Editors Zayde Antrim, Trinity College Alison M. Vacca, Columbia University Middle East Medievalists (MEM) is an international professional non-profit association of scholars interested in the study of the medieval Middle East, expansively defined to include all geographies with prominent Muslim political, religious, or social presences between 500-1500 CE. MEM has two primary goals. The first is to increase the representation of medieval scholarship at scholarly meetings by co-sponsoring panels. The second is to foster communication among individuals and organizations with an interest in the study of the medieval Middle East. Book Review Editors Jocelyn Hendrickson, University of Alberta Han Hsien Liew, Arizona State University Pedagogy File Editor Mathilde Montpetit, New York University Editorial Board, Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā Manan Ahmed, Columbia University Sean Anthony, The Ohio State University Mushegh Asatryan, University of Calgary Hannah Barker, Arizona State University Francesca Bellino, Università di Napoli “L’Orientale” Evrim Binbaş, Universität Bonn Amina Elbendary, The American University in Cairo Corisande Fenwick, University College London Eve Krakowski, Princeton University Josef Meri, Hamad Bin Khalifa University Oya Pancaroğlu, Boğaziçi University Michael Pifer, University of Michigan Walid Salih, University of Toronto Vanessa Van Renterghem, Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (Paris) Board of Directors, Middle East Medievalists Arezou Azad (President), University of Oxford Abigail Balbale (Vice President), New York University Jonathan Z. Brack (Secretary), Northwestern University Omniya Abdel Barr (Board Member), Victoria and Albert Museum and Egyptian Heritage Rescue Foundation Walid Saleh (Board Member), University of Toronto Hannah-Lena Hagemann (Board Member), Universität Hamburg Evyn Kropf (Board Member), University of Michigan Noemie Lucas (Board Member), University of Edinburgh Adam Ramadhan (Graduate Student Representative), Universiteit Leiden Journal Website For submissions, archives, contact information, announcements, and more, please visit: https://journals.library.columbia.edu/ index.php/alusur/index Copyright and Permissions This is an open access journal distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCom- mercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which allows users to copy & distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, & only so long as attribution is given to the original authors and source. To view a copy of this license, visit: http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/alusur/index https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/alusur/index https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/alusur/about/submissions Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 33 (2025) Table of Contents MEM Awards Recipient of the 2024 MEM Lifetime Achievement Award Jürgen Paul ................................................................................................................................................................ v–ix Articles “Ibn Khaldūn’s Muqaddima and the Maps of al-Idrīsī” Alfred Hiatt .............................................................................................................................................................. 1–29 “A Neglected Armenian Source of the Late Umayyad Era: The Martyrdom of Vahan of Gołtʻn” Tim Greenwood, Alasdair Grant, Kieran Hagan, Leone Pecorini Goodall, & Lewis Read ......................... 30-106 “Mkrtičʻ Nałaš: An Armenian Bishop as Pillar of the Aqquyunlu State? Synchronisms in the Armenian and Aqquyunlu History of Diyarbakır, 1430-1450 CE” Georg Leube ........................................................................................................................................................ 107-138 “'Masʾalatun or Mas'ʾalatun? That Is the Question! The Implications of Traditional Persian Metrics for Classical Arabic Stress” Arya Tabibzadeh................................................................................................................................................. 139-148 “Emotional Manipulation, Coercion, and Precarity in the Tales of Jamīl and Buthayna” Jonny Lawrence .................................................................................................................................................. 149-180 “The Tatars of the Sūdān: Race, Place, and Power in Ibn Saʿīd’s Geography” Hannah Barker ................................................................................................................................................... 181-216 “Selenocentrism and Heliocentrism in Early Modern Persianate Imperial Cultures: ʿAlī versus Jesus, with Hermes Presiding: A Harranian Essay in Astro-Decoloniality” Matthew Melvin-Koushki ................................................................................................................................. 217-266 Thematic Dossier: Indian Ocean Histories Guest edited by Jyoti Gulati Balachandran “Indian Ocean Histories: Connections and Reflections” Jyoti Gulati Balachandran ................................................................................................................................. 267-272 “White Camphor and Peppercorn Hair: Blackness in Medieval Arabo-Asia” Guangtian Ha ...................................................................................................................................................... 273-307 Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 33 (2025) “Across Sea and Ocean: Transmitting and Receiving Caliphal Sovereignty Claims between the Late Medieval Cairo Sultanate and the Sultanates of India” Mustafa Banister ............................................................................................................................................... 308-347 “The ‘Lamp of Hind’ in Cairo: How an Indian Jurist Became the Chief Hanafi Judge of the Mamluk Sultanate in the Fourteenth Century” Sohaib Baig ......................................................................................................................................................... 348-382 “What’s in a World? The ‘Indian Ocean World’ as a Research Framework” Maria Gajewska.................................................................................................................................................. 383-411 Roundtable on the Global Middle Ages “A Sea of Sorcery: Roundtable on The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi” Shireen Hamza................................................................................................................................................... 412-413 “Witches” Liana Saif ............................................................................................................................................................ 414-419 [Retracted] [Retracted] ......................................................................................................................................................... 420-424 “Transformation” Shireen Hamza................................................................................................................................................... 425-430 “Faith, Freedom, and Favors” Rebecca Hankins ............................................................................................................................................... 431-435 “Piracy” Mahmood Kooria .............................................................................................................................................. 436-439 “The Swahili Coast” KD Thompson ................................................................................................................................................... 440-442 “Voyage Stories: The Natural and Supernatural on the Deck of a Dhow” Fahad Ahmad Bishara ....................................................................................................................................... 443-446 Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 33 (2025) Editions & Translations “Kitāb al-Safar: A Book on the Management of Travel by a Yemeni Rasulid Sultan” Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Jāzim, with a Foreword by Daniel Martin Varisco ....................................... 447-481 Notes & Brief Communications “The Relative Lenience or Strictness of the Sunni Schools of Law” Christopher Melchert ........................................................................................................................................ 482-487 Pedagogy Files “The Multiplicity of Mosque Architecture in China” Sylvia Wu ............................................................................................................................................................. 488-514 Conference Reports Report on Serious Laughter: Beyond the Jest-Earnest Binary in Classical Arabic Literature Jonny Lawrence .................................................................................................................................................. 515-521 Book Reviews Review of Cyrille Aillet, L’archipel ibadite Antonia Bosanquet ............................................................................................................................................ 522-524 Review of Tehseen Thaver, Beyond Sectarianism Mushegh Asatryan ............................................................................................................................................. 525-529 Review of Ibn Buṭlān, The Doctors’ Dinner Party, ed. and trans. Philip F. Kennedy and Jeremy Farrell Elaine van Dalen ................................................................................................................................................. 530-534 Review of David Hollenberg and Mushegh Asatryan, The Nusayri Path of Knowledge Daniel De Smet.................................................................................................................................................... 535-536 Review of Atta Muhammad, Sufis in Medieval Baghdad Pascal Held .......................................................................................................................................................... 537-539 Review of Jonathan Z. Brack, An Afterlife for the Khan Blain Auer ............................................................................................................................................................ 540-544 Review of Kazuo Morimoto and Sajjad Rizvi, eds., Knowledge and Power in Muslim Societies Nebil Husayn ....................................................................................................................................................... 545-550