Serendipitous Translations
University of Texas Press (Verlag)
978-1-4773-3289-4 (ISBN)
Sri Lanka is an underappreciated focal point of global history. Known to Persian and Arab traders as Serendib, the island has long been a site of intensive cultural and material exchange, as well as a holy place-Islamic tradition holds that the biblical Adam arrived there after his expulsion from Eden. Assembling centuries of texts, this volume presents an array of sources from the Indian Ocean.
Serendipitous Translations gathers travelogues, literary works, commercial records, inscriptions, religious tracts, pilgrim manuals, and more-an unprecedented range of Muslim voices from Sri Lanka between the 1200s and 1990s. These works vividly document medieval pilgrimages, maritime mystics, diplomatic encounters, colonial-era commerce, and the bustling everyday affairs of a cosmopolitan Asian nexus. Expert translations bring Arabic, Malay, Turkish, Urdu, Dhivehi, Sinhala, Arabu-Tamil, and Tamil texts to readers of English for the first time. Editor Nile Green situates these texts in their Indian Ocean contexts by introducing the broad sweep of Sri Lanka’s story. An invaluable collection, Serendipitous Translations is the most comprehensive anthology of primary sources ever assembled on Sri Lanka’s thousand-year links to the Muslim world.
Nile Green is a professor of history at UCLA. He is the author of many award-winning monographs, the editor of eight books, and the host of the podcast Akbar’s Chamber: Experts Talk Islam.
List of Illustrations
A Note on Names and Spellings
Foreword (B. A. Hussainmiya)
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction. An Island in a Sea of Languages (Nile Green)
Chapter 1. Ibn Battuta’s Arabic Travelogue on Sarandib (Christopher Bahl)
Chapter 2. A Fragrance from Ceylon: An Arabic Mystical Epistle by Shaykh Yusuf al-Maqasiri (Mahmood Kooria)
Chapter 3. From the Seventh Clime to the Jewel Mine: Ottoman Turkish Visions of Lanka from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Centuries (Michael O’Sullivan)
Chapter 4. Muslim Lanka in Malay: A Prophet’s Exile, a Writer’s Recollections, and a Soldier-Saint’s Journey (Teren Sevea)
Chapter 5. “A Journey through the Sea”: An Indian Merchant Makes Sense of Ceylon in Urdu (Nile Green)
Chapter 6. The Muslim Friend and the “Muslim Revival”: Religious Change in Tamil Muslim Newspapers (Torsten Tschacher)
Chapter 7. Daydreams at Dawn: Hussain Salahuddeen’s Dhivehi Novel Numaan and Maryam (Garrett Field)
Chapter 8. Weaponizing Identity: The Sinhalese Reaction to Muslim Migration and Indian Ocean Cosmopolitanism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (Shamara Wettimuny)
Chapter 9. Adam’s Peak and Muslim Identity in Modern Tamil Texts (Alexander McKinley)
Contributors
Index
| Erscheinungsdatum | 07.01.2026 |
|---|---|
| Reihe/Serie | Connected Histories of the Middle East and the Global South |
| Zusatzinfo | 12 b&w photos, 9 b&w illustrations, 2 b&w maps |
| Verlagsort | Austin, TX |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 152 x 229 mm |
| Gewicht | 454 g |
| Themenwelt | Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte |
| ISBN-10 | 1-4773-3289-8 / 1477332898 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-4773-3289-4 / 9781477332894 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
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