I completely understand your frustration. Like you, I’m interested in applying the transnational lens to the early modern world and those non-state actors who traversed it. I share your skepticism about the existence of relevant source material though, and your anxiety as to exactly why individuals should be discussed in the transnational context.
First off, I’m convinced the transnational perspective is applicable to the early modern era: this is something I’ll tackle in my short essay. I was irritated by the transcripts of those transnationalists in the AHR conversation piece who expressed uncertainty as to the prospect of applying the ‘lens’ to the pre-19thcentury period. My ego took another knock when I turned to the Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History, in which ‘Discipline or subdiscipline were not discriminating factors, as long as a potential author had a bent for grappling with time and the history of the last 160 years’.[1]
We shouldn’t take this too much to heart though. A number of ‘transnationalists’ (like me and you perhaps) find the term ‘transnational’ rather unhelpful. Take a look at this – ‘‘I have to confess that I find “transnational” a restrictive term for the sort of work which I am interested in’.[1]Bayly’s Birth of the Modern World drew connections and comparisons between nations, societies and cultures in the 18thcentury.
Anyway, I think there’s scope for suggesting that ‘nations’ existed in the pre-modern world. Liah Greenfeld made this argument in her Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, as did Anthony Smith. In his article (‘Nations in Antiquity?) he conceived ‘the nation’ as a ‘moving-target’ (always in the making and never really ‘made’). You might be able to use that type of reasoning to ‘prove’ that the writing of transnational history is applicable to the early modern world. If you do, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to write a trans – ‘national’ history of a traveller like al-Nahrawali in the 16thcentury. I think it’s more than possible.
The lack of source material on your protagonist must be frustrating. Of course, I know next to nothing about his life, but one way to explore it in a ‘transnational’ context (and make it ‘worth discussing’) might be to explore how he (or others) moved between Mecca and the Ottoman interior: via specific trading networks or waterways for example. Or you could explore how the Ottoman interior managed its imperial periphery in a much broader context. This might explain al-Nahrawali’s capacity to move across imperial space (more ‘transcultural’ than ‘transnational’ perhaps, but maybe worth considering).
I think if you take a ‘macro’ approach in the first instance it might shed light on al-Nahrawali’s more or less ‘micro’ history.
[1]Bayly, Christopher A. et al. ‘“AHR Conversation”: On Transnational History’, The American Historical Review 111 (2006), p. 1442.
[1]Iriye, Akira and Saunier, Pierre-Yves (eds.), The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History(London, 2009), p. XIX.