Intro

Assalamualaikum wbt....

I am Sharifah Liyana Almahdaly, granddaughter of the late Syed Idris Mohd Alam Almahdaly & Sharifah Hindon Sulong Al-Sagoff. The objective of this blog is to pen down the stories and tales of the past generation, about the family history of my ancestors in hopes that the future generation of Almahdalys would not lose track of their roots. 

I was born and raised in Johor Bahru to a Yemeni-Arab-Malay father and Malaysian Chinese mother, spent my primary school days in Kuala Lumpur and subsequently secondary school in Petaling Jaya. I grew up a tad bit confused of what my real identity was, often questioned "what are you? Malay? Chindian? Chinese? Anak angkat?" that I got so fed up answering those questions. According to my late mother, there was an incident when I was 5 years old :  we entered a bakery and this Indonesian lady worker asked if I was an adopted child because of the different skin colour my mum and I had. I was so 'angry' she called me an anak angkat that I walked out of the shop, not wanting to buy anything from the bakery. As I grew older, I picked up Cantonese and Mandarin and at times I would follow my late aunty (mum's sister) to the pasar malam and often mistaken as her Indonesian maid. I have also been told that I look like a typical Yemeni girl by a Sudanese family friend. Now that I'm 21, I've learned to accept that I'm just a mixed blood kid that's categorised as a Malay in my Identification Card.

Growing up in Johor Bahru also meant I was exposed to more Syeds and Sharifahs, I'd be curious about the different surnames they had. There is the famous Wadi Hana & Wadi Hussein in JB, an area populated by the Arab community from Hadhramawt (Wadi means valley in Arabic) (sadly most of these Syeds and Sharifahs have moved out of there, including my own grandparents who once lived there in the 1940s). It was a typical 'Arab kampung' where different families mostly from Yemeni descent lived when they first set foot in Johor Bahru.

Sharifah Liyana (left) and Sharifah Shamini (right) during one of our beraya sessions few years back at Wadi Hana, JB

There were friends (primary school days) who asked me why is it that people with the name Syed must name their kids Syed or Sharifah? (other spellings/names include Sayyid, Sayid, Sayed, Habib, Syarief, Syarifah etc) Based on my very basic knowledge I had when I was younger, I could only answer them that people with these names were the descendants of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and that was all I knew. These questions I got from my friends sparked an interest for me to find out about my family history and the actual story behind these names that we have. That was when I started doing a research on firstly the Al-Mahdalys in Malaysia as it is a very rare surname here in Malaysia (more common surnames include Al-Attas, Al-Sagoff, Al-Habshee, Al-Jamalullail etc) and surprisingly found a closely related relative living in Indonesia through a website. Our great grandfathers are brothers and a few of my grand uncles chose to stay on in Indonesia and our families lost contact. I'll have to do a more thorough research and Q&A about that. 

For now, I just hope to write down stories that the older people tell me. I'm not an expert on this topic, so do forgive me if there are any mistakes in any of my writings. Till next time, insyaallah, assalamualaikum...

Part of the Almahdaly clan...

Sharifah Liyana Almahdaly