ISLAMIC MUSEUM.

The Syed Alatas Mansion as well known as Islamic Museum appeared to be just another
old bungalow until its history was researched and put into the context of the larger historic area.
Syed Alatas was the leader of Penang's Malay community at Acheen Street in the mid-19th
century and his house is one of the finest examples of an upper-class Muslim residence to
survive from that period.

Syed Mohamed Al-Attas is the leader of the Red Flagsecret society. In the late
19th century, he ran an arms smuggling trade during the Dutch siege on Acheh. Syed
Mohamed Al-Attas supplied guns, cannons and ammunination to the Sultan Acheh and
the anti-Dutch resistance that he obtained from British India. The leadership of the Red
Flag was carried into the early 20th century by his son, Syed Sheikh Al-Attas after his
death in 1890s. Because of this, the mansion was believed to have been used as an
operation base or a secret meeting place for the Achehnese leaders.

During the 1930s to the 1960s, this mansion fell from grace and became a
recycling centre for the Indian Chettiar community. The mansion now belongs to the
Municipa Council and there are plans to rehabilitate it in a pilot restoration project to be
carried out by the state with the French technical assistance. The building has been
proposed as the premises of a heritage training centre for traditional building crafts
training and heritage education.
 Figure 18 : There are a Al-Attas Mansion in architectural drawing and present nowadays.
Source : Field Study, (2008) & http://www.hbp.usm.my (2008)

The Syed Alatas Mansion was built as an upper-class Muslim residence incorporating
European, Indian and Malay cultural influences. In terms of size, degree of ornamentation and
intactness of interior and exterior features, it is probably the best example of domestic building
from Penang's, it not Malaysia's mid-Victorian period (1860-75) and bears witness to the rich
social history of the Acheen Street community.
The Syed Alatas Mansion is a masonry building of brick and lime mortar construction. It
is a symmetrically-disposed double-storey building set in a compound, fronted by a "porte
cochere" with a room on top, and covered by a terra cotta pan-tile hipped roof with gable roof
over the carriage porch. It is one of the few surviving Malaysian bungalows with a symmetrical
layout in the main portion of the buildings, repeated on both floors, with internal rooms formed
by full brick walls decorated with heavily moulded cornices. The highly intact interior
configuration and details recapture the lifestyle of an upper-class Muslim family of the mid to
late 19th century.