diff --git a/falahcast-e19-published.md b/falahcast-e19-published.md
index 8f134a4..34cc9fb 100644
--- a/falahcast-e19-published.md
+++ b/falahcast-e19-published.md
@@ -43,3 +43,29 @@ the same stream as the response body) but had actually succeeded server-side
 response bodies to a separate file/variable from status-code output before
 parsing, and check for existing posts before assuming a "failed" call didn't
 actually go through.
+
+## Episode 21 — Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals)
+
+**Live:** https://iqra.falahos.my/sejarah-melayu-memory-daulat-and-how-a-people-tells-its-story/
+
+Same pipeline. Also this session (2026-09-25): investigated the episode
+numbering duplication flagged earlier — root cause found in the campaign
+repo's commit history: episodes 11-18 exactly repeat the topics of
+episodes 2-8, in order, offset by 9 (e11=e02's topic, e13=e03's, ...,
+e18=e08's), with only e09/e10/e12 being genuinely new. This points to a
+topic-cycling/wraparound bug in the old `daily-cron.py`/`content-engine.py`
+pipeline. No fix needed/attempted — that pipeline is confirmed dormant
+(not scheduled anywhere on this Mac, per earlier pi diagnostic), and the
+current manual Notion-AI-driven episodes (19+) draw from never-used
+book-repo topics, sidestepping the bug entirely.
+
+Also: wired the researched 30-day topic calendar directly into the Iqra
+Times Daily Article routine (trig_01NjWBVBaDrtBbCU6mMq8xgf) — it now
+works through the fixed list in order (tracking position via the
+"Islamic Tech" Ghost tag) instead of self-picking topics each run.
+
+And: archived two empty/stale Gitea repos found in the earlier infra
+sweep (`wmj/mautic-mcp-server`, `wmj/ihya-migration-test`) via
+`PATCH /api/v1/repos/{owner}/{repo}` with `{"archived": true}` —
+reversible, non-destructive. `falah-mobile`'s earlier "partial API
+response" flag turned out to be a non-issue on re-check (69KB, healthy).
diff --git a/falahcast-e21-sejarah-melayu.md b/falahcast-e21-sejarah-melayu.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f528f61
--- /dev/null
+++ b/falahcast-e21-sejarah-melayu.md
@@ -0,0 +1,105 @@
+Assalamualaikum, and welcome back to Falah Cast,
+
+Yesterday we sat with Rumi's *Masnavi*—with that reed flute crying out, turning longing into a method, turning love into a kind of disciplined remembrance. And we ended with a promise: we would move from Persian mysticism into Malay memory.
+
+Tonight, let's step into a different kind of manuscript—one that smells of sea-salt and candle smoke, of palace corridors and monsoon nights. Let's step into Sejarah Melayu—the Malay Annals—where a people tries to answer an old question in the only way a people really can:
+
+"Who are we… when we tell our story to ourselves?"
+
+Imagine a scribe in the court, late at night. The palace has quieted. Outside, the strait breathes—ships creak, water lifts and lowers against wood, lanterns tremble with the wind. The scribe's world is a small circle of light. Ink. Paper. A careful hand. And behind that hand—voices. Stories carried from elders, from sailors, from storytellers, from warriors, from genealogists who know that lineage is not just a family tree, but a map of legitimacy.
+
+Sejarah Melayu is not "history" in the modern sense—not a timeline of footnotes and archives. It is a chronicle, yes, but also a mirror. A court text. A work that braids fact with legend, politics with poetry, genealogy with myth—because for the world that produced it, truth was not merely "what happened," but also "what it meant," and "what it should authorize."
+
+And that's the first thing to understand: the Malay Annals are alive because they were never meant to be a sterile record. They were meant to make a kingdom intelligible—to anchor the present in a past that feels inevitable.
+
+Listen closely and you can hear the rhythm of oral tradition becoming fixed into text. A story told and retold gains a kind of polish, like a stone smoothed by waves. The chronicle catches that stone mid-motion and places it on the page—still wet with the sea.
+
+The great heart of the Annals is Melaka—Melaka as port, Melaka as court, Melaka as symbol. Melaka as the place where the world arrived: traders, scholars, spices, silk, languages, law, diplomacy. But Melaka is also something more than geography. It becomes an idea—an ideal of order, of kingship, of Malayness itself.
+
+And like all founding stories, the Annals begin in that shimmering space where origin is half memory, half miracle.
+
+Who has the right to rule? Where does authority come from? Why should anyone bow to anyone?
+
+The Annals answer with genealogy and grandeur. They trace lines back to legendary beginnings, weaving the court into a cosmic fabric. Because when power is fragile—when a kingdom sits between rivals, between oceans and empires—you don't only defend it with weapons. You defend it with narrative. You defend it with a story strong enough to make loyalty feel like nature.
