Mobile Manuscripts

Christopher D. Bahl is Assistant Professor in South Asian History at Durham University.

• 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.

'This book is a truly valuable and timely contribution. Using a staggering number of diverse sources and analyzing them with impressive and versatile erudition, the author makes a compelling case for the importance of Arabic as a major medium of scholarship in South Asia. Further, his framework of transoceanic cultural circulation compels us to recognize that Arabic scholarship in South Asia was connected to a much wider Muslim world and that it can no longer remain marginal to Arabic Studies.' Asad Q. Ahmed, University of California, Berkeley