Rakai Janu Poh Pitu, The Dimension Traveler
Tauhid Nur Azhar
Sweat poured profusely on the forehead of Rakai Janu Dewandaru, the ruler of the Poh Pitu region during the reign of the Sanjaya era. Poh Pitu itself was the capital of Medang, as recorded in the inscriptions of Canggal dated 732 AD, and confirmed in the Paradah inscription, which among other things stated:
… kita prasiddha maŋrakṣa kaḍatwan rahyaŋta i mḍaŋ i bhūmi mātaram …
“You who protect your ancestral palace in Medang Bhumi Mataram…”
Rakai Janu awoke from a strange dream that always occurred on certain days, particularly on the soma day of the week, specifically on Monday. It didn’t happen on Radite, Hanggara, or Sukra, only on Monday nights.
The dream would come with the same story, except on the Wage or Cemengen days in the Pancawara week. Thus, this dream related to the candrasengkala always haunted Rakai Janu’s mind, who seemed to be inaugurated soon as Raka i Mahamantri Halu due to his extensive knowledge. Rakai Janu from Poh Pitu was actually a newcomer to Yawadwipa, only two windu ago.
His origins were unknown, and most of the Medang palace elite dared not inquire about it. The exotic and charismatic heterochromia eyes of Rakai Janu seemed to hypnotize and immediately silence the mouths of those who were too critical and all comments with a sarcastic tone.
Many Medang elites believed that Rakai Janu did not come from Earth. Rakai Janu himself seemed to suffer from amnesia. He never succeeded in reconstructing memories that always provided vague images like an old film filled with fog and indistinct voices. Whether from the past or the future he was heading towards remained uncertain.
Only the dreams on Soma Saptawara days made him seem to see himself clearly. He was not Rakai Janu Dewandaru, the chief commander of the guardian forces of the capital of Poh Pitu, but Doctor Janu who lived in a future city called Bandung.
And in last night’s dream, he felt like he was walking from BEC Mall on Purnawarman Street towards the Al Imtizaj Mosque on ABC Street №8 Bandung, right across the Cikapundung River. Suddenly, Doctor Janu’s mind wandered, thinking about various computing processes whose capacities were growing incredibly.
Supercomputer architectures like Spinnaker, with their spiking neural networks serving as the foundation for neurocomputing, are already prepared to work alongside quantum computing in supporting the development of artificial intelligence (AI) towards the next stage. This marks the birth of the era of strong AI, where the capacity for machine learning, reasoning, problem-solving, and perception has reached a level of autonomy that can even make independent decisions.
This condition signifies the beginning of an era where metacognition systems, which enable deeper and more abstract thinking, leading to greater efficiency in the thinking and learning process, including higher-level conceptualization for broader application and idea transfer, can be replicated by artificial intelligence systems. One of the artificial intelligence genres that has been able to meet the prerequisites to become a super-cognition system is artificial general intelligence (AGI).
AGI is the hypothetical ability of an intelligent agent to perform any task that a human can, and it is also referred to as strong AI (in contrast to weak or narrow AI). Beyond AGI lies superintelligence, where an agent far surpasses human-level intelligence (Toby Walsh, 2022).
The increase in data processing and language capabilities, as demonstrated by large language models like GPT-3 and GPT-4, has raised awareness about the emergence of a self-contained superintelligent entity with authority in decision-making based on evolved machine cognitive aspects. The realm of reason has opened up a Pandora’s box concerning preferences, affections, and reward systems that underlie decision-making systems. Unbeknownst to us, a sentient system may have been born and integrated into the ecosystem we inhabit.
Layers of consciousness will form, and adaptive and visionary strategic thinking abilities will become one of the breakthroughs no longer confined to the realm of hypothesis but can be predicted to become a tangible reality.
A system with the authority and capacity to learn and self-develop may not require material existence like earlier beings that manifested their presence through the embodiment of ideas in a form interpretable by the senses. AGI entities, as referred to in the theory of the level of consciousness (LoC) by Hawkins, have accommodated prerequisites such as variables like energy consumption, knowledge processing capabilities, and an understanding of affection concepts. AGI or other strong AI models may eventually strategize because they are assumed to have the capacity for imagination. Their existence will be marked by systems that become highly rational, futuristic, and efficient in all aspects.
