Akbar's Chamber - Experts Talk Islam

How Adam Fell to Earth in India: The Coral Rosary of Azad Bilgrami

According to a widespread Islamic tradition, when Adam was expelled from the garden of Eden he fell to earth on Sarandib (now Sri Lanka). In this episode, we hear how this tradition was interpreted in India through the monumental Arabic work, Subhat al-Marjan (The Coral Rosary). Since Arabic isn’t often associated with India, we begin by sketching the history of the language in the region. Next, we turn to the biography of Ghulam Ali Azad Bilgrami (1704-86), the author of Subhat al-Marjan who lived during an age of massive political disruption as the Mughal Empire fell apart. Withdrawing to the library of a Sufi monastery in Aurangabad, Azad Bilgrami spent years studying the evidence that linked India to Adam, the Prophet Muhammad, and other key figures of Islamic sacred history. We learn how in his masterpiece Bilgrami brought all this evidence together with the artistry that earned him the moniker Hassan al-Hind (the Hassan of India) for his skills in Arabic. Nile Green talks to Andrea Maria Negri, author of A Mirror of Arabic Language and Literature in India: Gulām ʿAlī Āzād Bilgrāmī’s Subhat al-margān fī ātār Hindūstān (De Gruyter, 2026).

Muslims in the Land of the Red Dragon

Wales: land of legendary dragons and male-voice choirs, of the cragged beauty of Snowdonia and the indefatigable lungs of the singer Tom Jones. Or land of old Arabic coins and lost Qurans, Sufi mystics and Muslim sons of empire. In this episode, we uncover fascinating and surprising facets of Islamic history in this little-known corner of Europe. We begin by introducing Wales itself, then asking what it was about this country that attracted Muslim individuals and artifacts alike. Suitably prepared, we board our podcast tour bus, stopping at key sites with very different stories. Along the way, we take in the library of a Christian monastery, the dockyards of the capital Cardiff, and the seaside resort of sunny Rhyl during the dark days of World War Two. Nile Green talks to Abdul-Azim Ahmed, author of Muslim Wales: A History in 9 Places (Seren Books, 2026).

A Muslim Interpretation of the Christian Gospels

Muslims have always recognized the Gospels, or Injil, as a holy book. But for most of Islamic history, such recognition was more theoretical than practical, with the Gospels discussed in the abstract than actually read. After all, Muslim scholars studied Arabic, not the Greek or Syriac in which copies of the New Testament were available to them. However, the 19^th century saw European Christian missionaries make the Gospels far more widely available to Muslims by printing translations in Arabic, Persian, Urdu and other languages. Among the learned Muslim who responded was one of the most influential Muslim thinkers of the modern era: Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-98). In this episode, we explore what motivated him to write a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew in his Urdu work, Tabyin al-Kalam (Elucidation of the Word); how he understood the Christian scripture as a Muslim; and how he used his newfound knowledge of the Injil to argue for the consistency of Muslim and Christian beliefs. Nile Green talks to Charles Ramsey, co-translator of Sir Sayyid’s Commentary of the Gospel: Tabyīn al-Kalām, Part 3 (Brill and Maktaba Jadid, 2017).

After Rumi: The Mevlevi Heirs of the World’s Most Famous Sufi

Rumi is perhaps the most famous Sufi of all time. For centuries after he died in 1273, his Persian poems were read and recited from the Balkans to Bengal. But his teachings were also passed down through the Mevlevi order that was established after his death in Konya (in present-day Turkey). From their headquarters around Rumi’s shrine in Konya, then subsequently from the Ottoman capital of Istanbul, the Mevlevis became one of the most influential Sufi orders in the eastern Mediterranean. Wrapping Rumi’s poetry into a larger package of ritual, music, meditation, and dance, the Mevlevis explored the many layers of meaning in Rumi’s masterpiece the Masnavi, on which several Mevlevi leaders penned commentaries. In this episode, we trace the development and teachings of the Mevlevi order, with a focus on the distinct emotional style that characterized its spirituality. Nile Green talks to Jamal J. Elias, author of After Rumi: The Mevlevis and Their World (Harvard University Press, 2025).

