidah who was a Hukum Soa Sio in 1859-1861. 
  
   His "Hikayat Ternate" writings ended in 1861 (at the era of Sultan Mohammad Arsad), therefore it is  highly possible that Naidah's manuscript was composed during that year. Until now the original manuscript it lost, and could only be read in its published form in a magazine by P.A.Van der Crab who was head of Ternate Residency at the time. The manusscript was published in three language,the original (Ternate), its translation into Malay languange,and the dutch translation (based on Malaytranslation). According to Dr.Chris van Fraassen who conducted a research an the manuscript in Ternate with the assitance of Mr.H.Abdul Habib Jiko. the Malay translation (therefore the Dutch Translation as well) had, in mani ways, deviated from its original languange.
  • "Hikayat Ternate (Tale of Ternate)', an anonymous manuscript, is kept in the library of Leiden University in the Netherlands. The history of ternate in this manuscript is a lot shorter compared to naidah's, dated only until 1801 (the era of the British occuption).

b.  Second,the archival documents by the westerners (reports, hand-written letters), which fall into two
     categories :

•  From the Portuguese,which are wll-kept in the National Archive of Portuguese in Lisabon, and

•  From the Dutch, (VOC and the Dutch Indies) which are also wll kept in the National Archive of       Indonesia in Jakarta and the national Archive of the Netherlands Kingdom in Den Haag. 

     Yet the historical tales as mentioned above may be of some use. The works written by the kingdom officials had various versions of the Ternatan Sultans' family tree specifically and others sultanes in North Moluccas generally. There is also another manuscript used by Fr. Valentijn in this book, oud en Nieuw O ost-indien, Part I,published in Dortretch in 1724. A German named A. bastian also wrote about the family tree in his book, Die Molukken, published in Berlin in 1884. These various genealogies, seen from the early period, could be used as yardstick to decide the birth date of Ternate.

     From the two manuscript and two books above, Dr. Van Fraassen, a Dutch who studied the history of the Ternate culture, compiled some of the various genealogies of ternatan king from those manuscript. From these family trees, he only wrote the earlier period. Yet the early period is imperative for us to find the early history of Ternate and also to decide ternate's birth year. Joint at.....Part III
Sumber : R.Z. Leirissa