One of the most powerful factors triggering the production and diffu-sion of manuscripts among the Ethiopian Muslim communities is the necessity of providing teachers and students with texts to be studied at the traditional learn-ing institutions. In the present paper I will exemplify this connection by analys-ing the way the Minhāǧ al-ṭālibīn by Nawawī (d. 1277), a renowned handbook used in the Ethiopian syllabus for advanced students of Islamic law, is copied and circulated. Differently from what happens in other areas of the Muslim world, in Ethiopia the text is mostly distributed into four codices, each of which corre-sponds to a branch of the law, which is studied at different stages of the local curriculum.