One of the abiding question marks as we study the Indian Ocean nautical texts is that practically all their wayfinding lore, all their sophisticated, awe-inspiring system of astronavigation depends on darkness—specifically on the absence of daylight. No wonder that one of the recurrent pieces of advice of Ibn Mājid to aspiring pilots is that “they shall sleep very little at night.” It is as if the astronomical skill of the pilots required them to live by night, because it was by night, in darkness, that they found their guidance and their certainty. One wonders at some reports in European nautical literature, about pilots who habitually slept by day to be awake at night.
Drawing clarity from darkness and coming to life in the dead of night are motives of inversion which are common to other nocturnal professions; they speak of an inversion of normality related to a special kind of knowledge. Noblesse oblige, in the case of the pilots, meant that they could no longer live like ordinary sailors.
Another remarkable inversion of values at sea is the appreciation of black waters mentioned in the Fawā’id. Black waters do not mean stormy weather or anything ominous, but are foam-less waters, while white waters are choppy waters, when it is windy and small peaks of foam take shape on the surface of the sea. Black smooth water means stability, calm winds, and above all, an even ride for the observation of the sky and for better calibrated measures.
In what is a typical experience of reversal (taqallub) as one advances through the degrees of knowledge, down the rabbit-hole, or through the looking-glass, or coming out of the cave of ordinary life, the Arab pilots (the ma‘ālimah, “those who know and teach”), seem to have led lives of subtly shifted values. The night and dark which inspire fear and misgivings to ordinary mortals, and which give shelter to crime and transgression, was their element and was for them a time of discernment and attainment. [JA]
