Transmission and Preservation of the Manaqib Tradition at Masjid Miftahul Barokah, Cikoang Kaler, Ujungberung, Bandung Regency, 2019–2024

Abstract

This article reconstructs how the manaqib tradition, the communal remembrance (dhikr) and veneration of the life and virtues of Shaykh Abdul Qadir al-Jilani, was introduced to and sustained at Masjid Miftahul Barokah in Kampung Cikoang Kaler, Ujungberung, Bandung Regency, between 2019 and 2024. Following the historical method (heuristics, source criticism, interpretation, and historiography), it combines oral testimony from five identified informants, a text associated with the Al-Qodiri pesantren of Jember, and the scholarly literature on manaqib in Indonesia. Interpretation draws on Christopher Lloyd’s concepts of structural conditioning, human agency, and structural transformation. The article argues that the practice reached the neighbourhood through a personal chain of authorisation (sanad, ijazah) running from the Al-Qodiri milieu in Jember through K.H. Muhammad Imam Samsul Arifin to a mosque official, Ustadz Mustofa; that the mosque’s established role as a venue for communal devotion supplied a ready institutional setting; and that the COVID-19 pandemic acted as a conjuncture that enlarged participation. The mosque sustained the practice not through formal regulation but through a fixed weekly rhythm, routine communication by messaging group, a TikTok livestream, the backing of local leaders, and a persuasive handling of dissent. Falling attendance among working-age congregants and young people is the main constraint. The article offers a documented micro-history of a recently transplanted Sufi devotional practice in a Sundanese peri-urban setting and an account of the mosque as a carrier of tradition rather than only a place of worship.