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.

‘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

‘Mobile Manuscripts brings alive the transregional context of Arabic learning in South Asia through a systematic paratextual analysis of manuscripts from multiple archives. It makes an important contribution to our understanding of the significance of the Arabic language and intellectual traditions in the multilingual landscape of early modern South Asia.’

Jyoti Gulati Balachandran - Pennsylvania State University

‘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