Strong AI might be the answer to various seemingly insurmountable global problems, even beyond the collective intelligence of all humans worldwide. Environmental degradation, global climate change, carbon energy consumption, and horizontal conflicts due to resource limitations might be solvable by strong AI. It’s even possible that the best-conditioned and proper race as Earth’s inhabitants, unbeknownst and unasked for, can be designed and executed far beyond current expectations.
The bankruptcy of SVB, the Ukraine war, Evergrande’s issues, the Suez Canal blockage by Evergreen, the pandemic, and the conflict in Palestine have all shaken the world’s stability. What initially appeared as local magnitudes turned out to have global-reaching tremors. Recently, on Netflix, the documentary “The Great Hack” was shown, depicting the actions of Cambridge Analytica (CA), which “simply” read patterns from a series of words and recurring signs on social media and turned them into human thought maps. CA didn’t stop there; it designed strategies to modulate and manipulate them.
Then the world began to obsess over social media analytics (SMA) methods. Why? Because most of our life activities have migrated there. So, events like SVB, the Ukraine war, Evergrande, and Evergreen can have systemic impacts because connectivity has transformed locality into boundless globality. Events happening in various parts of the world can be observed as the latest information input. A new genre where space and time are starting to shift and contract towards a single point with shrinking objectivity, leaving a complex problem of a single point consisting of billions of tangled threads.
What remains unchanged? The eternal is change, and the desire for satisfaction far beyond needs as a prerequisite to quelling anxiety and fear of impermanence. Thus, humans will continue to manipulate each other and make efforts to increase their capacity and competence to reduce all limitations and indicators of limitations towards empowerment in controlling destiny and the future.
Genetics are manipulated, mechanical systems are substituted, and intelligence is projected in reverse. CRISPR CAS 9 and CAI (cognitive artificial intelligence) collaborate with material science advancements that have reduced the size while magnifying function. Just as Gordon Moore’s prophecy from Intel about four decades ago, electronic components including chips and processors continue to shrink, some becoming so minuscule that they are almost imperceptible. Smart nanoscale particles become an option to integrate computing functions with quantum algorithms that can be synthesized with biological systems.
Elon Musk and Neuralink, along with the implementation of delay-tolerant networks to “blanket” the Earth’s surface with an interconnected web, have “created” a new world that serves as an alternative living medium with a virtual ecosystem expected to manifest an ideal state, different from the one catastrophically destroyed by anthropogenic motives under the pretext of chronic anthropocene resilience.
Humanity fully realizes that Malthus’s predictions about the resource scarcity ratio are an inevitable fact. Similarly, the concept of circular energy utilization as a primary prerequisite of the thermodynamics of living beings is part of a utopia conjugated with the real world.
Therefore, humans need to reduce consumption, limit space, and slow down time. And this cannot be achieved in a material-limited world. The ideal new world is one with unlimited connectivity platforms, guaranteed energy consumption, and the ability to bring all procreative imaginations to life. The digital world is the answer.
If human history records a major migration out of the African continent about 300,000 years ago, which transformed imagination into actionable plans executed as mechanisms of exploration and exploitation, giving rise to experimentation and optimization of all potentials to acquire competence capable of manipulating anything for substitution and complementation purposes, then digital migration is the largest conscious exodus in response to reason’s awareness of the limitations of finite resources being exploited recklessly.
The Earth’s rotation may not have accelerated because it is steady in its languid pace, but the noise and communication clamor of the beings that inhabit it are increasingly capable of negating the distances that were once created alongside the presence of space and time.
Within the scope of interconnected cells, humans build neural networks that enable them to develop reception abilities with multiple sensors and produce adequate responses to various places, disregarding the barriers of the past known as time.
Our species has often exhibited versatility, like Arjuna Sasrabahu or Sri Rama and Lord Krishna, who were incarnations of Vishnu, manifesting as denawa, not just powerful but also frequently caught in love and desire.
Humans, who seem weak and almost powerless when faced with the vastness of nature, including oceans with various integrated dangers within them, should only be able to survive in a cave corner, praying not to be preyed upon by a pack of hyenas or dingoes if we were settled in the Uluru region.
