The Hikayat
Hikayat Raja Iskandar Zulkarnain (1817).
The word 'hikayat' is a loan word from Arabic which means 'all kinds of histories'. The meaning in Malay, however, has changed through time so that in the title of a work, the word simply means 'story' or 'the story of'. Most of the numerous traditional works in the narrative form—including epics, stories of heroic and religious characters, and histories—use the word in their titles. The term encompasses the oral, handwritten and printed forms.
- Information in the full article includes
- Structure of the Hikayat
- Hindu and Islamic influences
- Written and printed Hikayat