Introduction

Summary

The Introduction sets out the main analytical framework to probe a transregional formation of Arabic learning. Building on a rich historiography of the Indian Ocean world and its various regions it formulates an approach to studying mobile manuscripts with a view to exploring the shared social and cultural histories of learned communities. It discusses ‘mobilities’ as the potential of manuscripts to move around and ‘histories of circulation’ as actualised or ‘enacted’ movement among scribes, readers, and owners of manuscripts. In particular, it engages with the concepts of ‘enactment’ to study social and cultural mobilities of manuscripts and ‘entanglement’ to plot these mobilities on a transoceanic field of Arabic learning. Arabic philology takes centre stage in this study and represents a diverse and many-sided field of Arabic learning. Manuscript collections which form the empirical basis of the research are delineated and discussed.