The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian OceanThe Graves of Tarim narrates the movement of an old diaspora across the Indian Ocean over the past five hundred years. Ranging from Arabia to India and Southeast Asia, Engseng Ho explores the transcultural exchanges—in kinship and writing—that enabled Hadrami Yemeni descendants of the Muslim prophet Muhammad to become locals in each of the three regions yet remain cosmopolitans with vital connections across the ocean. At home throughout the Indian Ocean, diasporic Hadramis engaged European empires in surprising ways across its breadth, beyond the usual territorial confines of colonizer and colonized. A work of both anthropology and history, this book brilliantly demonstrates how the emerging fields of world history and transcultural studies are coming together to provide groundbreaking ways of studying religion, diaspora, and empire. Ho interprets biographies, family histories, chronicles, pilgrimage manuals and religious law as the unified literary output of a diaspora that hybridizes both texts and persons within a genealogy of Prophetic descent. By using anthropological concepts to read Islamic texts in Arabic and Malay, he demonstrates the existence of a hitherto unidentified canon of diasporic literature. His supple conceptual framework and innovative use of documentary and field evidence are elegantly combined to present a vision of this vital world region beyond the histories of trade and European empire. |
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ªAbd ªAlawô Aâmad Abd al-Qādir Abd al-Raḥmān Abd Allāh Abñ Bakr abroad Abū Abū Bakr Aceh Aden Adeni Aḥmad al-'Aydarūs al-Junayd al-Káf al-Saqqāf al-Shiḥr al-Shillī Alawi Alī Allāh ancestors Arab Arabia Aydarūs became bedouin biography British Buginese Cairo canon century chapter coast colonial creole descendants diaspora discourse Dutch East figures foreign genealogy graves of Tarim Gujarat ḥadīth Hadra Hadramawt Hadrami diaspora Hadrami sayyids Haji Hejaz homeland Husayn imperial India Indian Ocean Indonesia Ingrams Irrigating Fount Islamic Java Jurist kafa'a land Malay Malay Archipelago mawt Mecca Melaka migration mobility mosque movement Muḥammad Muslim muwallads names narrative non-sayyid origins passport patrilineal persons pilgrimage political port Qasam Raja Rasulid religious ritual rule rulers saints Saudi Say'un scholars Shaykh Singapore social society Southeast Asia Sufi Sufism sultan Surat Tarim texts tion tomb town trade Travelling Light tribal Umar University Press wadi Yemen