Muslim Cultures of the Indian Ocean

Stéphane Pradines is an archaeologist and Professor of Islamic Art, Architecture and Archaeology and the founder and Head of the Indian Ocean programme at the Aga Khan University, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (AKU-ISMC) in London. Pradines is also a UNESCO, WMF and Google Arts expert for the Indian Ocean region. He is associate researcher to the CNRS Lab in Paris: UMR 8167 Orient & Méditerranée, Atlas of Medieval ports programme. He was the director of the excavations of the walls of Cairo (Egypt) and at excavations in the Indian Ocean (Maldives) and East Africa (Gedi in Kenya, Kilwa and Mafia in Tanzania, Mayotte in Comoros). He is now in charge of the excavations on the fort of Lahore, Pakistan (AKTC-SP). He is the founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Material Cultures in the Muslim World, and he is also the editor of Earthen Architecture in Muslim Cultures (2017) and Ports and Forts of the Muslims. Coastal Military Architecture, from the Arab Conquest to the Ottoman Period (2020). His latest book is Historic Mosques in sub-Saharan Africa, from Timbuktu to Zanzibar (2022). Farouk Topan is Professor Emeritus at the Aga Khan University, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, London. He has taught at the universities of Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Riyad and the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London. He is also a writer of Swahili fiction and has published several short stories and two of his plays have been part of the school curriculum in Tanzania.

The volume makes an original and distinctive contribution to the subject, and more generally to Indian Ocean studies. One of the volume’s strengths is precisely its multidisciplinary approach that makes it also suitable for different area studies in Human and Social Sciences.

• List of FiguresIntroductionStéphane Pradines and Farouk TopanPART 1: MUSLIM IDENTITIES, LITERATURE AND DIASPORAS1. Developing the Harari Muṣḥaf: The Indian Ocean Milieu of Ethiopian ScribesSana Mirza2. The Making of a Qur’ān Manuscript in Lamu Archipelago: The Indian Ocean Cross-cultural InfluenceWalid Ghali3. Muslim Identities of the Indian Ocean: The Ibadi Al Bu Sa’id of Oman during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth CenturiesBeatrice Nicolini4. Religion, Ethnicity and Identity in the Zanzibar SultanateValerie J. Hoffman5. Transcending Boundaries: Sayyida Salme/Emily Ruete and Siti binti SaadFarouk Topan6. Exploring the Geographies and Locales in Shaykh Jamali Dehlawi’s Siyar al-ʿārifīn (The Virtues of Gnostics)Gulfishan Khan7. A Persian view of the Maritime Muslim Frontier in Southeast Asia: The Jāmiʿ al-barr waʾl-baḥrRoghayeh Ebrahimi8. ‘Sword of the Two Sanctuaries’: Islam of and in the Modern Indian OceanM. Reza PirbhaiPART II: MONUMENTS AND HERITAGE IN MUSLIM CONTEXTS9. The Indian Ocean as a Martime Cultural Landscape and Heritage RouteEric Falt10. Indian Ocean Heritage and Sustainable Conservation, from Zanzibar to KilwaStephen Battle and Pierre Blanchard11. Early Swahili Mosques: the Role of Ibadi and Ismaili Communities, Ninth to Twelfth CenturiesStéphane Pradines12. Traditional Bohra Dwellings of Gujarat, India: Architectural Response to Cultural EthosMadhavi Desai13. Regionalism in Religious Architecture of India: A Comparative Study of Mosques in Gujarat and KeralaMiki Desai14. Architecture of Coral Stone Mosques of the MaldivesMohamed Mauroof Jameel 15. The Development of Early Islamic Architecture and Decoration in the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago (Nusantara)Bernard O’KaneAbout the ContributorsIndex