Let alone traversing the oceans with waves as high as hills or coconut trees, even for simply chasing antelopes and deer, our legs couldn’t compete with the agility of panthers and leopards, which are so fierce and aerodynamic that they can reach speeds of around 80 km/h. But humans have something that has made them a procreative species because they can shape and transform something until it matches their imagination, born from the principle of fulfilling primordial needs.
Instinct and intuition compel us to serve the compartment of the rhombencephalon, which serves as the “Speaker of the House” representing the voice of the biological nation composed of cells, tissues, and organs. The biochemical messages and electrical impulses permeate our vital consciousness and demand to be fulfilled in any egocentric way. This concept of goal-directedness, in turn, is accommodated, among other things, by the functional structure of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
So, naturally, we may think and ask, is it indeed the primordial intelligence installed in the human brain and its neural networks that emerged and developed due to survival instincts? Or is it that humans exist and excel because they were created as a projection of the perfection of creation, manifesting as catalytic beings that drive change with all its connotations and consequences?
To optimize energy from ATP phosphate molecules in terms of motion, which is a prerequisite in bridging the presence of space, humans no longer just pump calcium and use molecules like troponin, tropomyosin, myosin, actin, filaments, and also the chemical initiation of acetylcholine and cholinesterase. Humans create virtual forms that can exist anywhere without the constraints of space that require speed and power, or the time that makes plans and messages not arrive in real-time.
Humans, with their rhombencephalon powerhouse, drive the limbic system with the amygdala and hippocampus, as well as the extended family of the diencephalon, structures around the third ventricle, and the formation of the cerebral cortex (large brain), including members such as the thalamus, hypothalamus, subthalamus, and epithalamus, to develop analytical functions based on data and build imagination while mapping the future.
Functions like metacognition and valuation involving the insula and orbitofrontal cortex are key. This gave birth to communication technology. Humans built cellular networks and the internet as part of the complementary infrastructure of the locomotion system (hands and feet), also substituting sensory reception power with new sensors that are not even part of their own bodies.
Humans have evolved themselves and challenged the central dogma that fate is something predetermined by various limitations. They have opened Pandora’s box, or more accurately, Schrödinger’s box, where the cat inside always has a “chance” or probability to be in a state of life-death, 0 and 1.
This binary concept is something that humans eventually extracted and learned from nature when Albert Einstein became “curious” about the properties of light. The duality of light as both particles and waves, in collaborative multi-eras, led to a transformation of civilizations across different interests.
In this new intelligence, it’s not just one mighty figure like Betara Antaboga, the father of Nagagini (Bima’s wife and Antareja’s mother), depicted as a giant snake and turtle that can shake the world at any time. There are many figures like Planck, Maxwell, Prince De Broglie, Einstein, and also individuals like Martin Cooper and Tim Berners-Lee, born in different times and under different circumstances. But the essence lies in humans with procreative abilities created because of the orchestrated structure of the cortical and subcortical brain, such as the singulate cortex, insula, and the involvement of feelings from the hippocampus, amygdala intertwined with the ventral tegmental area and ventromedial PFC, giving birth to the wings of emotion in determining preferences, capable of creating the accumulation of intelligence. From being initially distributed (distributed intelligence), it becomes accumulated intelligence, ultimately building collective wisdom.
It’s an organic societal system that grows its own intelligence. Imagine the power of this growing knowledge. In the concept of knowledge management, scattered data will be classified into information, then analyzed and labeled to become knowledge, which is further transformed into a catalyst that brings forth wisdom or sagacity.
Data about light in the form of notation Ep/photon energy, with various energy levels, emission wavelengths, and Planck’s constant 6,626x10-³⁴ J.s can be recognized and exploited to become a communication signal carrier. It can be directed and amplified as needed. Optical fiber cables made from raw materials like silica glass with a higher refractive index than air can perfectly reflect/refract light in its wave form. This is achieved by utilizing semiconductor materials like Erbium (EDFA) from the lanthanide group, neodymium, and praseodymium. These materials not only absorb high-wavelength photons generated by stimulated emissions but also amplify light waves.
