Muhamed Riyaz Chenganakkattil is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Langauges and Cultures at Ghent University. He received his PhD in Literature (2024) with a specialization in South Asian culture and history from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, where he was an Early Doc Fellow. His dissertation, Sailing to the Hijaz: Narrativization of Hajj in the Literary Indian Ocean, explored the intersection of Indian Ocean mobilities and Hajj literature. His research examined historical archives and narratives in Arabic, Malayalam, Arabi-Malayalam, Urdu, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and English, documenting long-term processes of migration, transoceanic movements, and global Muslim networks in the context of the pilgrimage to Mecca from South Asia, particularly in regions such as Malabar, Madras, and Hyderabad.

His research interests include Islam in South Asia and the Middle East, history of Muslim mobilities, Islamic expressive and material cultures, transoceanic networks, and Hajj literature. He has published works on a range of subjects, including Hajj narratives and Indian Ocean Muslim literature; "we-formation" in pilgrims’ memoirs; invisible sacred space and Jinn mosques; and rebellion and the politics of built environments in the early Islamic period. Currently, he is working on a postdoctoral research titled Hubs of Faith in the Indian Ocean: Muslim Mobilities and Transregional Life-worlds of Mosques in and beyond Malabar. This research is part of the FWO funded project The Mosques of Kerala: Artistic Vocabularies in the Identity-Building of Muslim Communities, led by Prof. Dr. Sara Mondini.

Projects

Projects as postdoc

The mosques of Kerala. Artistic vocabularies in the identity-building of muslim communities (2023 - 2028)

Publications

Most recent publications

Full bibliography

Teaching

Contemporary Asian Academic Debates 2 (A005651):

Muslim cultures and societies across the Indian Ocean

Offered by:

Muhamed Riyaz Chenganakkattil (lecturer-in-charge)

& Muhammed Niyas Ashraf (co-lecturer)

Course details:

This elective course widens students’ perspective through a humanities lens by exploring Muslim cultures and societies across the Indian Ocean. It examines transregional connections and multilingual sources (translated to English), emphasizing their relevance to the region’s pluralistic societies, expanding knowledge about Islam beyond Arabo-centric regions and multidirectional flows of Muslims alongside their exchanges with non-Islamic cultures.

[Contents]: Spanning East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean has long been a dynamic arena of cross-cultural exchange, migration, and interconnected histories. This course explores Muslim cultures and societies across this oceanic rim from the 7th century to the present, tracing how merchants, scholars, and travelers forged transregional networks that linked diverse Islamic communities while engaging with non-Islamic societies. Alongside texts, we analyze oral traditions, material culture, architecture, travelogues, and multilingual sources to highlight the lived experiences of Muslims across littoral zones, challenging the center-periphery binary in global Islamic history. Students will learn how these interactions catalyzed the formation of varied Muslim societies along the coastlines, resulting in multilingual literary traditions, hybrid rituals, and political ideologies, reflecting the Indian Ocean’s role as a crucible of global Islam. Emphasizing local agency and connectivity, the course underscores exchanges between Muslim and non-Muslim societies, from the Swahili Coast to the Malay Archipelago and South China Sea. Designed for MA students of history, literature, anthropology, philosophy, and political science, it offers critical insights into the pluralistic, adaptive nature of Islamic cultures while centering voices from the Indian Ocean’s interconnected margins.

(Academic year 2025-2026)

Contemporary Asian Academic Debates 2