A Neo-Fatimid Treasury of Books
Arabic Manuscripts among the Alawi Bohras of South Asia
$57.99
- Paperback
528 pages
- Release Date
9 September 2024
Summary
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.
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781474479578 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 147447957X |
| Author: | Olly Akkerman |
| Publisher: | Edinburgh University Press |
| Imprint: | Edinburgh University Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 528 |
| Release Date: | 9 September 2024 |
| Weight: | 567g |
| Dimensions: | 156mm x 234mm |
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Critics Review
Using extensive archival and ethnographic fieldwork, Akkerman not only traces the temporal and geographic distribution of Isma’ili Arabic manuscripts, but also elucidates the social life of the khizana within the Isma’ili Bohra community. * MELA Book Award Committee *
Recognizing her personal integrity and her skills as a codicologist, the Alawi Bohra community of Baroda admitted Olly Akkerman into the sacred space of their Arabic manuscript collection, where, as she assisted with curatorial tasks, she was introduced to the community’s distinctive textual culture. This resulting account is a unique study in what she refers to as “social codicology.” – Brinkley Messick, Columbia University
Granted unprecedented access to the daily life and rituals of the leadership of the tightly-knit Alawi Bohra community, in particular their practice of manually copying esoteric manuscripts harking back to the Fatimid Caliphate, Olly Akkerman soon found that she was not permitted to reveal the contents of the manuscripts. Out of her dilemma has emerged a remarkable book. In clear-eyed, keenly observant yet empathetic prose, Akkerman provides rich social and historical context for the manuscript culture of the Alawis. Further, by weaving into the book her embodied, often difficult, experience as a foreign woman scholar, she provokes conversation about secrecy, ethics, gender, and hierarchy in western scholarship while remaining in respectful dialogue with her subjects and their protocols of scholarship. – Samira Sheikh, Vanderbilt University
Olly Akkerman
Olly Akkerman is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Islamic Studies, Freie Universität Berlin. Her research focuses on the social lives of Arabic manuscripts and their spaces of enshrinement within Muslim communities in the past and present, particularly in the context of the Bohras and the Western Indian Ocean (Yemen and Gujarat).
She is the author of The Bohra Manuscript Treasury as a Sacred Site of Philology: a Study in Social Codicology (Philological Encounters) and “Documentary Remains of a Fatimid Past in Gujarat” in Journal of Material Cultures in the Muslim World. She is also the editor of Social Codicology: The Multiple Lives of Manuscripts in Muslim Societies (Brill, 2022).
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