The narrative of Nusantara’s relationship with Islam almost always begins from the same direction: Arab ships arrived, Gujarati merchants docked, and ulama converted local kings to Islam. But there is one detail that is consistently overlooked. Long before all of that, a name from the Nusantara had already existed in the Arab world, not in the form of travel records, but within the language itself.
There is a word in the Qur’an whose roots, if traced back, ultimately lead to the western coast of North Sumatra. The word is kāfūr (كَافُور), mentioned in Surah Al-Insan [76:5] as an ingredient mixed into the drinks of paradise’s inhabitants. Ibn Kathir described it as cool, fragrant, and delightful. Yet almost nobody questions where the name of that substance came from.
One Word, One Chain Across Civilizations
The word kāfūr in Modern Persian comes from the Middle Persian kāpūr, which was most likely borrowed directly from the Malay word kāpūr. From Persian, the word entered Arabic and then continued spreading westward. From Arabic it passed into Latin, from Latin into French, and eventually became “camphor” in English.
This linguistic chain is documented in Encyclopaedia Iranica, one of the most authoritative references in the study of Indian Ocean civilizations. This means that a word originating from the tongue of Malay speakers in Sumatra not only influenced the vocabulary of half the world, but also became part of a holy scripture read by billions of people to this day.
Barus: The Meeting Point of the World’s Civilizations
The name that repeatedly appears in ancient texts from Arabia, Persia, India, and China is Barus, a small town on the western coast of North Sumatra that is now almost unknown, even among Indonesians themselves.
The name Barus was already recorded on the maps of Claudius Ptolemy in the 2nd century CE, noted as a trading port on the western coast of Sumatra known for producing aromatic commodities.
For centuries afterward, Barus became a place where nearly all of the world’s great civilizations converged. Barus, or Fansur in Arabic texts, was already widely known among Arab and Persian merchants in the 9th century as a source of valuable forest products from the Sumatran interior.
A Tamil inscription dated 1088 CE discovered in Lobu Tua near Barus also records the presence of South Indian merchant communities there, including shipowners and captains engaged in trade.
The 11th-century Jewish Geniza merchant network, which stretched from the Iberian Peninsula to South Asia, also reached Fansur as a primary source of the commodities they sought. Arabs, Persians, Tamils, Javanese, Jews, and Chinese all met at one point on the western coast of Sumatra. By the 13th century, camphor from Barus was worth its weight in gold.
Camphor and the Arrival of Islam in the Nusantara
Islam reached the western coast of Sumatra in the 7th century CE not through missionary efforts, but through Arab traders who came to Barus for one purpose: camphor. It was this commodity that first drew them to the Nusantara, long before religion arrived alongside it. In other words, Barus and camphor were what opened the very first door.
And the camphor for which they crossed distant oceans was not the substance we know today. This plant was known for its distinctive fragrance and could indeed be consumed because of its medicinal and health-related properties.
By contrast, the modern product called camphor is a chemically synthesized substance made from naphthalene (C₁₀H₈), entirely different from the natural plant mentioned in the holy scripture. This answers a question that often arises: how could a substance now associated with wardrobes and mothballs become an ingredient in the drinks of paradise?
What is referred to in the Qur’an is Dryobalanops aromatica, a tropical tree native to Sumatra and Borneo that was historically used in food, beverages, and religious rituals across civilizations.
Forgotten by Its Own Heirs
What is surprising is not the fact that the Nusantara was once that important. What is surprising is how quickly that legacy was forgotten by its own people.
The world preserves the name of the Nusantara in words such as camphor, kāfūr, karpūra, and camphora, a linguistic chain stretching from Sumatra to Persia, to Arabia, to Latin, to French, and finally to English. That name also exists, unnoticed by many, within verses of the Qur’an recited every day.
It was also from Barus that Hamzah Fansuri emerged, the 16th-century poet and Sufi widely regarded by many historians as the father of Malay literature. In one of his poems, he explicitly linked his spiritual identity to the camphor of that city:
“Hamzah Fansuri in the Malay lands, where camphor resides within the wood.”
One of the Nusantara’s greatest writers chose Barus camphor as a metaphor for the soul. Yet the city that gave birth to that metaphor is now isolated, marginalized from trade routes as well as from the collective memory of the nation that once perfumed the world.
