New Books In Islamic Studies

Monsoon Islam: Trade and Faith on the Medieval Malabar Coast (Cambridge University Press, 2019) by Sebastian Prange provides a fascinating window into the Muslim world of the medieval (12-16th century) Malabar Coast and the development of Islam that was defined by significant trade networks. Prange conceptualizes this particular development of Muslim communities on the Malabar Coast as Monsoon Islam. Subverting any notions that Islam developed systematically or through organized political efforts, the book uses the history of the pepper trade across the Indian Ocean to map spatial developments, such as of mosques and ports, and the early Muslim trading communities who inhabited these realms. We have before us a global history of Monsoon Islam that utilizes trade networks to capture far more complex cross-cultural exchanges that included kinship, religious, textual, Sufi, and political networks. The latter dynamics led to instances of negotiated establishment of legal and religious codes, as well as familial a