Meor Abdul Rahman
Malay silat master who founded Pertubuhan Silat Seni Gayong Malaysia in 1962 and introduced Gayong into Malay army training in 1971.
Quick Facts
MalaysiaBiography
Meor Abdul Rahman was a Malay silat master and the founder of Silat Seni Gayong. He was born on 21 August 1915 in Kampung Lake Garden in Taiping and died on 23 June 1991 in Ipoh at the age of 75; he is buried in Taiping.
From the age of 12 he learned silat from his grandfather Syed Zainal Al-Attas, known as Tok Jenai, from whom he inherited the Gayong lineage. According to the sources, the art itself originates from the Bugis prince Daeng Kuning, who brought it to the Malay Peninsula in the 19th century; Meor Abdul Rahman was his great-grandson. Around 1936 the Sultan of Perak, Alang Iskandar, after verifying his fighting ability, awarded him the title Panglima Sendo Perak.
In 1939 he went to Singapore. During the Second World War he served with the British Royal Signal Corps and worked as a close-combat instructor. During the Japanese occupation he fled to the island of Pulau Sudong, where in 1942 he began to teach Gayong publicly to defend the local community and trained seven students. In this way he turned Gayong from a closed tradition into a publicly taught school.
In 1962 he formally founded the Pertubuhan Silat Seni Gayong Malaysia, registered on 22 October 1963 as the first formally registered martial arts federation in Malaysia. In 1964 the first Gayong Perdana event was held in Kedah. In 1971 he introduced Gayong into the training of the Malaysian armed forces and received the title Datuk Paduka. The Seni Gayong syllabus has seven levels, from stances through unarmed combat and weapons to spiritual development.