Focus and Scope

Utawi: Journal of Turāth and Kitab Kuning Studies is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal published twice a year (January and July) by Mitra Edukasi Sejahtera, Indonesia. Its name comes from utawi, the first word pesantren students write beneath a line of Arabic when glossing a kitab word by word in Javanese Pegon (makna gandul). It publishes text-centred studies of the classical Islamic tradition (turāth) as read, taught, and written in the pesantren and Ma’had Aly of Indonesia and the wider Malay world, including the works of Nusantara scholars. Every article must take one or more clearly identified kitab as its primary source and read it with an explicit method: analysis of commentaries (sharḥ and ḥāshiya), comparison of opinions (muqāranah), analysis of legal reasoning (istinbāṭ and qawā‘id), or the history and transmission of texts. The journal accepts articles in Indonesian, Arabic, and English and gives particular space to young scholars from Ma’had Aly writing together with their teachers.

Scope

• The content, method, and reasoning of a kitab or group of kitab within one discipline (fiqh and uṣūl, tafsīr, ḥadīth, theology, Sufism, Arabic linguistic sciences, falak, and farā’iḍ)
• Comparative studies across kitab, schools of law, or between a matn and its commentaries
• Kitab-based reasoning applied to contemporary questions in the tradition of baḥth al-masā’il, with traceable references
• Authorship, isnād, and the printing history of kitab, including Arabic, Jawi, and Pegon works by Nusantara scholars
• Introductions to understudied kitab and short editions of passages from printed works, with translation and commentary
• Critical reviews of classical kitab and new commentaries

Out of scope

Field research on pesantren communities (see Sorogan or Tamhid), manuscript philology and codicology (see Nuskha), the pedagogy of kitab teaching (see Sorogan), and general Islamic thought without a kitab at its centre.