Abstract
This lexicon of Arabic nautical terminology is an extremely welcome contribution to the scholarship of the Indian Ocean that will no doubt prove an invaluable resource for researchers working in a wide range of fields, chiefly maritime history, nautical archaeology and craft and technology studies, as well as comparative linguistics and etymology. It will also be a useful reference for those working in less nautically or linguistically focused fields – such as literature, travel, anthropology, ethnography, Islamic studies and Arabic-English translation generally – where the sudden occurrence of a highly technical nautical term might bring progress to an exasperating halt.
It is a weighty book in all senses. Across 641 pages, Al Salimi and Staples provide detailed definitions, etymologies and textual citations of (by this reviewer’s count) some 469 Arabic nautical terms and the names of more than 30 currencies used historically in the Indian Ocean. The lexicon itself is divided into six themed parts: vessel types and general terms; boat building; seafaring; navigation; fishing and pearling; and currency. It has the large, handsome format and high production values of the Studies on Ibadism and Oman series, of which it forms the second volume: the text is beautifully laid out with ample white space on high-quality paper, and the entries are richly colour-illustrated throughout with contemporary and historic imagery, much of the former photographed or otherwise produced by Alessandro Ghidoni. The pay-off for this sumptuous approach is that the work weighs in at more than 3kg, making it no one’s travelling companion.
The lexicon is nevertheless worth its heft. What it achieves so skilfully is to make accessible to a wider readership a corpus of Arabic nautical terminology that draws from Classical Arabic literature and lexicography, traveller accounts, the European colonial legacy, modern European and Arab nautical and nautical-lexical scholarship, and the direct nautical and field experience of the authors. Hence its sources range from the Holy Qur’ān through the ninth century CE Akhbār al-ṣīn wa-l-hind (‘On China and India’), medieval ‘marvels’ literature and the great fifteenth and sixteenth century CE seafaring works of Ahmad b. Majid and Sulayman al-Mahri, to the twentieth century proliferation of Arabic nautical lexicons – in Arabic only – by scholars such as Ahmad al-Rumi (on Kuwait), Hamud al-Ghaylani (on Sur, Oman), Ibn Thalith (on the Emirates) and Hassan Salih Shihab and Badr al-Kasadi (on Yemen). It also makes diligent reference to key European scholars such as Dionisius Agius and a number of non-Arabic lexica of nautical relevance, for example in Persian, Anglo-Indian and Swahili.
Nouns denoting material objects, often quite technical, dominate the lexicon. Hence a talbīs (p.137) is ‘A temporary wash strake usually made of woven date-palm matting’, and a rizka (p.285) is ‘A rigging ring, coming in various sizes, that was fastened to the deck or this side of the ship for the rigging to be secured’. But intangible heritage is also represented: a faḍīla (p.560) is ‘the net earnings of a pearling boat sailor after a voyage’, and fayyaḥa (p. 330) is ‘To have downwind helm: for the vessel to point downwind in spite of the best efforts of the helmsman to keep her on course’, while saffala (p. 293) – closely related – is ‘To fail to sail to windward’.
This is an Arabic-English lexicon: readers seeking the Arabic equivalent of an English term will struggle, since entries (and the ‘Translation Table’ at the back) are arranged by Arabic name (in Arabic alphabet and in transliteration) and following Arabic abjad order: the index is in Arabic only. Alessandro Ghidoni’s ‘Drawings’ section helps in this regard, at least as far as boat parts are concerned, but there is no reverse index to direct the non-Arabic-speaking reader to the appropriate entry.
There is a certain tension in the work with respect to its geographical scope. The book’s sub-title declares, quite baldly, that what follows is ‘Arabic nautical terminology in the Indian Ocean’ (reviewer’s emphasis); moreover, the authors set out as their ‘second objective’ the production of ‘a more geographically comprehensive maritime lexicon of the region’ than what has gone before (p.12). Yet, in the small print, they clarify that ‘this work does not claim to record all Arabic terms in this vast ocean’ – who would? – but rather takes as its ‘primary focus . . . the Gulf, Oman and southern Arabia’ (p.10). This tension is no doubt in part a function of the Omani context of the research; the place of ‘Oman’s maritime history’ in this linguistic story is enthusiastically advanced by the Omani Minister of Endowments and Religious Affairs in his foreword. The authors need no lectures from this reviewer on the geographical heterogeneity of Arabic, and indeed recognise that, in fact, ‘Red Sea and East African Arabic terms are mentioned only infrequently’ in the book. Arabic maritime lexical usage does indeed differ in these regions, sometimes significantly, and readers with such places in mind should approach the book, despite its title, informed by the possibility that their Arabic-speaking corners of the Indian Ocean might do things differently. They will in the meantime find a great deal in this work that remains useful.
This observation of linguistic variety reminds us that much remains to be done in the field of nautical-lexicographic studies in the Western Indian Ocean, not just in Arabic, but in the many other languages of the Indian Ocean littoral. In some places, rapid changes in nautical technology and maritime practice mean that much of the lexicon has already been lost, or is about to be so. Al Salimi and Staples’ work is therefore both an important contribution to the process of documentation of an endangered linguistic heritage. It is to be hoped that others will follow in their wake in other regions of the Indian Ocean.