Almost invariably, the scholarly writings on music during the medieval period were composed at a private commissioner's request. We are told that al-Kind? composed his treatise, al-Ris?lat al-Kubr? f? l-Ta?l?f, for Ahmad ibn al-Mu?ta?im (d.866 CE). From the same period, Ya?y? ibn Ali ibn Ya?y? al-Munajjim's (d. 912 CE) treatise on music is dedicated to the caliph al-Mu?ta?id (d. 902 CE). Al-F?r?b? composed his Kit?b al-M?s?q? l-Kab?r at the request of the Abbasid vizier Abu Ja?far Muhammad ibn Q?sim al-Karkh?, while ?af? al-D?n al-Urmaw? composed his two treatises on music after being commissioned by an unnamed patron (possibly al-??s?, the astronomer (d. 1274 CE), and the Ilkhanid governor of Baghdad, Shams al-D?n al-Juwayn? (d. 1285 CE), respectively. Even encyclopedic works that include a chapter on the science of music, like Qu?b al-D?n al-Sh?r?z?'s Durrat al-T?j, were usually commissioned at a patron's request. The role of these patrons was so important that the final product was occasionally tailored specifically according to their needs and level of knowledge. As evidenced by the names of the patrons listed above, it appears that the intended audience of these treatises, at least at the beginning of the scientific tradition on music, was neither professional musicians nor ordinary people, but rather the Baghdadi elite, who wanted to learn about the science of music in a scholarly manner and had the financial means to commission treatises on the subject. This prompts us to look at these treatises as pedagogical tools, instrumental in learning about musical science. And yet, contemporary scholarship thus far has not dealt with this educational aspect of these treatises, treating them instead as data sets from which to extract information about the practice of music in medieval Islamicate societies. While this approach has been highly influential in shaping our understanding of the medieval period's musical culture as an audible phenomenon, it has neglected the social and intellectual dimensions of the learning of music as a scientific discipline. In this paper, I study learning the science of music among the elite of medieval Baghdad (9th-13th century) by examining the literature on the etiquette of companionship (Adab al-mun?dama) as well as the "mirrors for princes" genre. Further, I elaborate on the mechanisms and social factors that contributed to the fostering of an environment of continued production of literature on the science of music for centuries in the Islamicate world, with a particular focus on Baghdad.

This talk focuses on the travels and travails of Christian devotional objects—including their looting, breaking, and redemption. It argues that devotional objects shaped encounters and relations between Christians and Muslims (including Moriscos and renegades) in the Maghrib. Christian captives in the Maghrib crafted, received, and venerated images, or, if they converted to Islam, handed them over to their former coreligionists. Images’ intermediary role culminated in the threats of Muslim rulers and slave owners to break images; these threats were often carried out. Thus, the circulation of religious images across the sea offers a unique vantage point for the analysis of early modern Muslim iconoclasm—profaning and damaging images—and iconoclasm more broadly. While Christians framed real and imagined Muslim iconoclasm as based on theological prohibitions on figuration, hatred, or avarice, for Muslims it was often grounded in a non-aniconic theologically and always served political goals—breaking images was means for rulers to prove themselves spiritual guardians, enhancing their political sovereignty. Images were efficient mediators between these communities because they played a constitutive role for Catholics, which Muslims acknowledged but rejected. The talk positions these contentious objects at the center of the world of ransom over which Mediterranean rulers, redeeming friars, and merchants struggled, and analyses them as part of a trans-regional political economy of ransom. Reconstructing images’ trajectories offers a new way to understand cross-confessional relations across the Mediterranean. Moreover, studying these images sheds new light on a forgotten early modern Maghribi chapter in the history of Christianity, and reflects the importance of Christian artifacts in the Muslim material culture of the Maghrib.

The representation of the Mediterranean in the KMMS (Kit?b al-mas?lik wa-al-mam?lik, i.e. Book of Routes and Realms) tradition is striking. The cartographers use a bulbous geometric form to portray both sides of the Mediterranean as mirror images of each other. Given the history of tension between the northern and southern ?anks of the Mediterranean especially with the onset of Islamic control, this harmonious depiction of the two sides of the Mediterranean as near re?ections of each other takes us by surprise. Not least because we know the northern ?ank of the Mediterranean from modern maps to be anything but even. It is as if the Muslim cartographers chose to transpose the southern ?ank of the Mediterranean, with which they must have been more familiar, to the north. Should we read this as an assertion of a Muslim Mare Nostrum? The three islands of Cyprus, Crete, and Sicily form the central East-West axis of the image. These islands run through the heart of the sea and are capped by a mysterious, mythical island labeled Jabal al-Qilal. The Nile Delta and the Bosphorus with Crete as its central hub create an off-center North-South axis. These two axes divide the Mediterranean into four distinct quarters: the Levant opposite Anatolia, and the larger quarter of North Africa opposite Spain and Portugal. Separation of the Levantine ?ank from its Anatolian counterpart is indicated by the presence of three prominent south-eastern Anatolian rivers. Beyond the mouth of the Mediterranean a band representing the Encircling Ocean serves as the ?nal frontier for the Muslim Mediterranean. This map is always drawn with west, i.e. the mouth of the Mediterranean, at the top of the map. Thus the eye of the cartographer is ?rmly located in the East, speci?cally the Levant and the caliphal lands that lie east of it. This paper picks apart and studies the Islamicate map of the Mediterranean with the intention of explaining the signi?cance of its iconic form and the meaning behind its layout and distribution of places and spaces. The intent being to access windows into the milieus and geographic mentality that created and perpetuated this curious image of the Mediterranean and what its commissioners and makers intended to communicate to their audience about the geospatial politics of their time.