Arab Navigation in the Red Sea

The arabs have certainly sailed in the Red Sea for centuries, and we possess many scatte ed refer n s to the n vigat on of this sea, going back to the time of the Egyptian expeditions to Punt and Solomon's expedition to Ophir. Of course, in Islamic times we have more numerous references, beginning with those about the early Muslim fugitives who took refuge in Abyssinia. The well known travellers, Ibn Jubair and Ibn Battuta both crossed the sea between Jidda and Aidhab. As soon as there were Muslims in Africa and Somaliland, the Red Sea became important as a pilgrim route. Even Indians and Far Eastern Muslims would prefer this route to the hazardous trek across the Arabian Peninsula. However, it is not until the end of the fifteenth century a.d. that we obtain a detailed view of the navigation of the Red Sea, and this appears in the manuscripts of the surviving works of the pilot Ibn Majid, the man who was reputed to have guided Vasco da Gama across the Indian Ocean. He, in mentioning the Red Sea as a route, specifically gives two reasons for its importance. The first as a pil? grim route and the second as a trade route bringing supplies to the Hijaz from the Yemen and Abyssinia. At what stage Arab pilots began to write down directions for navigation we cannot teil. Detailed routes by sea to China given by Ibn Khurdadhbih, the Akhbar al-Stn and Mas'udi may have been taken from written pilot guides, although they may have been recorded from verbal accounts of sailors. Ibn Majid himself gives in his Fawd'id a brief literary history of Arab navigation, or rather a survey of sources known and probably used by him. This account mentions many early navigators, going back into the eleventh century a.d. and a few of them are stated as having written books. How? ever, Ibn Majid and all these predecessors of his were mainly Indian Ocean sailors. They all seem to belong to one school of navigation connected with the southern end of the Persian Gulf and it is possible that there were many other schools whose works have been completely lost. This school, 'Umani or Zufari in origin, to which Ibn Majid belonged, was interested in all the seas navigated by the Arabs but not in the same detail. Surprisingly, there is practically nothing about the Persian Gulf and very little about the Red Sea. Ibn Majid does give a very detailed account of this sea in one of his texts (the FawaHd) but few of the other texts deal with it and, even in the Fawd'id, Ibn Majid omits it until the end when he adds a special chapter on it, more or less as an appendix to his work. At the beginning of this chapter Ibn Majid gives a brief history of navigation in the Red Sea going back about a hundred years and he mentions several pilots by name and one or two works which have dealt with this subject before his time. Among the Red Sea pilots are 'Uthman al-Jazani from Jizan, the Captain (Rubban) Ka'in b. Hasan alMaha'imi (from a Yemeni tribe), Muh. b. Mara al-Iskandrani, and Mahmtid alTha'alibi, who was probably from al-Lith, for Tha'alib was a tribe on the sea coast between Jidda and al-Lith which owned, or had fishing rights in, the islands as far south as Zahrat al-Qasr. But these were contemporaries from whom Ibn Majid ob? tained information and there is no sign that they wrote anything. He also mentions obtaining information from the people of the island of Jebel Sabaya, who must have been a fishing community acquainted with the neighbouring coastal bank. Apart from these, Ibn Majid takes his information from works of his father and grandfather who sailed in the Red Sea before him. His grandfather (presumably Muhammad b. 'Amr al-Sa'dl) "was experienced and well-versed in this sea", to quote Ibn Majid, "and had no equal". But that is all we hear of him; no works are actually named. His father, Majid b. Muh. al-Sa'dl was even more experienced. His exploits are quoted in several places in Ibn Majid's section on the sea in the Fawd'id and several times the accuracy