The mention of Ottoman and South Asian relations often conjures up images of Ottoman warships off the Gujarati coast or that of the Mughal emissaries arriving at the lands of Rum. Needless to say, the cultural and intellectual exchanges between the learned Muslims of these two important corners of the Islamic world were just as vibrant as the political ones. More importantly, the former extended well beyond the early modern period as the present paper will attempt to show. The point of origin for the paper is a group of alchemical manuscripts presently housed at the Oriental Manuscripts Library & Research Institute (OMLRI) in Hyderabad. What renders this particular group of manuscripts unique among other collections in India with a substantial number of works on alchemy and chemical sciences is the unusually high count of books and treatises that had been composed in the Ottoman Empire. The paper will draw on my recent research at the OMLRI, which has revealed that a single individual was responsible for the arrival of this group of manuscripts in Hyderabad around the turn of the twentieth century. The identity, writings, and travels of the said individual, who had been a resident of Najaf prior to his move to Hyderabad, will constitute the central part of the paper. These issues, however, will also be used as a springboard to comment on the wider social and cultural context of the aforementioned group of manuscripts. Among them are the Ottoman relations with the Nizamate of Hyderabad, the Arab as well as the lesser-known Rumi community in the Deccan, and the continued practice of Jabirian alchemy in both the Ottoman Empire and South Asia into the early twentieth century.