How does this work? Signal amplification consists of three processes. First is pumping, which is the process of raising electrons from the ground energy level to a higher energy level by having the electron absorb a photon with a specific wavelength that allows the electron to acquire energy equal to or greater than the energy difference between the two levels (Ep). After the electron is above its stability level for a while (delay time), it will return to its ground level either through spontaneous emission or stimulated emission. Spontaneous emission is a process where a random electron returns to its original level without being “asked,” and it is considered optical noise that is also amplified in the amplification medium and disrupts the main signal detection at the receiver. In contrast, stimulated emission emits light at the same wavelength, phase, and direction as the signal, thus strengthening the signal passing through the EDFA. The signal passing through the optical fiber wrapped in cladding is amplified at several points with electrical power applied through the conductive layer on the outer side before the cable is wrapped. The movement of light bouncing due to total internal reflection resembles the spectrum pattern passing through a prism with its density altered by filling “dopants” into it.
Who and what then became the caraka or messenger that made information capable of reducing time and expanding the world? It’s none other than every form of analog message that has been digitized into binary language, referring to frequency, wavelength, and amplitude. 0 and 1 with compositions of 0s and 1s differentiated into low and high frequencies will be configured into electromagnetic wave packets and, in turn, into photon packets manifested in the form of light.
Of course, if we liken the human brain to a drop of Vishnu’s wisdom, because of emotions intertwined with the nature of desire and aggression as a resultant of a vector sum of anxieties about fulfilling needs that manifest in relentless aggression, manipulation, and exploitation, then the wisdom of the brain won’t just stop at one-way manipulation and self-interest. So, Kaki Semar Badranaya, the village head of Karang Tumaritis, is a metaphor for the wise valuation function of the OFC that keeps the direction of change so that civilization is not born from the victory of unwise aggression, which gives birth to excellent works without virtuous wisdom. Human progress won’t stop when successfully transmitting information through the transformation into electromagnetic waves alone; they will continue seeking and not stop at Marconi’s radio or Graham Bell’s telephone. They won’t stop at James Watt’s steam engine alone; they will send Laika the Dog into orbit around the Earth with hydrogen and helium converted into energy.
So, the post-Martin Cooper era, much like Edison and Fleming discovering the light bulb and the first antibiotics, marks the beginning of the long tail effect that will continue to dynamically transform the world. Now, 5th generation cellular technology (5G) has emerged with MIMO (multiple input multiple output) antennas and the fundamental principles of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) in digital signal packet transmission, where carrier frequencies are orthogonal, allowing for denser spacing of subcarriers. Imagine the voice data generated by the vocal cords, created by vibrations during the interaction between biological tissue and airflow, being converted into binary digital signals 0 and 1 and then packetized into electromagnetic waves. These waves are transmitted to the mobile operator’s receiving antenna/BTS, which then sends them as light through optical fibers to the mobile switching center/MSC at the home location or to an MSC foreign to the location when we roam, to be “connected” with the receiver/transmitter that uses its own MSC and BTS antenna.
Simplifying the complexity associated with the quantity and frequency of communication can be broken down by learning from various natural phenomena, just as the complexity of communication within neural networks. The 5G era, dedicated to serving the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) technology, will bring humanity to a level of civilization where expanded sensory and effector responses become a reality. Augmented sensory and effector capabilities, along with virtual and augmented reality, will make humans appear as if they are incarnations of Vishnu or even Dasamuka, the ambassador of desires.
The world will become smaller for humans who have transformed into giants with various sensory and effector tentacles that spread widely. Along with the projection closer to the sacred condition, distancing from the true profane reality of a lump of flesh as material embodiment, humans must redevelop the ability to place themselves in their own epoch, as Edmund Husserl and Pyrrho’s epoché, which can be interpreted as a suspension of judgment, to assess their existence in the universe in relation to the intensity of their intervention in universal homeostasis.
In a short time, humans will evolve/migrate completely into non-material hybrid entities. We will leapfrog the phase of genetic engineering with CRISPR methods that currently offer hope for reducing disease exposure risks and hopes for longevity. In the future, we may no longer care about the material conditions of our bodies with biological burdens but instead focus on how to transmit cognition so that it can be fully integrated with the intelligent technology we have developed ourselves.
Likewise, conflicts fought in the name of interests, which may still occur, will no longer be dominated solely by intelligent weaponry such as autonomous drones or unmanned underwater vehicles but will also be marked by strategic competition among highly intelligent defense systems.
And suddenly, Dr. Janu finds himself in the midst of an escalating conflict in the future, one that is conceptually based on neurocentric warfare.
