Mantai: City by the Sea

by John Carswell, Siran Deraniyagala and Alan Graham. Linden Soft Verlag, 2013. Hb., 552pp., 350 illustrations (tables, figures, and maps; colour/b&w), £56. ISBN-13: 9783929290394.

Authors

  • Stéphane Pradines Aga Khan University, London

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jia.v3i1.31879

Keywords:

Mantai, Indian Ocean, trade, port, sea, cultural crossroads

Author Biography

  • Stéphane Pradines, Aga Khan University, London

    Dr Stephane Pradines completed his PhD in Islamic Archaeology from Sorbonne University, Paris IV in 2001. He is an archaeologist and he was in charge of Islamic Archaeology at the French Institute in Cairo from Sept. 2001 to Sept. 2012. Dr Pradines’ fieldwork includes Excavations of the Fatimid and Ayyubid Walls of Cairo, Excavations of Kilwa, Swahili medieval harbour of Tanzania and of Gedi, Swahili medieval harbour of Kenya and more recently Excavation of Dembeni (Mayotte, French Comoros). He also created the First Field School of Islamic Archaeology in Egypt and he was Lecturer in Islamic Archaeology at Cairo University. His publications include Fortifications et urbanisation en Afrique orientale, Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 2004 and Gedi, une cité portuaire swahilie. Islam médiéval en Afrique orientale Monographies d’archéologie islamique 2010.

References

S. Flury, “The Kufic inscriptions of Kizimkazi Mosque, Zanzibar, 1107 A.D.” Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society 1922: 257–264 and M. Schneider, Stèles funéraires musulmanes des îles Dahlak
(mer Rouge), 2 vols., IFAO, 1983.

Mark Horton, Shanga. The Archaeology of a Muslim Trading Community on the Coast of East Africa (BIEA,
Nairobi, 1996), 303–304; Bing Zhao, “Global Trade and Swahili Cosmopolitan Material Culture: Chinese-
Style Ceramic Shards from Sanje ya Kati and Songo Mnara (Kilwa, Tanzania),” Journal of World
History 23(1), 41–85, 2012; Stéphane Pradines and Gwénaël Herviaux, “Dembéni, un site urbain
bipolaire? Mayotte, rapport intermédiaire 2014”, in Nyame Akuma 83, 2015, 128–141.

Horton, Shanga, 303–310.

Through IFPO’s excavations in Islamic Cairo of the last fifteen years, we have gained a solid familiarity
with this material.

Pradines, “L’île de Sanjé ya Kati (Kilwa, Tanzanie), un mythe shirazi bien réel,” Azania, 44(1), 49– 73,
2009.

Pradines, “To the Sources of the Ivory: the Bilad al-Zanj and the Dar al-Fil,” in Ivory trade and
Exchange in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, Myriam Wissa ed., forthcoming.

M. Kervran, Qal?at al-Bahrein. A Trading and Military Outpost (Turnhout, Brepols, 426pp., 2005); Axelle
Rougeulle Dir., Sharma. Un entrepôt de commerce médiéval sur la côte du Hadramawt (Yémen, ca. 980–
1180) (British Foundation for the Study of Arabia Monographs 17, ArchaeoPress, Oxford, 2015,
559pp.).

N. Chittick, Kilwa an Islamic Trading City on the East African Coast (BIEA, Nairobi, 1974, 2 vols., 514pp),
and Manda: Excavations at an Island Port on the Kenya Coast (BIEA, Nairobi, 1984, 258pp.).

Horton, Shanga, 1996 and Pradines, S. Gedi, une cité portuaire swahilie. Islam médiéval en Afrique orientale
(IFAO, Cairo, 302pp., 2010).

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Published

2016-09-12

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Section

Book Reviews

How to Cite

Pradines, S. (2016). Mantai: City by the Sea: by John Carswell, Siran Deraniyagala and Alan Graham. Linden Soft Verlag, 2013. Hb., 552pp., 350 illustrations (tables, figures, and maps; colour/b&w), £56. ISBN-13: 9783929290394. Journal of Islamic Archaeology, 3(1), 145-149. https://doi.org/10.1558/jia.v3i1.31879