This chapter considers the importance of scribal skills, particularly letter writing, through a focus on the insha (epistolary) treatises of the Bahmani vizier, long-distance merchant and scholar, Mahmud Gavan. Against a background of court factionalism, Gavan advocated the cultivation of a genre of writing, insha or letter writing, which not only had strong practical uses for communication at court, but had the potential, if manipulated adroitly enough, to transform society, the recipient of the letter, and the individual writing the letter.

Through an examination of the Nujum al-?Ulum, an encyclopaedia written by the sultan of Bijapur, Ali Adil Shah, which served three important ends, both personal and political, this chapter focuses on esoteric skills like magic, astrology and divination. As an invaluable manual of esoteric practices aimed at transforming the body of the individual and his place in the social world, the encyclopaedia served both the pragmatic ends of worldly success and ethical self-fashioning. Secondly, knowledge about esoteric practices became an arena for a concerted attempt by a powerful clique at the Bijapuri court to find conceptual commensurabilities for divergent cosmologies, in order to unite a society riven by factionalism. Finally, in its engagement with specific vernacular esoteric traditions, rooted in local geography, Adil Shah’s encyclopaedia addressed the broader political scenario of the contemporary Deccan where multiple courts jostled for prestige and power and eagerly tried to recruit each other’s personnel.