"Fansur can be nought else than the famous Pantsur,
no longer known indeed by that name, but a kingdom which we become
acquainted with through Hamza Pantsuri, a celebrated Poet, and native of
this Pantsur.
It lay in the north angle of the Island, and a little west
of Achin: it formerly was rife with trade and population, but would have
been utterly lost in oblivion had not Hamza Pantsuri made us again
acquainted with it." Nothing indeed could well be "a little west of
Achin"; this is doubtless a slip for "a little down the west coast from
Achin." Hamza Fantsuri, as he is termed by Professor Veth, who also
identifies Fantsur with Barus, was a poet of the first half of the 17th
century, who in his verses popularised the mystical theology of Shamsuddin
Shamatrani (supra, p. 291), strongly tinged with pantheism. The works of
both were solemnly burnt before the great mosque of Achin about 1640. (J.
Ind. Arch. V. 312 seqq; Valentyn, Sumatra, in Vol. V., p. 21; Veth,
Atchin, Leiden, 1873, p. 38.)
Mas'udi says that the Fansur Camphor was found most plentifully in years
rife with storms and earthquakes. Ibn Batuta gives a jumbled and highly
incorrect account of the product, but one circumstance that he mentions is
possibly founded on a real superstition, viz., that no camphor was formed
unless some animal had been sacrificed at the root of the tree, and the
best quality only then when a human victim had been offered.
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