Table of Contents

Notes on Dates and Transliteration

Acknowledgments

Prologue. Ibn Battuta's Sijilmasa Journey

Chapter 1. Approaches to Sijilmasa

Chapter 2. Confluence of Time and Space in Morocco's Desert Land

Chapter 3. Founding the Oasis City

Chapter 4. Sijilmasa in Empire

Chapter 5. Moroccan Rulers at the Desert's Edge: The Filalians

Chapter 6. Out of Sijilmasa: The Alaouites

Chapter 7. Using Models of the Islamic City as Guides

Chapter 8. An Altered Present; An Uncertain Future

Appendix 1. Moroccan Dynastic Rulers Governing Sijilmasa

Appendix 2. Ceramics Typology

Notes

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

Promotional Information

"Messier and Miller are among the few Americans working on pre-modern North African topics. They are possibly unique in their role as joint practitioners of urban Islamic archaeology for North Africa. They are more qualified to write this type of book than any other combination of scholars I know... [This] book reflects an effective integration of archaeological data with an urban history, and can be a model for the study of any pre-modern Muslim city from the Atlantic to the Indus Valley." -- Jere Bacharach, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Washington, and author of Islamic History through Coins: An Analysis and Catalogue of Tenth-Century Ikhshidid Coins

About the Author

Ronald A. Messier is Professor Emeritus of History at Middle Tennessee State University. From 1987 to 1998, he directed the excavation of Sijilmasa. He is the author of The Almoravids and the Meanings of Jihad and coeditor of The Jihad and Its Times. James A. Miller is the Director of the Moroccan-American Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange (MACECE), the Fulbright Commission in Morocco. He is Associate Professor Emeritus of Geography at Clemson University and the author of Imlil: A Modern Moroccan Geography.