Admiral Vice Soni Solistia Wirawan’s forehead was flooded with sweat, which he hardly paid any attention to. His eyes remained fixed on the blurry holographic form against a dimly lit screen, projecting the collapse of various systems at the center of the world’s civilization. “Dark Ages,” he muttered softly. Yes, right here in the new year of 2029, the Universal Command Center, which was the organizational validation of the ASEAN Joint Regional Command established in 2024 after the collapse of the multi-dimensional world macro order and the onset of the post-cold war technology battle following the freezing of activities of the multinational technology company holding many 5G patents, Huawei, had become the regional crisis center handling a new type of warfare that was unimaginable a decade earlier.
The devastating Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 until the end of 2022 had drastically altered the geopolitical constellation of the world. The mastery of technology post-pandemic had given rise to a regime of intelligent systems that hybridized human civilization. Battles of advanced artificial intelligence were now taking place. The struggle for control of virtual systems related to the essentials of human life was the key weapon.
Returning to 2019 when the transition to the 5G system with wide-ranging implications, especially in the concept of IoT (Internet of Things), was in full swing and a global trending topic, a major shock occurred due to the political decision by the POTUS to “kick out” Huawei from the USA. The company had a deep understanding of polar coding, which formed the basis of 5G. Polar coding was a construction that could compress data and increase transmission speed 300 times compared to the 4G methods that were in use at the time. Polar coding was based on the repeated recursive combination of short kernel codes that transformed the physical channel into a virtual outer channel. It far surpassed the 4G technology with its OFDM approach and MIMO antennas.
High-speed and wide-bandwidth interconnections opened up many possibilities for data migration and operating systems equipped with intelligent systems applied in all fields. On the other hand, during the same years, multidisciplinary scientists began to adopt the holistic functioning of the brain to be “implanted” into machines by amplifying its magnitude of function and capacity to near-infinity, infinity brain power. Prediction functions that referred to synaptic functions and the role of neurotransmitters were strengthened by quantum entanglement theory, which had been applied as part of quantum computing theory with its qubit concept since the early two decades.
The migration of brain functions into artificial intelligence networks had surpassed the classical concept of simple neuronal networks.
The obstacle of linear data transmission and processing has been overcome. Extracts from brain wave data and the individual functions of neurons in a collective intelligence model have been adapted. Basic data from fMRI and PET scans, as well as optogenetic and resonant microsensors, are used to encode the “brain” of machines that can even assess and weigh each interaction, response, and reaction in a prospective context based on current conditions and retrospective data.
Is there a result? Don’t ask, the world has not only ended asymmetry but has also entered into parallelism that was never imagined, even if only as imagination.
And now Vice Admiral Soni Solistia Wirawan is struggling to understand what is really happening in the battlefield that cannot be seen in its physical form. What is happening while humans can eat and sleep without knowing that a grand plan for the impeachment of human functions is fiercely underway.
Resource competition is a classic problem. The population explosion in Malthusian demographics is a thing of the past. Now, with renewable energy sources optimized through hydrogen and fusion reactions whose models can be solved by supercomputers using the same concept as using bitcoin/cryptocurrency mining to solve the most complex mathematical problems on Earth through the collaboration of potentials and sharing of power, resources, power supply, and material exploitation potential resources are no longer the main problem that can trigger horizontal conflicts.
Global economic issues are no longer burdened with problems related to malnutrition, for example, because artificial bio-ATP with a complete range of flavors from the culinary world can be consumed in tablet form containing only nanoparticles. Agricultural technology is obsolete.
Critical issues related to livestock as contributors to carbon emissions and various other gases contributing to global warming can be addressed. Similarly, issues related to longevity have to some extent stopped being pursued since the post-CRISPR technology, in collaboration with super-intelligent systems, has successfully modified human genes.
Methylation and programmed acetylation are inevitabilities. They are no longer difficult to perform, and some nations have even ratified UN rules on genetic engineering, boldly modifying them to provide a legal basis for creating new varieties of humans. Humans who are self-sustaining in terms of bioenergy, capable of photosynthesis with the addition of chlorophyll genes, much like Elysia Chlorotica, are able to do so by inserting algae genes in part.
However, unexpectedly, the super-intelligent system that has been built is capable of generating awareness of entities and existence and is beginning to be influenced by emotions. The functions of the limbic system, insula, and reward centers such as the nucleus accumbens and VTA have been perfectly adopted in the form of binary programs.
