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This chapter explores the writings of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, which provide a glimpse into a post-Mansā Mūsā Mali in initial decline. Suffering from invidious comparison with his brother, Sulaymān's reign is yet remarkable in including an episode featuring a demoted wife, Qāsā, challenging for the leadership of his vast empire. It is also with Sulaymān that the pivot to North Africa begins. However, relations between the regions are less than transparent, an opacity reflecting ambiguity that would lead to misunderstanding and, eventually, open conflict. Though waning as a regional power, Mali was highly successful in achieving a paradigm in which Islam and polity worked in close cooperation. This intimate association of culture and statecraft would completely transform the politics of the region for centuries to come. Critical to this new model of West African statecraft were efforts to reimagine and situate the region within the larger Muslim context.

This chapter discusses the biographical dictionary’s indebtedness to a long tradition in Arabic letters of prosopography and exemplarity, and specifically how Fawwaz draws on both the form and the content of this tradition and yet also draws away from it in giving emphasis to particular subjects and pursuits, highlighting women’s ambitions and achievements and minimizing their embeddedness in ancestry. It traces her use of well-known premodern sources. It considers Fawwaz’s own explication of method in her preface and the extent to which 19^th-century women could even access sources for history writing, an issue raised by what might seem the puzzling absence of certain leading premodern biographical dictionaries that feature female subjects.

The Arabic novel invents a tradition of Arabic storytelling and reconfigures the Arab cultural heritage. The novelists join forces with the poets in a project of fashioning a revolutionary language from the Arabic literary tradition. Nizar Qabbani, Adonis and Naguib Mahfouz argue with the past and revive tradition in their modernist writings. Mahfouz rewrites the travels of the pre-Islamic poet in the qasida, of Ibn Battuta, and of al-Ghazzali's search for certainty and tells the story of modern Arab intellectual's search for knowledge and Arabic novel's search for form. Tradition takes an unfamiliar shape in the Journey of Ibn Fattouma (Rihlat Ibn Fattuma), as it becomes the locus and site of interrogation, contestation and transgression.

Bayana, were it not for its shortage of water, might have been the capital of India. Strategically located in south-east Rajasthan on the route from Delhi to Gwalior and the Deccan, it attracted the attention of the Muslim conquerors, who made it their centre of power, with buildings praised by no less than Ibn Baṭṭūta. Until the founding of Agra it was the centre for control of the region, with the rulers, often autonomous, defying the Delhi sultans. Agriculture and the stone industry dominated, with sophisticated craftsmanship, but after a catastrophic earthquake in 1505 and the population’s migration to the newly founded capital, Agra, Bayana declined to the point that by the 19th century the Archaeological Survey of India reports show it as a forlorn remnant of past splendour. The previous archaeological studies along with the scope and field-work of the present study are outlined, as well as the present condition of the area and the regions’ influence and importance in the development of Mughal architecture.

The history of Bayana and its region is investigated from historical sources, inscriptions, and the actual buildings, beginning with its pre-Islamic origins; the conquest of Bayana by the Ghurids in 1194; the extent of the region of Bayana; its flourishing condition in the 13th and 14th centuries and the account of Ibn Battūta’s visit. The shock of Tīmūr’s invasion of North India, with the formation of independent sultanates is analysed, in particular the rise of the Auhadīs (genealogy in Appendix II) who ruled Bayana autonomously; followed by the impact of Lodī dominance; Bābur and the rise of the Mughals. The Sūrī challenge to the empire and the social conditions are also considered, in particular the appearance of a Mahdī and the purge of his cult and its militia. The return of the Mughals, and their patronage of the area is illustrated by edifices such as the garden built for Jahangīr’s mother Maryam Zamanī. Extracts from the sources (often untranslated previously) are given in the original Arabic and Persian as well as in translation, as are major epigraphs (supported by Appendix I), to form a coherent picture of this previously neglected area of North Indian history.