+
+This is where the idea of daulat begins to glow.
+
+Daulat—that sacred aura of kingship, that sense that the ruler carries more than personal authority, that the throne is a trust. It can be abused, yes. It can be weaponized, yes. But at its best, it is an ethical claim: that leadership is not merely force, but responsibility under God.
+
+And yet, the Annals do not let you forget the tension. Because the court is not paradise. The court is politics. It is ambition. It is anxiety. It is the constant work of keeping order in a human world.
+
+In the Malay Annals, the ruler is not simply a man; the ruler is a symbol. And symbols demand performance.
+
+So the court becomes a stage where memory is curated.
+
+Who is praised? Who is blamed? Which events are told brightly, and which are whispered? Which betrayals become cautionary tales, and which compromises become "necessary wisdom"?
+
+When history is written by and for a court, some truths are elevated and others are quietly buried. Not always out of malice—sometimes out of survival. Sometimes out of the simple human need to believe that the kingdom is coherent, that sacrifices were not meaningless, that defeats had a moral explanation.
+
+And then we reach the figures that still walk through Malay imagination like living shadows—Hang Tuah, Hang Jebat, the great debates of loyalty and justice.
+
+Now, whether every detail occurred exactly as told is almost beside the point. Because what the Annals preserve is not only the "event," but the argument the culture is having with itself.
+
+What is loyalty?
+
+Is loyalty obedience to a ruler, no matter what?
+
+Or is loyalty fidelity to a higher principle—justice, trust, responsibility?
+
+Hang Tuah becomes the emblem of unwavering service, the ideal court warrior. Hang Jebat becomes the wound that speaks back—the protest, the fury that says, "What if the throne betrays the trust?"
+
+In that tension, you can feel a society wrestling with the moral limits of daulat. If kingship is sacred trust, what happens when the trust is broken?
+
+And this is what makes Sejarah Melayu so powerful: it's not merely a parade of names. It's a meditation disguised as a chronicle. A people asking: how do we preserve order without losing our soul?
+
+And perhaps the most intimate scene is not a battle or a coronation, but that quieter act—the act of writing itself.
+
+Because the moment oral memory becomes text, something changes.
+
+Oral stories breathe. They adapt. They belong to everyone in the room. They shift with the listener. But once written, they become anchored. They can be copied, transmitted, preserved—but also controlled.
+
+A manuscript can travel further than a storyteller, but it can also harden a version of the truth into official shape.
+
+So what is gained?
+
+Continuity. A shared reference. A bridge across generations. A way for a civilization to speak to its descendants.
+
+And what is lost?
+
+The chorus of alternative voices. The village perspective. The stories that do not fit neatly into the palace's mirror.
+
+In that candlelit room, the scribe is doing more than copying ink. The scribe is deciding what will be remembered as "us."
+
+And this is where the Annals meet our own lives. Because every family has a sejarah—a story we tell about who we are. Every community has a set of cherished beginnings. And every time we retell them, we edit. We emphasize. We soften. We justify.
+
+We do this not because we are liars, but because memory is an instrument of identity.
+
+The Malay Annals remind us: history is not only a record. It is a claim.
+
+A claim about legitimacy.
+
+A claim about values.
+
+A claim about what deserves to last.
+
+So when you read Sejarah Melayu, read it like you would listen to someone recounting their childhood home. You don't interrupt with "Actually, the dates don't match." You listen for the emotional architecture. You listen for what the story is trying to protect.
+
+And you ask: what kind of world did this story want to build?
+
+A world where the court is the axis of order. Where kingship carries daulat. Where loyalty is noble, but also dangerous. Where honor is luminous, but fragile. Where the port city is a crossroads and a prize. Where Islam, adat, diplomacy, and power braid together into the fabric of the Malay world.
+
+And as we close, I want you to hold one final image:
+
+A manuscript passing hands.
+
+A court in one century speaking to a reader in another.
+
+Ink surviving where voices fade.
+
+A people saying, across time: "Remember us like this."
+
+Next episode, we'll leave the warm, complicated memory of the court and step into a philosopher's blueprint. From one court's chronicle—its legitimacy, its daulat, its stories of order and betrayal—we'll move toward a different kind of city: Madinah not only as a place on a map, but as an idea… and then to al-Farabi's vision of the Virtuous City—where politics becomes ethics, and leadership becomes the craft of guiding souls.
+
+From the memory of Melaka… to the dream of the ideal city.
+
+Assalamualaikum—and I'll see you on the next episode of Falah Cast.