Reading tarājim with Bourdieu: prosopographical traces of historical change in the South Asian migration to the late medieval Hijaz

Abstract

Abstract:This article presents a new analytical reading of one of the most popular genres in medieval Arabic historiography, biographical dictionaries, in order to address broader questions of historical change in transregional movements and scholarly group cultures. It builds on recent scholarship that focuses on shifting trade patterns across the Western Indian Ocean and in particular the intensification of commercial connections between the Red Sea region and South Asia during the 15th century to advance an argument on the sociocultural dimensions of a concomitant migration of South Asians (al-Hindīyūn, sg. al-Hindī) from the subcontinent to the Hijaz. The case study is empirically grounded in the reading of prosopographical sources, biographical entries (