The manuscript collections set up by Hadrami communities settled on the Malabar Coast between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries bore several Arabic manuscripts related to the social, intellectual and religious lives of the Hadrami Sayyids. Their general pattern is to collect, carry and preserve the genealogical, talismanic and healing texts that serve everyday purposes of their professions as spiritual leaders, whereas the minority are keen on producing works with scholarly interests.

Malabar Coast was one of the usual destinations in the larger migration of the Hadrami Sayyids. During their dispersal in the region they also carried books from Arabia to facilitate their religious missions and establish their genealogical significance. They built libraries on their own, until they hosted a rich collection of Arabic materials today. These collections, in its diverse purpose, most of them found a career in the region by capitalising the sacred notions on the basis of their lineage claims going back to the prophet Muhammed (PBUH). Many Hadrami Sayyids kept texts related to certain major areas that consist of traditional healing practices ascribed to the prophet called Tibb Al-Nabawi, talismanic texts with chants and prayers prepared out of devotion (safaa) to find solutions for everyday problems, devotional texts especially eulogies in Arabic and Arabi-Malayalam called Malas, Mawlids and Manaqibs, Sufi "defensive literature" sought to defend the Sufi ideas against the spread of Wahhabi puritan ideas and the political treaties urged the readers to fight against the British colonial empire. The contents vary from person to person but most of these texts were inherited from generations to generations. Hadramis hardly circulated outside their close circles. Few of such restricted collections are of Abd Allah al Aydarus in Quilandy, Abd Allah Shihab in Cheruvannur, Sayyid Muhammed Ali Shihab Thangal in Panakkad (now transferred to Sabeel al-Hidaya Arabic college, Parappur) and Aidrus Tangal in Ponnani.

Transcripts of Imbichikkoya Tangal: A Glance into the Malabar's Scholarly Heritage

Ahmad Sihab al-Din Imbichikkoya Tangal, who belongs to the Shihab Family, established a major manuscript collection from Hadramis. He was born and brought up in Panakkad, educated from noted scholars such as Kalppatta Biran Kutti Musliyar and K.K. Sadakathullah musliyar. He served as the Qadi of Calicut from 1947, when he was 24 years old, to 1999. During his period, he inherited manuscripts from his ancestors, but a few of them got copied from other collections. The colophon in one manuscript exposes that it was copied in Terim and purchased in Palembang, Indonesia. Although, many articles and texts produced by him in Arabic and Malayalam have been published but most of his works remained in manuscript formats, all left as unfinished, because of his responsibilities as a Qadi of Calicut.

He had kept an interesting genre collecting divergence of eulogies in Arabic and Arabi-Malyalam in his library, established at his home in Chevayur now it has partially been shifted to Kuttichira, they contain important Sufi works authored by Hadrami scholars in Yemen such as Abd Allah al-Haddad along with significant Quran exegeses and texts on Hadith and law.

Hadrami community took a great interest in disseminating his ideas to a larger public, utilising the means available to them with the advent of new technologies. And this collection has also embraced printed works from other Hadrami scholars such as Sayyid Jifri and Sayyid Fadl, in his many handwritten and printed copies of the texts across the libraries in Malabar such as the edition of Hulal al-Insan and Al-Tariqa Al-Hanifa. The printed versions of these books are from different printing houses in Cairo. It demonstrates the scholarly networks of Hadramis beyond the ocean world.