Raja Ali Haji

Raja Ali Haji was a Malay scholar, historian and poet of Bugis descent at the court of Riau-Lingga on the island of Penyengat. He completed the Tuhfat al-Nafis, a history of the Malay and Bugis rulers of the region, and wrote the didactic poem Gurindam Dua Belas. His grammar and dictionary of Malay helped set the standard for the language from which modern Malay and Indonesian developed, and Indonesia named him a national hero in 2004.