2023 - Arabic and Arabi-Malayalam Manuscripts in Kerala and Lakshadweep
Mohammed Salih Cholakkalakath was awarded the Barakat Postgraduate and Early Career Award to undertake fieldwork in South India for his PhD project. The project was aimed at surveying healing and protection manuscripts written in Arabic and Arabi Malayalam, a South Indian language used by the Muslim population.
Moreover, the project digitised manuscripts that were locked away in various private collections, especially ones in precarious condition. Many of these private collections, spread across South India, belonged to families with a long history of the local healing tradition.
Mohammed’s dissertation showed the intercultural power of these talismans, and how talismanic imagery was shared much further than expected: in one undated South Asian manuscript, the mystical image of a double circle enclosing a raised central dot atop a pole flanked by wings, is almost identical to an amulet published in a Jewish text in 1701 Amsterdam. With Arabi Malayalam being a fascinating blend of Arabic, Sanskrit, Persian, Tamil, and other languages, Mohammed’s thesis will show just how cosmopolitan this area on the Indian Ocean coast really was.
