[1][2] He left a written record of his mission, the Kitāb Akhbār al-Nūba waʾl-Muḳurra wa ʿAlwa waʾl-Buja waʾl-Nīl ("Book of Reports on Nubia, Makuria, Alodia, the Beja and the Nile").
There he persuaded King George II to resume payment of the baqt, an annual tribute the Nubians had rendered to the Muslim rulers of Egypt since the seventh century.
He also visited the southern kingdom of Alodia and describes its capital, Soba, in the Kitāb Akhbār al-Nūba.
[2] According to Halm, the fact that al-Maqrizi, writing in the 15th century, had to refer to al-Aswani's work shows that no such similar journeys were undertaken from Egypt in the meantime.
[3] Historian Yūsuf Faḍl Ḥasan opines that the Kitāb seems to have once circulated relatively widely, since it can be detected as a source in several works, such as that of Abu al-Makarim.
[3] Conversely, Halm considers that al-Aswani's work was not cited by earlier authors, indicating that it was never publicly circulated, instead being kept in the palace archives in Cairo for the first centuries of its existence.