The Rise of Muhammad al-Nahrawali al-Makki: Locating Arabic Historiographical Traditions Between Gujarat and Hejaz in the Sixteenth Century

may, 2025

2may4:10 pm- 5:40 pmThe Rise of Muhammad al-Nahrawali al-Makki: Locating Arabic Historiographical Traditions Between Gujarat and Hejaz in the Sixteenth Century

Event Details

Date: Friday, May 2nd, 2025
Time: 4:10 PM
Location: 208 Knox Hall

Islamic History Workshop: Jyoti Gulati Balachandran (History, Pennsylvania State University)

This paper recovers the scholarly ties that connected Gujarat in the Indian subcontinent to the Hejaz and the larger Red Sea region in the sixteenth century. It takes as its guide the figure of Qutb al-Din Muhammad al-Nahrawali (d. 1582), a Muslim intellectual from Patan in northern Gujarat who established himself in Mecca and went on to serve as the mufti (jurist) of Mecca under the Ottoman Sultans. While some of al-Nahrawali’s Arabic works including his history of Mecca and the history of the Ottoman conquest of Yemen have been widely used by modern scholars, his social, political and intellectual connections across the Indian Ocean have largely remained unexplored. By placing al-Nahrawali along with other contemporary scholars who wrote works of history and biography in Arabic in Gujarat, this chapter underlines the importance of Arabic in shaping scholarly communities on both ends of the western Indian Ocean. It particularly questions the widespread assumption in South Asian historiography that Arabic merely served as a language of religion by highlighting the presence of robust Arabic historiographical traditions that connected Gujarat to the Arabian Peninsula in the sixteenth century.

Time

(Friday) 4:10 pm - 5:40 pm

Location

208 Knox Hall

606 W. 122nd St

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