The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi


 
 
 
 
 
 
 Contents
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Dedication
 Map
 Epigraph
 Contents
 Author’s Note
 A Word on What Is to Come
 Chapter 1
 Chapter 2
 A Letter from a Scholar
 Chapter 3
 A Missive to the Wali of Basrah
 Chapter 4
 Chapter 5
 Exposé of the Tricks of Those Who Work Knockout Drugs and Other Stupefacients from The Book of Charlatans by the Learned Jamāl al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Jawbarī
 Chapter 6
 Chapter 7
 Excerpt from a Warning about the Malabar Coast
 Chapter 8
 Chapter 9
 The First Tale of the Moon of Saba
 Chapter 10
 Chapter 11
 A Notice to Suleiman Batawiyna on the Dissolution of the Apprenticeship of His Son
 Chapter 12
 Chapter 13
 Its Inhabitants Are Christians and Sorcerers
 Chapter 14
 Chapter 15
 A Regrettable Evening in the Maldives
 Chapter 16
 Chapter 17
 An Ill-Fated Decision Due to Greed
 Chapter 18
 Chapter 19
 Chapter 20
 The Second Tale of the Moon of Saba
 Chapter 21
 Chapter 22
 Chapter 23
 Chapter 24
 The Third Tale of the Moon of Saba
 Chapter 25
 Chapter 26
 Chapter 27
 Chapter 28
 They Are an Artful, Debauched Lot
 Chapter 29
 Chapter 30
 Chapter 31
 Chapter 32
 Chapter 33
 Chapter 34
 There Was and Was Not a Nakhudha Named Amina al-Sirafi
 Acknowledgments
 Glossary
 Author’s Note and Further Reading
 Bibliography
 About the Author
 Also by Shannon Chakraborty
 Copyright
 About the Publisher
 
 
 
 
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 Dedication
 
 
 For all those parenting in hardship: during pandemics, through climate crises, and under occupation. For those struggling
 to keep food on the table, and juggle multiple jobs and impossible childcare. For everyone who’s set aside their own dreams,
 briefly or forever, to lift those of the next generation.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Map
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Epigraph
 
 
 I clung to the plank of wood, my only refuge in the storm-tossed sea, and berated myself, saying “Sindbad the Sailor, you
 never learn! After each of your journeys—the first and the second, the third and the fourth, the FIFTH, all worse than that
 which preceded it!—you swear to God to repent and give up these travels. And every time you lie, swayed by greed and adventure,
 to return to the sea. So take the punishment that is coming, you deserve it!”
 
 —From “The Sixth Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor”
 
 
 Author’s Note
 
 Please note that in the voice of the time and place in which this book takes place, the Latin Christians of Western Europe
 are referred to as Franks and the Byzantines as the Rum. The novel’s twelfth-century, largely Islamicate societies of the
 northwestern Indian Ocean littoral had their own rich and fascinating way of describing antiquity, their contemporaries, and
 the wider world, and though I’ve tried to re-create that here as accurately as possible, this is a work of fiction. A glossary
 with additional historical and nautical terms can be found