Arabic-language manuscript and print as a source for Indian Ocean Islamic history: The case of East Africa

In the Indian Ocean Islamic world, Arabic-language texts have been the foundation of what has been called an Arabic cosmopolis and a Sunni Islamic ecumene. In East Africa, this historical material can be found in extant collections in manuscript and printed form, and has formed the basis of research over the past decades that investigate local, regional and trans-oceanic Islamic histories. The nature of this corpus means that it is spread across several modern nation states and a diverse range of custodians. Here is offered an overview of the material available for research in the Western part of the Indian Ocean, also known as the Swahili world. The Arabic textual material that can be found in this part of the Indian Ocean has a strong potential to enrich the study of Islam in the region, but also to inform the wider field of Islamic history. This article offers pointers to avenues for future research.