of 17th Century Acheh. Al-Attas went on to the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London where he worked with Professor A.J. Arberry of Cambridge and Martin Lings. His doctoral thesis (1962) was a two-volume work on the mysticism of Hamzah Fansuri. In 1965, al-Attas returned to Malaysia and became Head of the Division of Literature in the Department of Malay Studies at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. He was Dean of the Faculty of Arts from 1968 until 1970, where he instituted more consultative reforms. Thereafter he moved to the new National University of Malaysia, as Head of the Department of Malay Language and Literature and then Dean of the Faculty of Arts. He advocated the use of Malay as the language of instruction in the university. He founded and directed the Institute of Malay Language, Literature, and Culture (IBKKM) at the National University of Malaysia in 1973. In 1987, with al-Attas as founder and director, the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation (ISTAC) was established in Kuala Lumpur. The institution was made to increase the consciousness of Islam to its students and faculty. Al-Attas incorporated Islamic artistic and architectural principles throughout the campus and grounds. Malay literature and Sufism He authored Rangkaian Ruba'iyyat a literary work that was among the first ever published in 1959 and the classic work, Some Aspects of Sufism as Understood and Practised Among the Malays, in 1963. His two-volume doctoral thesis on The Mysticism of Hamzah Fansuri, which is the most important and comprehensive work to date on one of the greatest and perhaps the most controversial Sufi scholars in the Malay world earned him the PhD in the UK in 1965. Al-Attas engaged in polemics on the subjects of Islamic history, philology, and Malay literary history and Sha'ir. He established that Hamzah Fansuri was the originator of the Malay Sha'ir. He has also set forth his ideas on the categorisation of Malay literature and periodisation of its literary history. He contributed to the history and origin of the modern Malay language. His commentaries on the ideas of Fansuri and al-Raniri are the first definitive ones on early Malay Sufis based on 16th- and 17th-century manuscripts. In fact he discovered and published his meticulous research on the oldest extant Malay manuscript, wherein among other important matters, he also solved the issue on arrangements of the Malay-Islamic cyclical calendar. He