Us vs. Them: Early Modern Nautical Othering

Reading through the initial pages of chapter 4 of the Fawā’id, we came last week across a remarkable passage on Mediterranean/European vs. Indian Ocean/Arabic nautical techniques. The Westerners are in fact called here by Ibn Mājid “the people of the Egyptian abodes”:

…they have the compass, and in it they have lines, and marks for miles, and their rhumbs are only sixteen… We use thirty-two rhumbs… and they are incapable of understanding our level of attainment, whereas we do reach as far as their knowledge goes and we can sail their ships, for the Indian Ocean is connected to the Atlantic Ocean (al-Bahr al-Muhīt), and it has a knowledge recorded in writings and stellar altitude measures…

Leaving aside other technical details for a future occasion, let us focus on these final lines, where we find one striking assertion and one subtly insightful statement.

The first one is striking if we consider that Ibn Mājid is writing this probably in the 1490s, just as the Portuguese started rounding the Cape (Bartolomeu Dias, 1488), and yet he takes as a given the connection of the two oceans. This is no novelty if we remember that al-Birūnī (11th century), already spoke clearly of this connection with al-Bahr al-Muhīt. Literally the Circumambient, or All-Encompassing Sea, this was the most frequent Arabic name for the Atlantic—while still carrying echoes of the archaic notion of a Universal Surrounding body of water, what the Greeks called Okeanos. We wonder anyway, had Ibn Mājid also had news of the Dias expedition?

Sebastian Münster 1554 map

The second statement is this idea that there was a written body of Indian Ocean nautical science, and that it was this, combined with a certain knowledge of astronavigation, which gave Arab sailors the edge over those “Egyptians”. We have by now got used to Ibn Mājid boasting about his own writings, but here it does certainly sound as if he is referring also to a traditional, well known, nautical corpus. Of these possibly lost writings we have, alas, only the faintest traces left in medieval Arabic literature… what a sunken Atlantis of maritime treasures! [JA]

Between Heaven and a Vast Place

Just a pause for thought as we prepare to start a new chapter of the Fawā’id. Last week we completed the longest chapter, on the twenty-eight lunar stations (manāzil al-qamar), and now we move on to a chapter on the thirty-two stellar rhumbs (akhnān). We shall soon have occasion to go into more detail regarding the rhumbs, but for now it may be useful to consider the connections between the two topics.

The path of the lunar stations goes roughly along the inclined red line. The 32 stellar rhumbs are laid out on the horizontal of the equator, one rhumb each 11 1/4°.

The system of lunar stations is—schematically—an equal division of the sky. The system of stellar rhumbs is an equal division of the entire circle of the horizon, based—schematically—on the rising points of a set of sixteen stars. In theory, their rising points and their diametrical opposites define the compass points. Interestingly, in the Mediterranean, the same division of thirty-two compass points was “based” on the winds, and there were quite complex names of the winds!

So we have one “vertical”, or at least celestial, positioning system, and one horizontal system. Between them, as if availing himself of the possibilities of this conjunction, is the master pilot, a tiny dot with his vessel in the middle of the ocean: so small and insignificant, and yet, thanks to his knowledge (scientia), in command of the situation, following an invisible path through the deep water. Stay tuned for many more details over the coming weeks, digging into the facets and subtleties of the knowledge and practice of the stellar rhumbs. [JA]

The African Colleagues

A passing commentary by Ibn Mājid last week draws my attention to some aspects of his relation to Africa: “According to the ancients, this mansion (he is referring to Sa‘d al-su‘ūd, mansion 24) is found within the sign of Capricorn, but the people of Zanj (roughly what we know as the Swahili coast) consider that, as of the date of this book, it belongs in Aquarius.”

The intensity and historical importance of the maritime traffic between the west coast of India, the Arabian Peninsula, and the east coast of Africa, has been the subject of much international research, and it has elicited from medieval legends to modern soap operas shared across cultural and national boundaries. This sort of Oceanic triangle, comprising the historical areas of the Arabian Sea and the Sea of Zanj, bears testimony archaeologically, linguistically, religiously, economically and in other domains to perennial cultural exchange. So this is not new, and recent scholarship keeps stretching the historical boundaries of this fascinating record.

A second takeaway from our initial citation is the reference to those Zanji astronomers whom he obviously considered as interlocutors, or who were at least into the details of the overlapping between solar and lunar zodiacs. This amounts to saying they had an interest in both theoretical and practical astronomy, including awareness of precessional shifts. It is an enticing testimony to the collegial relations across the waters, and to the state of astronomical study on the Swahili Coast during the 15th century.

