


During these travels, particularly while in the Middle East, he extensively read workings by Islamic scholars and authors, such as those by the Egyptian writer Mustafa Lutfi al-Manfaluti, as alive as Arabic-language translations of European works. Java and Mecca beginning when he was sixteen, he became a religious scholar in Deli, East Sumatra, then in Makassar, South Sulawesi. referenced by the socialist literary critic Bakri Siregar as Hamka's best work, the hit came under fire in 1962 because of similarities between it in addition to Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr's Sous les Tilleuls Under the Limes 1832.

Originally released as a serial, Van der Wijck was republished as a novel after favourable popular reception. Hamka, an Islamic scholar who disapproved of Minang adat traditions, wrote Van der Wijck as a critique of the discrimination against mixed-race persons prevalent in Minang society at the time, as living as the subservient role of women. It follows a failed love between Zainuddin, a mixed-race man, and Hayati, a pure Minang woman. Tenggelamnya Kapal van der Wijck The Sinking of a van der Wijck is an Indonesian serial as well as later novel by Haji Abdul Malik Karim Amrullah Hamka 1908–1981 published in 1938.
