In Roma in the Medieval Islamic World, Kristina Richardson offers a concise, groundbreaking volume that establishes a new, critical nexus between studies in Islamic social and material history and in Romani and Romani-like ethnicities and cultures.

Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies

This book is nothing short of a radical remapping of the Global Middle Ages that decenters sedentary peoples and refuses territorial partition. Kristina Richardson brilliantly illuminates the sophisticated literary, technological, and intellectual cultures of the Ghuraba' (Strangers), the Roma, and other traveling communities as they moved along the margins of Afro-Eurasian societies between the eighth and the sixteenth centuries. Methodologically wide-ranging and analytically bold, Roma in the Medieval Islamic World will change the way we write medieval history.

Professor of History and International Studies, Zayde Antrim, Trinity College, USA

Fascinating! Like watching a wonderful and unexpected landscape emerge as a master jigsaw puzzler fits the pieces together.

Richard Bulliet, Emeritus Professor of History, Columbia University, USA

"In this brilliant work, Dr. Kristina Richardson illustrates the fundamental importance of studying peoples that transcend geographical and cultural boundaries. Attention to the 'marginal' Ghuraba' across time and space shows them to be anything one of the major groups responsible for facilitating Afro-Eurasian cultural exchange. Of the many notable contributions of this work, her intervention in the history of the printed book is a stunning contribution to the field. Through meticulous linguistic and material analysis, she shows that the Ghuraba' are the most likely candidates for the transmission of 'print culture' from East Asia to the West. Her findings are sure to win many converts and provide a new methodological approach for exploring the vital importance of minority groups to the emergence of Afro-Eurasian material cultures."

Devin Fitzgerald, Curator of Rare Books and History of Printing, UCLA, USA

Roma in the Medieval Islamic World is a superb example of a sophisticated reading of the historical record, including very well-known and well-studied literary and historical works, with and against the grain. In so doing, the book offers refreshing revisions to several grand narratives.

Journal of the American Oriental Society