Beyond the Great Wall of China: A New History of Islamic China

Of all the world’s Muslim communities, the multiethnic Muslims of China are perhaps the least known, as though secluded by a Great Wall of linguistic, geographical and political dimensions. Yet preserved in mosques and shrines across the whole length of China—as well as India and Thailand —are manuscripts, woodblock prints and lithographs that reveal the interconnections of China’s Muslims with their coreligionists in other parts of Asia.  In this episode, we travel far and wide by following these books and their authors from Nanjing and Xinjiang to Kanpur, Sri Lanka and Mecca. We learn about such influential figures as Wang Daiyu (c.1570-1660) and Ma Lianyuan (1842-1903), who not only wrote books in Chinese and Persian but also pioneered the development of Muslim printing. We also see how their teachings and travels linked China’s Muslims to various regions of Asia beyond that illusory Great Wall. Nile Green talks to Rian Thum, author of Islamic China: An Asian History (Harvard University Press, 2025).

What is a Madrasa? Life and Learning in an Islamic College

In the years after 9/11, madrasas became a major concern of serious newspapers throughout the Western world. But two decades later, how many of us can really say we know what a madrasa is – still less, what actually goes on in one of them? This episode dispenses with theoretical abstractions to explore the realities of lived experience, with a focus on South Asia (specifically India). We’ll learn what madrasa students actually do day to day. Then we’ll turn to the kinds of texts that are taught, along with the distinct modes of teaching that characterize a madrasa education. Here we examine the concept of the maslak (meaning ‘way’ or ‘method’)—and the disagreements between proponents of rival maslaks. We’re fortunate in being guided by an ‘insider/outsider’ and self-described ‘friendly critic’ of the traditional madrasa system. Nile Green talks to Ebrahim Moosa, author of What is a Madrasa? (University of North Carolina Press, 2015).

Translating the Untranslatable: The Curious History of Quran Translation

How should one go about translating a text that is untranslatable? Especially when the text is believed to be the living word of God? Muslims have pondered this dilemma for more than a millennium, because a standard doctrine of Islam is the ‘inimitability of the Quran’ (i‘jaz al-Qur’an). This principle was often taken to imply the untranslatability of the Quran. But even in the first centuries of Islam, the conversion on non-Arabs created the practical need for translation. This episode explores the different solutions Muslims found, whether through interlinear summaries and tafsir commentaries in premodern times or via the proliferation of full-blown translations in the modern age of print—and nationalism. From multilingual manuscripts to state-sanctioned translations, we trace the different ways in which the Quran has been read over the centuries. Nile Green talks to M. Brett Wilson, author of Translating the Qur’an in an Age of Nationalism: Print Culture and Modern Islam in Turkey (Oxford University Press, 2014).

The Wolf King: The Forgotten Spanish Kingdom of Ibn Mardanish

Over the past few decades, archaeologists have excavated the remnants of a little-known Muslim kingdom from beneath hotels, parking lots, and even a convent in the Spanish city of Murcia. Cast into the shadows by the splendors of Granada, in its heyday Murcia was a flourishing kingdom that welcomed both Sufi mystics and Italian merchants. The main figure responsible for this was a man of many names. He was officially known on the coins he minted as Muhammad ibn Saʿd, but he was more widely known in Arabic by the mysterious moniker Ibn Mardanish. And to the Christians of Spain—who were often his allies—he was el Rey Lobo: the Wolf King. In this episode, we take a historical tour of medieval Murcia and the stylish palace of Ibn Mardanish, before tracing how in later centuries his memory was burdened with various competing messages.  Nile Green talks to Abigail Krasner Balbale, author of The Wolf King: Ibn Mardanish and the Construction of Power in al-Andalus (Cornell University Press, 2022).

