Al-Muqaddasi's tenth-century maritime landscape of the Arabian Red Sea

Abstract

The aim of ninth- and tenth-century classic geographical works was to survey routes and settlements, lands and seas known to Islamic caliphate and governors of the time. Al-Muqaddasi embarked on a ship at Al-Qulzum that sailed down the Arabian Red Sea coast reaching al-Yaman, then round the southern Arabian coast to the Gulf of Oman and from there, the final leg, to the Persian Gulf, reaching Persian coast of Abbadan. Al-Muqaddasi does mention a nautical technique when steering the ship in and around rocks or navigating through the reef channels. Parallel to the Hijaz coastal route that al-Muqaddasi documents was the old desert pre-Islamic incense route, which became the pilgrim–trade route in the early years of Islam and then formed route of the Hijaz railway at the beginning of the twentieth century. Classical Roman and Greek literature record a number of ports on the Arabian Red Sea whose finds have been subject of debate by archaeologists and maritime historians.