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

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 lif...