The story of printing Sufi books in the Muslim world encompasses an array of actors and takes place in remote yet connected locales. This story is slowly beginning to receive the attention it warrants with regards to the social, cultural, and intellectual facets of book production in the long nineteenth century. This paper studies the printing and translation history of Rashaḥāt ʿayn al-ḥayāt (Beads of Dew from the Fountain of Life) by Fakhr al-Dīn ʿAlī (d. 940/1533)—a volume on the biographies of Naqshbandiyya masters of Timurid Iran. I argue that this particular text forces a reexamination of the dismissive attitudes towards Sufi book and print culture, in light of careful work on individual texts, publishing houses, and scholars-cum-editors. Through a study of the printed book’s paratexts, biographies and histories of those involved in the publishing scene, I trace the transition from manuscript to print, and consider whether print made different and new demands on the text and its producers. Through an intellectual and material history of the volume, I reconstruct it’s printing and translation journey during the nineteenth century, particularly, through the intellectual labor of Muḥammad Mūrad al-Qazānī (d. 1352/1935). Al-Qazānī, an immigrant and scholar from the Volga-Ural region, had translated several printed editions of seminal Naqshbandī books during the long nineteenth century. Translated from Persian into Turkish, Arabic, Uzbek and Urdu, the Rashaḥāt experienced a multilingual journey through the publishing houses of the Islamic world. Throughout the paper, I argue that an examination of Naqshbandī translation efforts, and their overlapping nature with printing initiatives during the nineteenth century emphasise how the Rashaḥāt –with the aid of Sufi financial and intellectual patronage– was able to renew the collective imaginary of the tarīqa’s members. The story of al-Qazānī’s migration to the publishing scene in the Hijaz, sheds light on the particular role of Sufi brotherhoods in the development of the intellectual networks of Naqshbandiyya involved in print culture. Moreover, I argue for the centrality of al-Qazānī’s intellectual weight in disseminating Arabic translations of the tarīqa’s texts in the modern period. Such a reconsideration of Sufi print culture lends a better understanding of, and emphasis on, the role that sufi groups—such as translators, editors, and patrons— played in shaping a global perspective of print in the nineteenth century.

In the last quarter of the 19th century Ottoman male dress, in the form of the fez and long, straight-collared 'istanbulin' coat, became widely popular across much of South, Central and Southeast Asia. By focusing on this style’s spread and the kinds of associations it held to those who wore it specifically in the Indian cities of Delhi and Hyderabad, this paper asks: what explains the wide transnational attraction of an Ottoman style in the era of high imperialism, and what enabled this fashion to spread so quickly across a huge geography and even to cities far inland? While the adoption of fez and istanbulin could communicate an array of possible meanings, I argue that the fashion exemplified new ideals of urbane masculinity then emerging across the wider region which sought to express a civilized, cosmopolitan, yet consciously non-Western identity. The paper’s conclusions draw on over two years of fieldwork in archives, libraries and museums in Istanbul, London, Delhi and Hyderabad. It deploys collections of late 19th century popular studio photography to trace the transnational path and timeline of this fashion’s spread, which are combined with contemporary coverage and commentaries on Ottoman affairs and discussions of fashion in Urdu periodicals, books and travelogues and the British colonial archive. Both the fez and istanbulin first appear in India in the 1870s-80s, in a context shaped by deepening incorporation into transcontinental networks of trade and migration, and a dynamic new visual public sphere created by cheap lithographic and photographic reproduction. Popularization of the style was primarily a phenomenon of imitation rather than physical exchange, inspired by the ubiquitous images of Ottoman Sultans and statesmen in early Urdu periodicals like Avadh Akhbar and various regional Indian Punch magazines, and by the perceived successes of the Ottomans’ modernizing tanzimat reforms. At the same time, the common combination of the fez and istanbulin with other accoutrements of urban civility –watches, cigarettes, restaurants etc – among upwardly mobile professional classes of all backgrounds points to an appeal that goes beyond simple assertions of anti-colonial or religious solidarity. Rather, it suggests how political sentiments overlapped with new forms of aspirational consumption, expressed here in a sense of membership in an Ottoman-influenced, cosmopolitan, but non-European modernity.

In 1698, Zanzibar fell under the control of Saif ibn Sultan, the Sultan of Oman, after a successful expulsion of the Portuguese colonizers. Migration from Oman to East Africa accelerated after the nineteenth century when the Omani ruler Said ibn Sultan established Zanzibar as the capital, and Oman was renamed The Sultanate of Muscat and Zanzibar. Henceforth, Zanzibar became the hub for the Omani ruling elite, expanding on three economic pillars: plantations to grow spices (mainly cloves), ivory sales, and slave labor, until a violent revolution overthrew the Arab rulers from the Tanzanian archipelago in 1964. Despite a long painful history of colonization, slavery, and forced land redistribution, the dominant master narrative in Oman about its history in East Africa rests on three ideological pillars: first, oversea territorial expansion is implicitly justified on the basis that Oman spread Arab-Islamic civilization to East Africa; second, co-existence and co-prosperity with local African inhabitants is emphasized; and third, Oman’s role in the Indian Ocean slave trade and its monopolization of Zanzibar’s economy is downplayed. Thus, this paper argues that the Omani master narrative either glorifies this past or erases some significant aspects of it. An overview of Oman’s history in East Africa will first be provided. It will then be followed by a discourse analysis of Omani newspaper articles that examines this history, utilizing theoretical concepts from Postcolonial studies and Critical Race Theory. A special emphasis will be given to the story of Tippu Tip, an Omani merchant who is remembered in the public memory as a “legend” who conquered the “Jungles of Africa,” while downplaying the fact that he was a slave trader and a plantation owner. Finally, this paper will conclude by providing a revisionist history, and an alternative narrative that replaces comfortable majoritarian interpretations of events, subverts the dominant paradigm, disrupts taken-for-granted beliefs, and exposes oppressive structures.