A Neo-Fatimid Treasury of Books: Arabic Manuscripts among the Alawi Bohras of South Asia

Description

This book tells the story of a manuscript repository found all over the pre-modern Muslim world: the khizanat al-kutub, or treasury of books. The focus is on the undisclosed Arabic manuscript culture of a small but vibrant South Asian Shi’i Muslim community, the Bohras. It looks at how books that were once part of one of the biggest imperial book repositories of the medieval Muslim world, the khizanat of the Fatimids of North Africa and Egypt (909CE-1171CE) ended up having a rich social life among the Bohras across the Western Indian Ocean, starting in Yemen and ending in Gujarat. It shows how, under strict conditions of secrecy, and over several centuries, one khizana was turned into another, its manuscripts gaining new meanings in the new social realities in which they were preserved, read, transmitted, venerated and copied into. What emerged was a new distinctive Bohra Ismaili manuscript culture shaped by its local contexts. Maps and Figures Acknowledgements Notes on Transliteration and Dates Sources Prologue: Fatimid Encounters across the Indian Ocean Introduction: Reading Sijistani in Gujarat: the Bohra Treasury of Books Inside the Treasury of Books: Reflections on the Ethnography of Manuscripts 1 Community: Introduction to the Alawi Bohras 1.1 Shrine Custodians 1.2 Secret Manuscripts and their Social Lives 1.3 Everyday Documents and the Organisation of the Daʿwa 1.4 An Indian Muslim Caste 2 Treasury of Books 2.1 Neither Library nor Archive: the Khizana as a Treasury of Books 2.2 A Lost Fatimid Khizana in Gujarat? 2.3 A Treasury of Books across the Indian Ocean 2.4 A Neo-Fatimid Treasury of Books in Baroda 3 Secret Universe 3.1 Bohra Spaces and their Modes of Access 3.2 Access I: A Profane Topography of the Bohra Universe 3.3 Access II: A Sacred Geography of the Bohra Universe 3.4 Gender, Etiquette and Access 4 Manuscript Stories 4.1 Secret Khizana , Social Manuscripts 4.2 Manuscripts of Alawi Provenance 4.3 Manuscripts of Non-Alawi Provenance 4.4 Practices of Borrowing, Lending and Appropriation 5 Materiality of Secrecy 5.1 Codicology of the Treasury of Books 5.2 Anatomy of Bohra Manuscripts: Paratexts from Head to Tail 5.3 Occult Paratexts: Batini Manuscript Culture 5.4 Magical Marginalia: Zahiri Manuscript Culture 6 Script and Scribal Politics 6.1 A Modern Isma’ili Manuscriptorium 6.2 Script and the Language of Secrecy 6.3 Khizana Scripts 6.4 Scribal Politics Conclusion: A Jihad for Books Epilogue: A Case for Social Codicology Glossary Bibliography Index Пустая страница