تحفة النظار في غرايب الامصار وعجايب الاسفار 13.58: ذكر سوق المغنين

In the city of Dawlat Ābād there is a market for male and female singers called Ṭarab Ābād, one of the finest and largest of markets. It has many shops, each with a door leading into its owner's house, and the house has another door besides! The shop is decorated with carpets, and in its middle is something like a large cradle in which the singing-girl sits or reclines, adorned with all kinds of jewellery, while her slave-girls rock her cradle.

In the middle of the market is a great dome, carpeted and ornamented, in which the chief of the musicians sits after the afternoon prayer every Thursday, with his servants and mamlūks before him, and the singing-girls come, one group after another, and sing

Music and singing — from The Art of Painting among the Arabs — Ministry of Information — Baghdad 1973

before him and dance until the time of the sunset prayer; then he departs. In that market there are mosques for prayer, and the imams lead the tarāwīḥ prayers in them during the month of Ramaḍān. Some of the infidel sultans of Hind, when they passed through this market, would alight at its dome, and the singing-girls would sing before them; some of the Muslim sultans have done so as well.

Then we travelled to the city of Nadhurbār—its name is spelled with nūn and dotted dhāl both with fatḥa, rāʾ with sukūn, one-dotted bāʾ with fatḥa, alif and rāʾ—a small city inhabited by the Marhata, who are skilled in the crafts, and are physicians and astrologers. The nobles of the Marhata are the Brahmans, and they are also the Katrīs. Their food is rice, vegetables and sesame oil; they do not hold with tormenting animals or slaughtering them; they wash before eating as one washes after major ritual impurity; they do not marry among their relatives except with one separated from them by seven ancestors; and they do not drink wine, which among them is the greatest of vices—as it is likewise among the Muslims in the land of Hind: any Muslim who drinks it is given eighty lashes and imprisoned in an underground cell for three months, which is opened for him only at mealtimes. Then we travelled from this city to the city of Ṣāghar—its name is spelled with undotted ṣād with fatḥa, dotted ghayn with fatḥa, and ending in rāʾ. It is a large city on a large river also called Ṣāghar like the city, on which are waterwheels; and there are orchards with grapes, bananas and sugarcane. The people of this city are people of righteousness, religion and trustworthiness, and their conduct is altogether commendable. They have orchards containing hospices for travellers coming and going; whoever builds a hospice endows the orchard to it and assigns its supervision to his children, and if they die out, supervision passes to the qāḍīs.

It is very populous, and people come to it to receive blessing from its inhabitants and because it is exempt from taxes and levies. Then we travelled from the aforementioned Ṣāghar to the city of Kinbāya—its name is spelled with kāf with kasra, nūn with sukūn, one-dotted bāʾ with fatḥa, alif, and yāʾ, the last letter of the alphabet, with fatḥa. It lies on an inlet of the sea, like a river valley, which ships enter, and it has ebb and flow; I saw the ships there lying grounded in the mud at low tide, and when the tide came in they floated on the water.

This city is one of the finest cities in the excellence of its buildings and the construction of its mosques. The reason is that most of its inhabitants are foreign merchants, who are constantly building fine houses and wonderful mosques there and vie with one another in this. Among its great houses is the house of the Sharīf al-Sāmarrī, with whom I had the affair of the sweetmeats, in which Malik al-Nudamāʾ gave him the lie. I have never seen timber more massive than what I saw in this house, and its door is like the gate of a city; beside it is a great mosque known by his name. Among them too is the house of the Malik al-Tujjār al-Kāzarūnī, with his mosque beside it, and the house of the merchant Shams al-Dīn Kulāh Dūz, which means 'cap-maker'.