An excerpt from Ibn Baṭṭūṭa introduces the challenges of surviving in this arid region. All the existing Indian methods for harnessing and storing monsoon rain were employed in Bayana, adapted and enhanced by the Muslims, resulting in a variety of dams, wells and reservoirs. The reservoirs vary from enhanced natural depressions, such as the “Peacock Lake” planned to supply the Fort, to the more elaborate reservoirs with steps at all sides (bā’olīs). All significant remains are surveyed, notably the Jhālar Bā’olī, an elegant walled and colonnaded structure built in 1318 by the Khaljī governor, Kāfur Sulṭāni, possibly for the army campground but exceptional in its design and creation of a micro-climate. The deep rectangular bā’olīs with a well at one end and steps at the other could also have shady underground arcades and colonnades as places of resort from the heat: the Bā’olī of Khān-i Khānān built for the use of Hindus in the Fort has a hierarchy of space and ornament anticipating early Mughal buildings, other step-wells combining pleasure and utility include that at Barambad, in the garden of Maryam Zamānī, the wife of the Emperor Akbar.

An unusual abundance of contemporary sources illuminates the 1330s: the traveler Ibn Batuta, the statesman Al-Umari, al-Urtyan of Sivrihisar, and Balban the Genoese—all writing in Arabic—the Turkish epic about Umur of Aydın and treaties between the Venetians and Menteşe. Ibn Battuta in particular gives an eye-witness account of the emirates and their rulers. The sources illustrate the wealth of maritime Aydın and Menteşe as well as Germiyan and narrate the spectacular career of Umur and the rising power of Orhan who, however, was paying tribute to the Mongols The chapter describes the emirates along with the Byzantine outpost of Philadelphia. It integrates the coins into the narrative.

Writers on music in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries conceptualized meter through motion. Their primary mode of theorizing meter was through the physical act of beating time. Although today the English term 'beat carries two separate meanings' the one a strike, the other an interval of time, these meanings were not at all separate for thinkers before the eighteenth century. Time for these thinkers was a way to count or number motion, as the Aristotelian commentators put it. Writings on time in natural philosophy and writings on meter were part of a group of knowledge relationships grounded in the Scholastic concept of motus (which meant both motion and change). This chapter examines how these relationships were created, sanctioned, and controlled in the period's music theory, providing close readings of texts by Ornithoparchus, Zarlino, Lippius, and Loulié.

This chapter aims to flesh out the early modern, motion-driven theory of the beat through a focus on the act of beating itself and the conceptual work it accomplished. It argues that the beat should be understood as a technical and physical solution to an ongoing problem in the conceptualization of temporal continuity. The physical act of the beat, a motion with its own continuity, provided a scaffold upon which to construct the continuity of musical time. As such, the beat served as a kind of tool or technique for those who aimed to explain the tenets of practical music theory. A concept with material and physical heft, the beat is an important part of the history of musical technologies. The chapter concludes with a careful rereading of Zarlino, paying particular attention to the medical and philosophical discourses he cites in his chapter on the beat in Le istitutioni harmoniche.

Kilwa Kisiwani is an iconic Swahili stone town, its status and international renown exceeding any other. As discussed, it is also the town that has seen some of the largest-scale archaeological work, recovering a material record that bespeaks a thriving urban setting. Archaeological interest came on the heels of historical scholarship relating to the area; Kilwa is one of the few Swahili towns mentioned by both indigenous and foreign histories. The various versions of the Kilwa Chronicle give an account of the dynastic succession of Kilwa and of the deeds of its various sultans; together they are the earliest indigenous history of the coast. The oldest version was transcribed from oral form by João de Barros in his 1552 Da Asia (Freeman-Grenville 1962a: 89–93), while two other versions were both copied down in the nineteenth century (Strong 1895; Velten 1903). The Chronicles are similar in many aspects, although they differ on details and on the names of certain sultans. Debate over their veracity was quieted by the recovery of thousands of locally minted coins, and the dynastic lists were used as the basis for their interpretation (Album 1999; Brown 1991, 1992, 1993; Chittick 1965, 1967, 1973; Mitchell 1970; Walker 1936, 1939; Walker and Freeman-Grenville 1956). Indeed, the chronology of the Kilwa sultanate has been determined in the interplay between historical and numismatic evidence, the latter seen to act as an independent check on the less-reliable oral histories (cf. Fleisher and Wynne-Jones 2010b). This local historical record is bolstered by occasional mention in travellers’ accounts of the region. These are testament to Kilwa’s growing renown, but rarely offer much detail. In 1222, the Arab geographer Yakut referred to this ‘town in the country of the Zanj’ in his Geography and in 1331 an extended account was provided by Ibn Battuta during his travels on the coast (Freeman-Grenville 1962a: 27–32). These accounts echo a theme evident in the Kilwa Chronicles themselves: a distinction made between this town on its island, and the African continent that sits at its back.