Finally, note the ring of immediacy and adventure when he implies that his book is informed by contemporaneous scientific dialogue between Africa and Arabia, and naturally Persia, Gujarat, Malabar… It makes you wonder to what extent our many new exciting initiatives of Indian Ocean Studies are simply picking up the torch, restarting a tradition of generous exchange which became dormant only a few centuries ago. [JA]

“The Clouds” and Stellar Fraternity

Just a brief note this week, prompted by a passing remark by Louis Massignon in his article about the Magellanic Clouds, “Les nuages de Magellan et leur découverte par les arabes”. Apart from their astronomical interest, these two galaxies, called the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), are especially notable for being about 20 degrees from the South Celestial Pole, and as such of great aid to navigation. Even more, their current and historical position bears echoes of an even greater archaic importance, for around 1000BC they were almost on the Pole.

Unknown to Ptolemy, these Two Clouds (al-Sahābatān) were first mentioned in writing by al-Sūfī in the 10th century, and as such they were known to Ibn Mājid, and a common fixture of Indian Ocean navigation. The Celestial Pole can be located at the vertex of an equilateral triangle based on them (or alternatively a larger triangle based on Canopus and Achernar)—see the illustration below, where the Pole is approximately within the blue circle, and the two faint Clouds show on the centre right.

View from Mossel Bay, South Africa, 3 February 1488,
around the time that Bartolomeu Dias first rounded the Cape.

Massignon comments on the warmth of the relation of southern hemisphere nations to the Two Clouds, comparing it to the relation with the Pleiades, and observing: “it is fraternal respect rather than worship.”

The word “government”, we tend to forget, is not directly related to force and to the “might is right” delusion, or to other delusions of imperial grandeur, but to the Greek root kubernao, “to steer”, “to pilot” on the authority of knowledge. That we can benefit from our elder siblings in the sky, all those guiding lights, and to do so fraternally, like a passenger approached a pilot in the middle of the night on board a ship, to have a chat and learn… this is a reassuring thought in stormy times, and as good pilots know, some times are stormier than others. [JA]

When the Pole is Lost… Sail On!

As we advance through the lunar mansions, and as we find new constellations south of the celestial equator, we are given specific advice by Ibn Mājid. “When the Pole Star is lost, the Two Calves (al-Farqadān, in Ursa Minor) can be used. Then when you lose these two in southern regions, make use of al-Jūn and al-‘Anāq (ε and ζ of Ursa Major) to do your work and make your calculations.” We are still relying on the circumpolar stars so far, but further south we must, and “When the Plough disappears, this is the beginning of darkness.”

“The Darkness,” al-Zulumāt (in fact a plural, “the darknesses”, tenebrae) became over the centuries a customary expression for the open ocean, and at some point in particular for the Atlantic, al-Bahr al-zulumat. But it was at its origin a term full of Qur’anic resonance, and it was not limited to water navigation, since “It is He Who maketh the stars for you, that ye may thereby have guidance through the dark (zulumāt) of land and sea” (6:97).

We will find indications for further south navigation in the next sections and chapters of the Fawā’id, but it is remarkable here how the stellar frame of reference changes in such direct relation to the latitude, and how despite moving into deeper waters and unfamiliar skies, we are still within a clearly defined geographical area where pre-modern Arab navigation took place. Shores from the Red Sea, through the Arabian Sea and eastwards to the South China Sea, and as far south as Madagascar were all part of the tightly-knit network of commercial and countless cultural exchanges going back for many centuries.

The intense human activity and the vast area of this maritime expanse is part of the fascination of Ibn Mājid’s works, which as we have mentioned represent the common heritage of generations of many and very different peoples. It is mostly in this cultural sense that it does make sense to speak historically of the Indian Ocean as a “Mediterranean,” a larger and more diverse Mare Nostrum which even included, as we would put it today, “going into the unknown.” [JA]

The Missing Lions

This week we were led to wonder about the earliest Arab nautical texts. That Ibn Mājid was not the first author is evident, for he himself mentions three earlier authors famously known as the “three lions of the sea.” Were they the first to write about navigation? How far back does this tradition go?

We have been looking at Aḥsan al-taqāsīm fī maʿrifat al-aqālīm (The Best Division for Acquaintance with the Lands), by al-Maqdisī (=al-Muqaddasī). According to this 10th century geographer, there are only two seas in the polity of Islam: the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. It is remarkable that the Red Sea, instead of being perceived as a separate entity, is considered part of a unity with the North Indian Ocean. This is in perfect continuity with the Ancient Greek notion of the “Red Sea” (Eruthre Thalassa), practically from Suez to at least the west coast of India.

This 11th century map shows the two seas (south is up!):
the Mediterranean on the right and the “Indian Ocean” on the left.

Even more interesting for our research, al-Maqdisī speaks with admiration of the seamen he met: captains, navigators and merchants, “… and I saw they have notebooks (dafātir) from which they learn, and on which they rely and act.” In other words, al-Maqdisī alerts us as clearly as possible to the existence of a widespread nautical literature, already in the 10th century. From then to the earliest texts known today (15th century), we have five centuries of lost navigational texts! We wonder about the physical format of those notebooks, their resilience, their destinies… and we keep on the lookout, hopeful for bibliographical surprises. [IB]