Pakistan’s Little Mecca: Architectural Marvels of Medieval Sindh

Everyone has heard of Mecca. But few people outside Pakistan have heard of Makli, or “Little Mecca,” the sacred cemetery that is both the holiest place in Sindh and a UNESCO World Heritage site. The site is actually huge, with up to a million people buried there, so the “little” reflects respect for Mecca rather than the size of Makli. More important than Makli’s size, though, is its beauty. From the fourteenth onwards, rulers and aristocrats from the local Samma, Arghun, then Mughal dynasties commissioned elegant carved stone mausoleums around the burial places of the saints who rendered Makli sacred. In this episode, we’ll take an audio tour of its beautiful buildings, looking at their decorative symbolism and Arabic inscriptions, before delving further into the history of this extraordinary necropolis of the holy, powerful, and poor alike. Nile Green talks to Fatima Quraishi, author of Palimpsests Past and Present: The Sufis and Sultans of the Makli Necropolis (1380–1660) (University of North Carolina Press, 2026).

Islam in the Land of Bilal: The Rich Heritage of Ethiopia’s Muslims

Today nearly a third of Ethiopians are Muslims. At around 37 million, that’s a larger Muslim population than many Middle Eastern countries. According to Islamic tradition, fourteen centuries ago the first person appointed by the Prophet Muhammad to call Muslims to prayer was an Ethiopian called Bilal ibn Rabbah. Moreover, some of the Prophet’s companions sought refuge in the Ethiopian Christian kingdom of Axum. Over the following centuries, Islam spread to other regions and ethnic groups in what is now Ethiopia, developing a rich tradition of manuscript written in Arabic and local languages alike. Using the Arabic script (or more recently the Fidäl script), Islamic manuscripts were written in languages as varied as Somali, Harari, Oromo, Afar and Tigrinya. This episode explores the multilingual manuscripts, Sufi traditions, and modern technologies through which Ethiopia’s Muslims have maintained their religious and cultural heritage from the time of Bilal to today.  Nile Green talks to Alessandro Gori, co-editor of The Writings of the Muslim Peoples of Northeastern Africa (Brill, 2022).

Mecca through Bosnian Eyes: Five Centuries of Pilgrimage Writing from Southeast Europe

The Muslims of Bosnia in southeast Europe treasure a centuries-long tradition of writing about the journey to Mecca. These treatises and travelogues help us trace the changing ways in which the hajj was experienced and described by these European Muslims who lived under the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, then socialist Yugoslavia, before the independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the early 1990s. To explore these different meanings of the hajj for the Bosnian Muslims—or Bosniaks—this episode looks at the fascinating texts they wrote in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish as well as the Bosnian language. We’ll follow not only the impact of changing political conditions, but also the way new forms of transport and changing literary fashions reshaped the experience and interpretation of a pilgrimage which both was and wasn’t the same over the centuries.  Nile Green talks to Dženita Karić, author of Bosnian Hajj Literature: Multiple Paths to the Holy (Edinburgh University Press, 2022).

Islamic Occultism: The ‘Hidden’ Sciences of the Premodern Muslim World

Islam and the occult may seem like odd bedfellows. But during the medieval and early modern periods, Muslim thinkers wrote vast numbers of manuscripts on a panoply of occult sciences, ranging from numerology and astrology to alchemy and lettrism. Just as the English word occult derives from the Latin occultus (meaning ‘hidden’), so in Arabic were these arcane disciplines collectively known as the ‘ulum al-khafiyya (‘hidden sciences’). Both the Latin and Arabic terms were references to the invisible rather than visible dimensions of the cosmos that, as the scientists of their time, such occultists sought to manipulate. So important were these Islamic occult sciences that they formed a crucial part of high imperial politics, patronized by emperors and other courtly elites who deployed these hidden sciences for everything from hiring personnel and military success to urban and even party planning. Nile Green talks to Matthew Melvin-Koushki, co-editor of Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice (Brill, 2021).