The Great Arab Navigators
Ahmad bin Majid and Sulaiman al-Mahri
Originally printed as “Ahmad bin Majid and Sulaiman al-Mahri” by Eric Staples in Pride 2010 – 2011.
Reprinted here with permission from Al Roya Press and Publishing House.
ARAB NAVIGATORS (MU`ALIMAH) played a central role in the great age of pre-modern Indian Ocean navigation. Most of their names have been lost with the passing of time, but two figures still remain as pinnacles of navigational science in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries CE: Ahmad ibn Majid and Sulaiman al-Mahri.
Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn Majid al-Najdi, more popularly known as Ibn Majid, has become the archetype of the perfect Arab navigator in popular legend. He was born around 1432-7 CE, most likely in either Julfar or Musqat. It is apparent from his works that he traveled the seas for most of his life, following the winds along the various trade routes of the Indian Ocean, and in particular the coasts of Oman and the Red Sea.
He is also famous for his reported connection with the arrival of the Portuguese. The Arab historian Qutb al-Din al-Nahrawali (1511-82) claimed that ibn Majid had shown the Portuguese the sea route from East Africa to India. However, certain scholars have debated this claim, pointing to the fact that the Portuguese sources consistently refer to the pilot as an Indian Muslim from Gujerat.
Regardless of his disputed connection with the Portuguese, the length and breadth of his works are his true historical legacy. He wrote at least forty poems and navigational treatises, many of which were unearthed in French archives in early twentieth century CE. Most of these are written in the rajaz meter, but perhaps his most famous, kitab_al-fawa`id fi usul al-bahr wal-qawa`id, is written in prose and has been translated by G.R. Tibbets into English. In these works he expands on the principles of navigation in great depth, distilling decades of experience at sea.
THE OTHER ARABIAM NAVIGATOR whose name is still known is Sulaiman al-Mahri. He was reportedly from Shihr on the southern Arabian coast, born in the later half of the fifteenth century CE. He is not as controversial or well-known a figure as ibn Majid, but he nonetheless has provided a valuable corpus of navigational material that is still extant today.
One of his main works is `umdat al-Mahriyah fi dabt al-`ulum al-bahriyyah (1511). This work is a well-organized and relatively concise navigational guide (rahmani) on sailing in the Indian Ocean. It is less literary and more straight-forward than those of ibn Majid. Possibly as a result of this clarity, his works were the primary source of information for the Turkish admiral Sidi al-Chelebi`s later navigational treatise, al-muhit.
It is clear from these works that these authors were drawing on their considerable personal experience, as well as a previous navigational literature.Ibn Majid for example refers to the “three lions” of Arab navigational literature, Muhammad ibn Shadhan, Sahl ibn Abban and Laith ibn Kahlan all of whom had written navigational treatises several centuries earlier and which now are unfortunately no longer extant. He claims that he was the fourth lion, and that in fact his work is superior because it was based on actual experience and trial and error, whereas the others had only been theoreticians.
This is the true strength of the works of both Ibn Majid and al-Mahri, for they are filled with the concrete details of navigation, as well as corrections of false assumptions that had previously been written.
THESE TWO NAVIGATORS PROVIDE modern readers with a valuable glimpse into the achievements and challenges Arab navigators prior to the advent of the sextant and the chronometer. They are a testament to the resourcefulness and sophistication of the mariners that sailed the coasts of Oman and beyond.