The Construction

The Thai house is a thing of beauty, well proportioned, elegant, and practical. It is also an artefact that describes the difficulties and dangers of life in the country. The Thai house is made of wood, which was once abundant. The parts can be floated to a suitable site on a riverbank for assembly. The structure consists of a kilted roof with deep eaves, which provides shade from the sun, and shelter from the rain. The rooms are made of panelled segments, which can be taken apart with relative ease. The timber is often teak, exuding an insect repelling scent. The house is held up by sturdy piles – creating an open-air living space beneath. In some parts of the country, houses have no staircases. Instead, the bedrooms are reached by a ladder that can be pulled up at night, as protection against tigers and other predators. In the flood season the elevated house becomes a refuge, when the waters submerge the dry land for weeks and months.

A house is not thrown up on a whim. There is a system at play – to build a house is a ritual event. The house is not simply a collection of materials; it will be a cosmos. Rites are conducted for the spiritual safety of the workers and surrounding community, as much as the wellbeing of the home and inhabitants.

Everything in the Thai universe begins with distinct intentional qualities. The chaos sets in afterwards.

I do not know how many ceremonies my grandfather Tula observed, or what exactly was specified in the Central Thai tradition of his builders. It is certain, in the initial building of

Tula and Chancham’s Thai house, that offerings were made and a specific procedure was followed.

Andrew Turton provides a detailed description of the northern Thai process in his essay, “Architectural and Political Space in Thailand”.1 The following is a brief summary pertaining to house construction.

An auspicious day is chosen for the planting of the house posts, between the harvest and first ploughing. These posts, or stilts, are laid along the ground in parallel to the bodies of the Nagas, supernatural water and earth serpents, with the tops pointing towards the Naga heads. Offerings are made to the guardians of the cardinal directions, as well as to the rulers of the heavens and earth. All of this must be done in a strict hierarchical order. Next a type of exorcism of impropriety is conducted, which cleanses taboos and taints. Then comes an exorcism of the wood itself, done by inserting nails into the posts. After this the earth must also be exorcised, and offerings made to the Nagas. The final stage is the ritual binding of soul to the principal male and female house posts.

The physical construction commences with the laying of the pillars, which are erected in order of hierarchy, with each space predetermined by a ritual map.

Ritual house-building reflects Thai urbanism, the child of intertwined traditions.2 The Khmer legacy is regal, and concerns the evocation of heavenly forms according to invisible and mathematical blueprints. The Mon is Theravada Buddhist, bestowing clarity and textual resonance, and the ready-made moated towns of early conquest. The Thai, also known as Tai, is pragmatic, malleable and martial. It borrows and adapts. A classic Thai settlement delights in proximity to flowing water. Thai cities are built in rectangles beside rivers, echoing a transitory past, the fairytale wandering of the Thai race down the waterways of the middle Mekong, to encroach on the lands of the star-gazing Khmers and Mons.

Nicknames

Chuen or Chuun. The transliteration cannot catch the Thai vowel. In Thai script, the diacritic over the vowel makes the sound of a falling tone uu. Chuen is a nickname, from the early 1600s. The first Thai nickname in the family, for the first to be born in Siam.

It was simpler to follow Ahmad, Chuen’s father. His foreign name stands out, remaining even in his titles. Since surnames do not exist yet, the tracing of an individual will require knowledge of the titles conferred at a specific moment, and of linguistics and the historical arcana surrounding the defunct and shifting ranking system.

The titles, which come from the king, are descriptions of service that bear similarities to names but are impersonal. A title is a cessation of self, it can be taken away and reassigned. The chronicles do not record individuals, they set down the actions of office holders. The identities of the actors must be surmised by circumstantial details, and nicknames.

