Mobile Manuscripts
Arabic Learning across the Early Modern Western Indian Ocean

Bahl traces the spread of Arabic learning in South Asia from the perspective of the written objects that traversed the western Indian Ocean.

Christopher D. Bahl (Author)

9781009359726, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 February 2025

340 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.5 cm, 0.63 kg

'With admirable analytical clarity, Christopher Bahl develops methods for tracing the circulation of Arabic books between India, Arabia, Egypt, and beyond. Drawing on some 600 manuscripts, he reconstructs a region built on 'entangled' texts in motion. This is a milestone work in the growing literature on Arabic in the Indian Ocean.' Nile Green, UCLA

In this essential new work, Christopher D. Bahl departs from the established historiography on trade, shipping, and pilgrimage to argue for the emergence of Arabic learning as a crucial form of transoceanic mobility from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries. From Egypt to the Hijaz, Yemen and further on to Gujarat and the Deccan, networks of manuscript circulation created shared social and cultural spaces across the early modern western Indian Ocean, in which South Asia was a key node of connection. Largely unstudied Arabic manuscripts from collections in eight different archives offer a new source base to explore the region as a hub of Arabic scholarly culture, while marginalia and notes provide an empirical treasure trove for the study of social spaces and cultural practices. This is the first book to trace these truly transoceanic encounters between scholars, sultans, scribes, readers, and librarians.

Introduction
1. The prosopographical world of maritime mobilities
2. The Royal Library of Bijapur: the emergence of a textual entrepot
3. Arabic philology in early modern South Asia
4. Mobile Arabic learning from Egypt to the Deccan
5. From the Deccan to Istanbul: a transoceanic community of readers
Conclusion: Arabic learning across the early modern western Indian Ocean world
Bibliography
Appendix
Index.

Subject Areas: General & world history [HBG]