Throughout the Middle Islamic Period, especially during the Rasulid era (13th-15th centuries CE), navigation became an increasingly important mode of travel for trade and diplomacy between the Near East, Africa and Asia. One of the main ports along this major network was the Yemeni port of Aden, one of the best natural harbors in the world and a refuge for ships during rough seas. Details on the sailing seasons in and out of the port of Aden are provided in the Rasulid almanacs, but can also be pieced together from other sources, such as the travelers Ibn al-Muj?wir and Ibn Ba????a, as well as the account of the Chinese explorer Zheng He in the early 15th century. In this paper I will look at the role of the two major monsoon seasons in defining sailing seasons from the Red Sea through the Indian Ocean to the East African coast and Southeast Asia during the 12th-15th centuries. Given the vast extent of the sailing network, local climatic conditions must also be taken into account for analyzing sailing times. The monsoons, and winds in general, had a differential impact on travel in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. It is also important to note that sea travel was also possible in local contexts without the aid of the monsoon winds. Given the variety of languages and peoples spoken, the sea route was a transcultural and border-crossing network par excellence, especially at a time with the turmoil following the Mongol invasion. A number of factors transcended geographical and political borders, including the need for a time reckoning system that could be understood across most of the network. This resulted in the use of a navigational nayr?z calendar (not to be confused with the Persian new year) described in Rasulid texts and later by Ibn M?jid. In addition to trade items, there was an exchange of information about sea conditions and navigation by use of star measurements.

Local Knowledge in pre-colonial Maritime Interactions: Some insights by historical anthropology on western and central Indian Ocean hubs This paper sets out to examine the state of academic knowledge on navigational techniques along the main routes of long distance maritime interactions in the western and central Indian Ocean between the 11th and 15th century CE. With the conceptual help of historical network analysis, the next part of this discussion will then single out and focus on "dangerous but unavoidable" waters, i.e. of the metaphorical eye of the needle type. The leading crew members in the relevant ships - many among them Arab-speakers from the eastern or southern parts of the peninsula - may be addressed as true "cosmopolitans" of their times, with substantial geographical and technical expertise. When they had to pass through dangerous but unavoidable waters, however, they could not exclusively rely on their accumulated expertise and usage of navigational device alone. The point is exemplified through fieldwork insights, and by means of some of the few relevant source materials. Passing through dangerous waters and dire straits unavoidably required local knowledge. The paper will conclude with an outline of where and how local pilots operated, and what anthropologists may contribute to understanding these – almost –invisible but crucial historical actors.

This paper will present and analyze evidence for slave trading in the Indian Ocean that stretched from Egypt, via Yemen and the Persian Gulf, all the way to India and China. While much is known about the Indian Ocean slave trade between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, there is far less scholarship about slaving activity before 1500. Despite this, it is possible to sketch the extent and limits of the medieval slave trade through the use of sources including geographies, chronicles, and documentary sources that are found in Arabic, Judeo-Arabic, Old Malayalam, and Chinese. In more recent decades, archaeologists and geneticists have also brought data to light that can be read alongside such texts. The goals of this paper are twofold. First, it will use the available sources to sketch the known geographic extent of slave trading across the medieval Indian Ocean. Second, the paper will discuss interpretive problems that scholars face in making sense of this evidence. Though enslaved people surface with some frequency in the record, these mentions are not necessarily indicative of a robust and perennial trade in slaves. My paper will show how the Indian Ocean slave trade was comprised of multiple strands that operated in distinct ways. Slave trading, for example, could take place as part of an isolated diplomatic exchange and, thus, not be representative of a perennial trade. In the quotidian economy, small numbers of slaves were shipped across the Indian Ocean as a composite part of a larger mixed cargo. Accordingly, when medieval sources report that "slaves" were traded in a given context, this usually signifies the transport of a very small number of slaves. This paper argues that scholars can better evaluate the overall medieval slave trade by parsing its multiple strands in order to avoid over-reading sources to posit a perennial and voluminous maritime slave trade in the Indian Ocean. While the slave trade did peak in specific times and places, I will suggest that such episodes were the exception and not the rule. Another frequently misconstrued historical event is the so-called Zanj (East African) slave revolt in ninth-century Iraq. This paper will illustrate why this was not, in fact, a slave revolt as it often depicted. Moreover, misconceptions about the Zanj presence in Iraq can also distort the overall portrait of slavery in East Africa, Iraq, and indeed in the greater Indian Ocean region.

This paper will look at the passenger side of monsoon navigation through the eyes of the Mamluk-era traveler Ibn Battuta. Born and raised in Morocco, he started his travels with a caravan journey east-bound toward Mecca. Traveling to Upper Egypt and the Red Sea coast, he was prepared to sail across to reach his pilgrimage destination, but instead had to return to Cairo, and later reached Mecca by the land route. Ibn Battuta would have been well aware of boat traffic on the Mediterranean, but there is no indication that he had ever travelled by ship before venturing on pilgrimage in 1325. The paper focuses on the impact of Indian Ocean environment on sailing choices, opportunities and obstacles facing the voyager at three oceanic transit points: (1) between the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, (2) mid-ocean, where the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent meets the island of Ceylon; and (3) sailing from India to the Far East. Ibn Battuta’s first sailing experience was impacted by the hajj calendar and the winds in the western part of the Indian Ocean. We can follow him along with the returning pilgrims to the eastern shores of Africa and coasts of southeastern Arabia. Navigation in the region, while regulated by the Northeastern (winter) and Southwestern (summer) monsoons, was also dependent on regional meteorology and currents. Shipping at the southern reach of the Indian subcontinent was complicated by the South-Asian landmass effect on the wind and rain regime. We are informed of the navigation practices on these routes by the later Arabic sources. Eastbound oceanic routes from such important ports as Calicut varied depending on the destination: shorter sailings to Ceylon or into the Bay of Bengal (both of them taken by Ibn Battuta) or further east toward China or Indonesia. Ibn Battuta is shipwrecked here, other vessels are borne away by powerful winds, and extended delays are imposed by the weather. Ibn Battuta’s narrative, while not chronologically precise, allows us to estimate the environmental impact on his itinerary and travel timeline, as we trace his maritime journey all the way to China.