It is not clear how much the culture of Thai names has changed down the centuries. A modern Thai might have a formal name that is talismanic, and occasionally hidden to protect the bearer, or aspirational or pretentious, to confer good fortune. The nickname is for both public and intimate use, and these playful names remain in lineage books, for instance, Chuen and Chom and Chi. Melodic children’s names prove durable down the ages when logically they should be lost with the passing of immediate relatives.

Chuen is then more faded than his father, and the bleaching out of the records will continue for several generations, down to his grandson. What is known about him can be summarised in a few statements.

Chuen was born soon after Ahmad’s arrival in Ayutthaya. He was Ahmad’s first son by his wife Choey. A younger brother, Chom, died in his teens, and there was a sister, Chi, who became a consort of King Prasat Thong.

Chuen was a royal page under King Song Tham. Chuen would take over his father’s ministerial duties under King Prasat Thong and King Narai, with the title Chaophraya Aphairaja. He was acting Chularajamontri, leader of Ayutthaya’s Muslims, between 1624 and 1630.1

Chuen had a son called Somboon, and a daughter, Luan, who joined her aunt as consort of King Prasat Thong, and bore the king a daughter. Chuen is said to have lived to the age of seventy, so it can be assumed that he died in the late 1670s or early 1680s. Not much more is known about Chuen, or can be extracted from the existing records. The only detail that brings colour and texture to his life is peripheral. Prince Damrong noted, in his Our Wars with the Burmese, that royal pages had the right to wear silk undergarments.2

While the histories are reticent about Ahmad’s son, more can be said about the life of his nephew.

A Persian embassy to the court of King Narai arrived in 1685. The account of their voyage, known as The Ship of Sulaiman, 3 provides a rare perspective on Ayutthaya and its environs. Waiting to meet the king, the envoys report details: the names of local Persians, their houses and hammams, the presence of a Greek adviser they call the “Evil Frank”, Qizilbash guards with their Turkic ranks, the “Yuz Bashis”, and the history of a man called Agha Mohammed, for whom a tomb had recently been built.4

As has been stated, Agha Mohammed Astarabadi was the son of Mohammed Sayyid, Ahmad’s brother. It is not known if he was born in Ayutthaya before his father’s departure, or back in Persia. In the 1640s Agha Mohammed arrived in Ayutthaya, presumably coming directly from Astarabad. He struck up a friendship with a prince called Narai, who was curious about the foreigners residing in the city, and often visited the homes of the Persian merchants.5

When King Prasat Thong died in 1656, Agha Mohammed played a role in the bloody coup that placed Narai on the throne. In one account Narai advances stealthily to seize the royal palace by hiding in a Persian religious procession.6

Agha Mohammed was rewarded with the hand of his cousin, Chi, one of the late king’s consorts. They were to have two sons, Yi and Kaew, who would grow up at court. Kaew became Chularajamontri, leader of the Muslims, while Yi rose to ministerial rank, was made governor of coastal city Tenasserim and was recorded as having rebelled.7

After the coup, the leader of the Persians was a certain Abdur Razzaq, who is sometimes associated with Chuen.8 When Abdur Razzaq fell from favour in 1663, Agha Mohammed became the most powerful man at court. At some point he provided Narai with a palace guard of 500 warriors, Qizilbash from Mazandaran and Khorasan who had been working as mercenaries in India.

Over the next decade, Agha Mohammed outfitted his own merchant ships, expanded trade generally and encouraged Narai to foster connections with the Safavid Court and the Persianate state of Golkonda in India.9

He grew powerful and rich. He is said to have built himself a large house, in grounds shielded by a high brick wall, that looked out at the river.10

Over time another adventurer supplanted him in the king’s favour. This man was a Greek called Constantine Phaulkon, who convinced Narai to look to the French over the Persians. Narai dispatched a number of missions to France, and allowed the French to garrison vital ports.

After some thirty years of prosperity and good fortune in Ayutthaya, Agha Mohammed was accused of corruption. Narai had him executed in 1678 by having his lips sewn up with strips of cane. He was kept alive in this condition for a day.11