The scattered relics of Saint Thomas the Apostle are a testament to the manifold localised reverberations of the millenary trade, political and religious networks that not only extend throughout the southern regions of Eurasian continent but also implicate East Africa. His legendary evangelizing travels to the Southernmost tip of the Indian subcontinent, and the posterior wanderings of his scattered bodily remains, have laid the foundation to a multiplicity of narrations and beliefs through which it is possible to map the extension, complexity and longevity of a loose community of traders that have encroached in, and melted into, diverse forms of political hegemony in the Western Indian Ocean. To better understand the present-day traces and manifestations of his cult, be it in South India, in Syria, In Southern Europe, or in Africa, it is important to disentangle the layered – and contested – oral, written and physical memories of the apostle, and the various appropriations of his legend.

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Indian Ocean,Africa,Saint Thomas