The trading links among the lands around the Indian Ocean have attracted the attention of recent scholars. A fine place to begin is Patricia Risso, Merchants and Faith: Muslim Commerce and Culture in the Indian Ocean (1995). More ambitious but perhaps more inclined to overreach the evidence is Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System, a. d. 1250-1350 (1989), which may usefully be read with K. N. Chaudhuri, Asia Before Europe: Economy and Civilization of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (1991). Students will find clear summaries of Islam’s influences in tropical Asia and Africa in Ira Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, 2nd ed. (2002), part II, and of commercial relations in Philip D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (1984).
Greater detail about tropical lands is found in regional studies. For Southeast Asia see Nicholas Tarling, ed., The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, vol. 1 (1992); John F. Cady, Southeast Asia: Its Historical Development (1964); and G. Coedes, The Indian-ized States of Southeast Asia, ed. Walter F. Vella (1968). India is covered comprehensively by R. C. Majumdar, ed., The History and Culture of the Indian People, vol. 4, The Delhi Sultanate, 2nd ed. (1967); with brevity by Stanley Wolpert, A New History of India, 6th ed. (1999); and from an intriguing perspective by David Ludden, A Peasant History of South India (1985). For advanced topics see Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of India, vol. 1, c. 1200-c. 1750 (1982).
A great deal of new scholarship on Africa in this period is summarized in Chapters 6 and 7 of Christopher Ehret’s The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800 (2002). See also the latter parts of Graham Connah’s African Civilizations: Precolonial Cities and States in Tropical Africa: An Archaeological Perspective (1987), and, for greater depth, D. T. Niane, ed., UNESCO General History of Africa, vol. 4, Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century (1984), and Roland Oliver, ed., The Cambridge History of Africa, vol. 3, c. 1050 to c. 1600 (1977).
For accounts of slavery and the slave trade, see Salim Kidwai, “Sultans, Eunuchs and Domestics: New Forms of Bondage in Medieval India,” in Chains of Servitude: Bondage and Slavery in India, ed. Utsa Patnaik and Manjari Dingwaney (1985), and the first two chapters of Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa, 2nd ed. (2000).
Three volumes of ibn Battuta’s writings have been translated by H. A. R. Gibb, The Travels of Ibn Battuta, A. D. 1325-1354 (1958-1971). Ross E. Dunn, The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim of the 14th Century (1986), provides a modern retelling of his travels with commentary. For annotated selections see Said Hamdun and Noel King, Ibn Battuta in Black Africa (1995).
The most accessible survey of Indian Ocean sea travel is George F. Hourani, Arab Seafaring, expanded ed. (1995). For a Muslim Chinese traveler’s observations, see Ma Huan, Ying-yai Sheng-lan, “The Overall Survey of the Ocean's Shore" [1433], trans. and ed. J. G. Mills (1970). Another valuable contemporary account of trade and navigation in the Indian Ocean is G. R. Tibbetts, Arab Navigation in the Indian Ocean Before the Coming of the Portuguese, Being a Translation of the Kitab al-Fawa’id. . . of AhmadB. Majidal-Najdi (1981).
World History
