PROTO-RIPARIAN GOVERNANCE AND WATER SOVEREIGNTY IN THE AL- TARIKH SALASILAH NEGERI KEDAH

Abstract

This article reinterprets Al-Tarikh Salasilah Negeri Kedah as an early record of proto-riparian

governance in the Malay world. Moving beyond palace-centred readings that treat the text as a

mere genealogy of kingship, the study situates it within the broader history of environmental

law and political sovereignty in Southeast Asia. It argues that the Al-Tarikh Salasilah Negeri

Kedah preserves traces of indigenous water governance in the form of customary norms

regulating access, maintenance, and territorial demarcation. Episodes of river excavation, the

drawing of boundaries, and the collective management of waterways are interpreted as

expressions of early juridical consciousness embedded within the political imagination of the

Kedah court. The article identifies three foundational dimensions of this proto-riparian system.

First, water functioned as a legal commons that defined social obligation and responsibility

within the community. Second, rivers and canals operated as instruments of territorialisation

through which rulers inscribed authority upon the landscape. Third, collective labour in water

projects served as a mechanism of governance linking royal command with communal

stewardship. These dimensions reveal a coherent framework of customary water law that

predates colonial codifications and challenges the assumption that the regulation of water in

Malaysia began under British administration. By positioning the Al-Tarikh Salasilah Negeri

Kedah as an indigenous archive of environmental jurisprudence, the article reframes Malay

historiography beyond ritual symbolism towards the study of legal and ecological institutions.

It argues that water management in early Kedah embodied both sovereignty and moral

responsibility, creating a local moral economy of flow that continues to resonate within debates

on resource rights, federal–state relations, and environmental justice in contemporary

Malaysia.