Abdullah bin Abdul al Kadir (1796–1854) also known as Munshi Abdullah, was a Malayan writer. The term Munshi means "teacher" or "educator". He was a famous Malacca-born munshi of Singapore and died in Jeddah, a part of the Ottoman Empire.
A page of the Hikayat Abdullah written in Malay in the Jawi script, from the collection of the National Library of Singapore. A rare first edition, it was written between 1840 and 1843, printed by lithography, and published in 1849.
Munshi is a Persian word, originally used for a contractor, writer, or secretary, and later used in Mughal India for native language teachers, teachers of various subjects, especially administrative principles, religious texts, science, and philosophy and were also secretaries and translators employed by Europeans.
Portrait of Abdul Karim (the Munshi) by Rudolf Swoboda.