Roma in the medieval Islamic world: literacy, culture, and migration

Intro -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Figures -- Tables -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction: how the Ghurab ā' Fell Out of History -- Genetic Purity and Languages -- Orientalist Discourses on Sīn-Speakers -- Unthinkability -- Constructing a Roma Racial Subject in Modern Europe -- Conclusion -- Chapter 1: The Roma, Banū Sāsān, and the Ghurabā' -- Who Were the Banū Sāsān? -- Tribal Nomenclature -- Ancestral Tribal Leader -- Professional Subtribes -- Renaming the Banū Sāsān to Ghurabā' -- Late Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Aleppo: Private Journal -- Premodern Romani History -- Chapter 2: Sīn: The Language of the Banū Sāsān and the Ghurabā' -- Buyid Iraq and Iran: Two Qaṣīdas -- Buyid Iran and Abbasid Iraq: Maqāmāt -- Artuqid Mosul: Didactic Prose -- Mamluk Cairo: Shadow Theater -- A Qaṣīda in Artuqid Mardin -- Additional Sīn Sources -- Sīm and Sīn in the Modern Era -- Conclusion: Literary and Historical Implications -- Chapter 3: Gharīb Literary Cultures in Mamluk Cairo -- Gharīb Oral Culture -- Maqāmāt Illustrations -- Bāb al-Lūq, a Gharīb Neighborhood in Mamluk Cairo -- Ibrāhīm al-Miʿmār, a Gharīb Poet -- Conclusion -- Chapter 4: Housing, Neighborhoods, and Cemeteries of Urban Ghurabā' -- Maṣṭaba Housing -- Historical Implications -- Ghurabā' Quarters and Cemeteries -- Damascus -- Ghurabā' Quarter -- Cemeteries -- Aleppo -- Ghajar and Ghurabā' in Aleppo -- Fez -- Andalusian Cities -- Conclusion -- Chapter 5: Bulhāns: Illustrated Shi ʿ i Astrological Books -- Uses of the Bulhān -- Translations and Adaptations -- Conclusion -- Chapter 6: A New Narrative of Premodern Afro-Eurasian Printing -- Johann Gutenberg -- Pre-1500 Blockprinting in East and Central Asia -- Printing Paper Money and Striking Coins -- West Asian Printing as a Minority Enterprise -- Ghurabā' Printing -- Printing Ink.

"The recorded history of gypsy communities in Europe begins with the arrival of the Roma in the fourteenth century, although genetic and linguistic evidence demonstrates that this group left northwest India sometime before the seventh. Remarkably, this leaves a 700-year unexplored void as the communities migrated across the Middle East. The main problem facing historians studying so-called gypsies and gypsy-like communities is a linguistic one - namely not knowing how to identify or recognise them in the medieval Arabic and Persian sources. Drawing on ground-breaking linguistic research, Kristina Richardson here demonstrates that the Banu Sasan - literally 'from the tribe of Sasan' and commonly identified in scholarship as a fringe criminal gang or underworld brotherhood - should be less creatively imagined and viewed as an ordinary tribal confederation: the 'missing' gypsy community. Having established this, Richardson fleshes out the existence of these communities across the medieval Middle East, touching on topics as diverse as their professions, their migration patterns, the art they left behind, the urban spaces they lived in and influenced, their daily life and their literature. Richardson's ground-breaking book will provide the foundation for future studies of the Romani in the period, in addition to revealing a great deal about the cities, communities, religions and cultures that they lived within as they moved and settled across the medieval Islamic world."--