The edited volume Muslim Cultures of the Indian Ocean: Diversity and Pluralism, Past and Present is the outcome of a conference held at the Aga Khan University's Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (AKU-ISMC), London, in 2018. Stéphane Pradines, currently Professor of Islamic Art, Architecture and Archaeology at the AKU, and Farouk Topan, Professor Emeritus at AKU, co-wrote the introduction, their respective chapters, and edited the 13 other contributions to this volume. Contributors hail from across the world with several of them working in cities in the Indian Ocean region, from Ahmedabad to the Maldives.

The introduction argues for a range of Muslim cultural connections from the seventh century (ad) to the present day, brought about by mobile groups and their artistic and intellectual practices in interaction with more sedentary communities along the Indian Ocean shores and hinterlands. The Indian Ocean region is considered as a vast canvas of cultures, increasingly held together by “a cultural continuum” (p. 1) of Islam and its different cultural manifestations. The editors marshal a diverse historiography ranging from studies on the “nautical revolution” to the widening of cultural horizons under the Abbasids, trading networks that functioned over a long distance, the movement of people and the emergence of new port cities. It is difficult (maybe even impossible) to draw the wealth of research into a coherent chronology. However, a few key developments are the establishment of “Shirazi” communities in East Africa, the consolidation of thalassocracies on the Swahili coast, such as Zanzibar and Kilwa, the expansion of the Shafiʿi legal school, the shift of transoceanic trade from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea region, and the increasing domination of trade networks by imperial powers into the modern period.

The case studies of the individual chapters elaborate on this idea of the diverse Muslim “cultural continuum” in a kaleidoscopic manner. Part I entitled “Muslim identities, literature and diasporas” includes studies on the cultural confluences visible in manuscripts of the Quran, the shaping of Muslim identities in East Africa under the Zanzibar Sultanate, Persian travelogues and what they reveal about social and cultural encounters of their travellers as well as their changing worldviews. Part II entitled “Monuments and heritage in Muslim contexts” is dedicated to the study of the Indian Ocean as a “Muslim Cultural Landscape” (p. 183, term by Christian Westerdahl) and the various architectural formations from the Swahili Coast to the Maldives, South India, and to Southeast Asia, in particular the architectures of mosques in those different regions and how they relate to a larger Indian Ocean Muslim culture.

The chapters differ in terms of conceptual finesse and empirical depth. Several contributions deliver fascinating case studies which come out of or can serve as stepping stones for future research pursuits. Sana Mirza's close examination of an eighteenth-century Quran script (muṣḥaf) from Harar in Ethiopia explores the affinities of its script with that of the biḥārī script in the Indian subcontinent (possibly from the eastern region of Bihar). The result is an intriguing argument for an “interrelated long-distance artistic network” (p. 28) and elements of a truly transoceanic cultural form. Gulfishan Khan's chapter on “Exploring the geographies and locales in Shaykh Jamali Dehlawi's Siyar al-ʿārifīn (The Virtues of Gnostics)” provides an overview of this exciting collection of biographies, travel accounts, descriptions of places and their sociabilities. Ranging from the Maghrib in the west to Khurasan in the east, Roghayeh Ebrahimi's contribution engages with the maritime worlds of Southeast Asia through another Persian text entitled Jāmʿa al-bar wa-l-baḥr (Compendium of the land and the sea). Its composer, Maḥmūd b. ʿAbdullāh Nīshābūrī, was involved in commercial activities and travelled widely. He penned his account during a long sojourn at the Deccani court of the Quṭb Shāhī's of Golkonda 996/1587–1027/1618. Here, with access to people travelling further to the east, he collected stories and accounts of places such as the islands of Maluku, Manila, Makassar, and even parts of New Guinea. As Ebrahimi argues, the book reveals the workings of commercial operations in this part of the world but also Nīshābūrī's self-understanding of cultural superiority from where he views the spread of Muslim culture through Persian merchants in the archipelago. Stéphane Pradines’ chapter on the “Early Swahili mosques – the role of Ibadi and Ismaili communities” is a highly instructive case study of cultural change in East Africa from the emergence of the Swahili mosques in the context of Ibadi and Ismaili migration and local elite conversion to the increasing spread of Sunni practices from the thirteenth century and the growth of Sufi movements. As Pradines shows, those transformations went hand-in-hand with changes in the use of building materials for mosques.

Several recent works have studied historical changes in Muslim culture across the waters of the Indian Ocean. Patricia Risso's book Merchants and Faith: Muslim Commerce and Culture in the Indian Ocean (1995) is still a reference point, but new studies have taken special vantage points, such as Sebastion Prange's (2018) Monsoon Islam: Trade and Faith on the Medieval Malabar Coast, viewing the Ocean from Malabar and Scott Reese's Imperial Muslims: Islam, Community and Authority in the Indian Ocean, 1839–1937 (2017), which uses the port of Aden in the British maritime imperial networks as its main frame of reference to explore processes of community building. What Pradines and Topan's volume mainly adds to the field of Indian Ocean studies is its strong focus on the material culture and architecture that attest to cultural exchanges and continuities across this transoceanic world over different periods. Here, a further critical reflection on this empirical perspective and how it can intervene in the often rather text-based study of the Indian Ocean's history would have been welcome.

Architectural drawings, photographs, reprints, and maps of high quality enrich many of the chapters. This volume will be of interest to students and specialists working in anthropology, art, architecture, and history in regions from across the Indian Ocean.