On the evening of 14th June, 2012, at about 5pm, my mother’s cousin called my mother informing that my great grandfather was very sick and had just been admitted to the hospital.

I call my great grandfather Appa and he is my mother’s grandfather. His name was Mohd. Ya’acob bin Abdullah and his Chinese name was Tung Foo Piew. He is one of Abdullah al-Yunani‘s sons.


Appa’s house is one of our favourite place in Terengganu because we can read a lot of books from ‘Appa’s Library’.

My father planned to go to Kuala Terengganu the next day to visit Appa at the Kuala Terengganu Specialist Hospital (KTS). But just half an hour later, my mother’s cousin called my mother again saying that my Appa had passed away.
It was a very sad and shocking news. Despite his age was already above 95, he was very strong, healthy and active. He was an active member of the ‘Ahli Persaudaraan Pengakap B.P Terengganu’ and two years ago, he joined the scout’s jamboree to Thailand. He was a committee member of the Terengganu Civil Service Pensioners Association. He was a very nice man, father, grandfather and great grandfather.

We went to Kuala Terengganu that night after our Maghrib prayers. We arrived at Appa’s house at 1:43 am, 15th June, 2012. Appa was buried at Perkuburan Tok Pelam later that morning, at about 10am.

Salam blog owner, I really want to further know the lineage of this family because I am the president of GPTD website: gptd.blogspot.com who is now coaching a group of Zheng He study.. I just got the info about Al-Yunani Family, this might help us out to search for the lineage to went up to Zheng He. Apart from that, we are curious to prove that Zheng He came to Malaya to widespread Islam before Arabs, and Chinese did influence more than others to Malays embraced Islam.
Kindly contact me via email and provide me the person who knows more about this and do have many documents proving the info we need. Really hope you can respond this.
May Allah bless the ruh of your great grandfather. It’s Allah destiny that we have no opportunity to meet arwah. But, we hope his legacy would still be available to us to connect..