Includes index.

"Off the tip of India, Sri Lanka has been one of the crossroads of the Indian Ocean, the destination or stopping point of many travelers from the Muslim world from Medieval times onward. The island also played a important role in Muslim tradition, believed to be the spot where Adam fell from the celestial Garden of Eden. Eminent historian Nile Green here assembles a variety of sources from Sri Lanka itself as well as from these maritime travelers, originally written in a variety of languages and translated for this volume. They reveal how the island was understood by the peoples of the Indian Ocean and in turn how Sri Lankan Buddhists viewed Islam and Muslims. Ranging across genres and time from 1200 to 1990, the texts included here speak to the importance of the island as well as the cosmopolitan nature of the Indian Ocean. Green begins with an introduction to Sri Lanka and its importance within the Indian Ocean, its own Muslim population, and its relation to other Muslim territories. He also explores its place within the literatures of the Middle East and South Asia and the tropes within them as travelers write about the island's place in commerce and politics in addition to their culture, people, and religious traditions. The source texts themselves are introduced and translated by experts, the most expansive and linguistically varied collection of documents on the Indian Ocean. The pieces range from excerpts from geographical texts of medieval Arabs, to travelogues of Ottoman travelers, to diaries, newspaper and journal articles, and an excerpt from a novel. Appropriate to this series, the texts all show Sri Lanka's role in the connected histories of the Indian Ocean and Islam"-- Provided by publisher.