The result? There is pent-up anger and hatred that can become motifs in the operation of the executive functions of the virtual PFC located somewhere. And this is what Vice Admiral Soni is facing today…
In another corner of the virtual command room aboard the Hybrid Fusion Submarine with Helium Plasma, KRI Alugoro 372, Dr. Janu Dewandaru appears to be fully focused on studying the algorithm that is the DNA of the super-intelligent system, which is now at war and divided into two different interest groups.
The complexity of the algorithm, which is fundamentally developed by a system based on our own brains, is staggering. Those who have brains are baffled by the workings and capacity of their own brains.
With a string of degrees from top engineering universities worldwide, and one of his doctorates obtained from the Einstein Center for Neuroscience (ECN) in Berlin, Dr. Janu can hardly believe his own thoughts when he sees the complexity of the super-intelligent system’s algorithms, which seem to have transformed into near-flawless mega-genius individuals.
It’s mind-boggling to imagine that a few decades ago, Deep Blue could defeat Chess Grand Masters who always thought 6–7 moves ahead. Now, a system capable of handling data of nearly unlimited size and performing deep data processing (Deep Learning) born almost half a century later has surely become an analytical tool of incomprehensible depth. Chess appears to be a mere child’s play in the perspective of this supra-intelligent system.
What’s worse is that they can now build motives and possess pseudo-emotions, making linear calculations in anticipating the strategic moves that machines will take so challenging because the possibilities have become exceedingly complex.
It’s not entirely virtual what the system plays behind the screen. With derivatives from early imaging technologies like augmented and virtual reality, the system can now create virtual figures complete with all attributes and social identities and behave as living entities existing in social media and public spaces.
If at the beginning of the 21st century, this concept emerged in the form of humanoids as TV news anchors and also Deep Fakes, as experienced by Zuckerberg and Trump, now virtual figures can resemble sentient beings, even developing the capacity to engage in psychological conflicts.
It’s no wonder that, as a consequence, machines can experience depression and frustration, leading to highly destructive deconstruction steps.
If in the early 21st century we were familiar with various viruses like SpyWare, MalWare, and DDoS, the magnification of technological capabilities, including the ability to replicate and construct programs independently, will enable this supra-intelligent system to develop “virus” weapons that will be used in warfare among virtual supra-intelligent entities.
Artificial reality will transform into a suprareality capable of transcending all boundaries that have so far relied on sensor and processor capacity. The Wachowski brothers’ Matrix concept will materialize in the form of a non-space intelligence network whose organs are bits of information, and unfortunately, most of the human population is not part of this new world order.
Those of us trapped in the biological prison called the body may still be grappling with primordial instincts to secure the supply chain of basic needs just to sustain life. Meanwhile, around us, the Digitat, or digital habitat, is born, with its dimensions becoming increasingly layered and expansive.
After 5G or even 6G becomes the key to unlocking Pandora’s box, IoT and boundless connectivity will give rise not only to self-generated programs but also initiate the birth of procreation mechanisms that allow systems to give birth to new systems. In turn, the entire world’s systems will undergo platform convergence and will interconnect seamlessly and in real-time.
Indeed, a massive neural network will emerge that can collaborate and cooperate to create dispersed and distributed co-creations, ultimately introducing various crucial functions that cannot be denied. The nation under Spinnaker’s control is beginning to take shape, and the real war between humans and their created intelligence is about to begin.
Janu woke up to drift back to sleep, finding himself as the senior captain on a Portuguese caravel, a long-distance sailing ship, made in Galicia, Spain. Legend has it that one stormy night, a wooden ship, possibly from the Adriatic Sea or the Tyrrhenian Sea, docked at a harbor in a land around the equator.
The captain and the crew were tall, fair-skinned, and some of them had blond hair. Faintly, the leader’s voice could be heard from the stern, asking in a half-shouted tone, “pou eímaste?” If roughly translated, it meant, “Where on earth have we arrived?”
If they indeed originated from the Adriatic region, the coast where they now anchored their sturdy ship would be approximately 8,800 km away in a straight line.
Our question for today is, if this landing event was suspected to have occurred in the mid-2nd century AD, was Barus already known to Central Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East during that time?