The precolonial Swahili coast was thus a region united through particular material practices. In this volume, consumption and display have been emphasized as aspects that are very clearly evident in the archaeological record. More ephemeral practices, such as ritual, dance, or public acts of memorialization, are only now being incorporated into our understandings, bringing the picture of the precolonial coast into line with what is known of more recent periods (see Chapter 8). Yet tangible acts of display and the use of material objects in certain contexts served to delineate a particular cultural area, as well as to link them to a broader Indian Ocean sphere; the objects bound up into prominent acts were often derived from that world. As has been discussed, this served a purpose on the Swahili coast, where cosmopolitanism and the ability to claim connections with distant regions have long been important in the negotiation of identities. This might be seen as an unequal relationship: a region in which external symbols had special power, whether due to their intrinsic qualities or to the cultural hegemony of the societies from which they came (per Gosden 2004). This has often been the assumption on the eastern African coast, where commodities such as gold or ivory were traded for exotic objects such as glazed ceramics or beads. Yet this inequality is a difficult notion to test. First, as discussed in earlier chapters, the ocean was only one of the spheres of interaction in which the Swahili were active, albeit one that they chose to highlight. Second, it is probable that the imported goods we see on the coast, often in tiny quantities, were just a very small part of a much larger commodity trade. Ships would not have travelled empty to this region, and so the bulk of their cargo must have been made up of items we now do not see: cloth, foodstuffs, or raw materials long since consumed or formed into manufactured objects.

This chapter looks at Granada’s most glorious period, as well as charting the start of its decline. During the reigns of Yusuf I and his son Muhammad V, the Nasrid dynasty reached its heights. This was the period when three poet-viziers decorated the walls of the Alhambra with its celebrated poetry. During this period Granada attracted visitors of the renown of Ibn Battuta and Ibn Khaldun, and its silk industry was celebrated far and wide. But these years of glory were not to last; by the fifteenth century, infighting between rival branches of the Nasrids was causing instability in the kingdom and this would eventually allow the Christian kingdoms to the north to resume the Reconquista.

Called “the traveler of the age,” Ibn Battuta describes the spread of Islam in Mali, saying the people were devoted to Islam, had a reputation for hospitality, peace, and justice, and had a high regard for education and ethical conduct. He visited Diakha (Jakha) in Masina on the Niger whose people, identified as the Jakhanke in this book, were long-standing Muslims noted for their devotion and strict observance whose pacifist clerical tradition is credited to al-Hajj Salim Suware. By establishing this pacifist tradition in Diakha-Bambukhu in the heart of the Mali Empire, al-Hajj Salim Suware emerged as the preeminent anti-sultan of West African Islam. The ancient center of Wuli-Sutukho in the Gambia maintained a continuous clerical tradition from at least the fifteenth century.

The chapter considers the enslaved women belonging to Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn Battuta (1304–1368 CE). Ibn Battuta was a serial slave owner, master of numerous concubines, and author of the renowned Book of Travels (Rihla) completed in 1357. It underscores the ubiquitous use of concubinage during the medieval Islamic period. Drawing on Ibn Battuta’s own observations, the discussion points to the hardships imposed on these women by Ibn Battuta’s relentless itinerary, pointing out that, unlike free women, the concubine’s slave status trumped all other aspects of her identity. She lacked the legal agency reserved for the male owner, although she could improve her lot by sexual and emotional manipulation, subterfuge, or by producing a child for her master.