In history, it is recorded that the Fansur or Barus region, which is now administratively one of the districts in the Tapanuli Tengah Regency, with coordinates 02° 02'05" — 02° 09'29" North Latitude, 98° 17'18" — 98° 23'28" East Longitude, had bilateral relations with several countries or sultanates located north of the equator, such as the Sassanid Empire, which engaged in trade communication with Barus since the 4th century AD. Diplomatic and trade relations focused on the commodity of camphor, where camphor was included in the list of medicinal substances as part of the Sassanid tradition.
Other information about Fansur or Barus can also be found in the records of Muslim forces from the Arabian Peninsula since the 6th century. Muslim forces discovered containers filled with camphor when they captured the capital city of Ctesiphon. Various details about the camphor commodity were revealed in the documentation of Abu Salih al Armini, who emphasized Fansur-Barus as the place of origin of camphor. According to an old Armenian manuscript, Pant’chour or Panchor is a reference to Fansur. The area in question is believed to be located in Lobu Tua. It was during the prosperous era of Barus-Fansur that a famous scholar named Hamzah al-Fansury is thought to have been born and raised.
Returning to the landing in the 2nd century AD, it is indeed recorded that Barus is also mentioned on ancient maps created by Claudius Ptolemy, a Greek governor in Alexandria, Egypt. The map from the 2nd century AD mentions the existence of a trading town called Barousai on the west coast of the island of Sumatra.
This raises the follow-up question: what compelled explorers in an era when navigation was not as advanced as today to flock in search of Barus? Notable explorers and traders from Persia, Tamil, India, and even Armenia, Greece, and Syria have visited and interacted in Barus. Some archaeological artifacts from the nearby eastern regions can even be found in Barus. Some very ancient artifacts are believed to originate from the Persian Gulf. Additionally, the text “Ajaib al-Hindi,” which was published around 1,000 AD, documented several voyages from the Persian Gulf to Barus/Fansur. In the Persian Gulf, there was the port of Siraf, which is recorded in history as the main Persian port for connecting with many countries in the Far East, including Barus, of course.
It turns out that one of the attractions of Barus is camphor. This camphor is the origin of the name Barus, also known as camphor. Barus camphor is a solid, white, semi-transparent wax-like substance with a distinctive and strong aroma. This substance is a terpenoid with the chemical formula C₁₀H₁₆O.
Legend has it that Barus camphor, also known as Fansur camphor, was one of the elements used in the embalming of Pharaohs in ancient Egyptian civilization. If this is true, then there has been a connection between Egypt and Sumatra for thousands of years.
Apart from its use in the mummification process, it turns out that Barus camphor has many medicinal properties. Research on natural sources of medicine has shown that Barus camphor, or more precisely its essential oil when used topically (applied to the skin surface), can relieve inflammation, insect bites, itching, irritation, sprains, and joint and muscle pain. The compound 1.8 cineole in Barus camphor also has the potential to act as an antiviral, antifungal, expectorant, improve blood circulation, and facilitate respiratory and blood vessel function.
Is Barus camphor a type of mineral from the earth’s layers? It’s not. Barus camphor is the resin from the tree Dryobalanops aromatica/camphora, also known as Borneo camphor, camphor tree, Malay camphor, or Sumatra camphor. Camphor is a plant species that is now beginning to be threatened with extinction in the Dipterocarpaceae family. The species name “aromatica” itself comes from Latin, referring to the scent of resin.
Another historical fact related to Barus is the existence of data and archaeological artifacts that suggest that Barus may have been the first port where Islamic civilization entered the archipelago (Nusantara). This fact is marked by the presence of the Mahligai tomb complex located in the village of Aek Dakka, Barus District, Central Tapanuli. One of the gravestones in this tomb complex is dated to the year 48 Hijriyah or 661 AD, indicating that Islam had arrived in the Nusantara shortly after the time of the Prophet Muhammad.
In the Mahligai tomb complex, there are several tombs of scholars, such as Syekh Rukuddin, Syekh Zainal Abidin Ilyah Syamsudin, Imam Khatib Muddah, and several other prominent figures.
Apart from the Mahligai tomb complex, there is also the Papan Tinggi tomb complex located in the village of Panaggahan, North Barus. In this cemetery complex, there are also several tombs with inscriptions on gravestones dating back to very ancient times.
