Ibn Majid (1430-1500)

Ahmad ibn Majid was born in Oman, probably in 1430.

Ibn Majid wrote several books on marine science and the movements of ships, which helped people of the Persian Gulf to reach the coasts of India, East Africa and other destinations.

Ibn Majid’s Hawiyat, a poem of some 1,082 verses, is a genuine treasury of navigational theory. In 1498, Vasco Da Gama, while sailing up the east coast of Africa met Ibn MajidHe helped Vasco Da Gama to reach Indian Coast.

His most important work was 

Kitab al-Fawa’id fi Usul ‘Ilm al-Bahr wa ’l-Qawa’id (Book of Useful Information on the Principles and Rules of Navigation), written in 1490.

It is an encyclopedia of navigational lore: the history and basic principles of navigation, lunar mansions, rhumb lines, the difference between coastal and open-sea sailing, the locations of ports from East Africa to Indonesia, star positions, accounts of the monsoon and other seasonal winds, typhoons and other topics for professional navigators.

He drew from his own experience and that of his father, also a famous navigator, and the lore of generations of Indian Ocean sailors.

Ahmad Ibn Majid on European Navigation

We have 32 rhumbs, and tirfa, and zam, and the measurement of stellar altitudes, but they have not.

They cannot understand the way we navigate, but we can understand the way they do; we can use their system and sail in their ships.

For the Indian Ocean is connected to the All-Encompassing Ocean, and we possess scientific books that give stellar altitudes, but they do not have a knowledge of stellar altitudes; they have no science and no books, only the compass and dead reckoning…. We can easily sail in their ships and upon their sea, so they have great respect for us and look up to us.

They admit we have a better knowledge of the sea and navigation and the wisdom of the stars.”

The Book of Useful Information deals not only with the monsoon system, but also with the finer details of local wind regimes.

The prevailing winds in the Red Sea north of Jiddah were among the most difficult, Ibn Majid writes, because they blew from the north all year round. Normal practice was to sail to Jiddah and there either transfer cargo to smaller boats, whose pilots were experienced in the local conditions between Jiddah and Suez, or to send car- goes overland.

Even to Jiddah, and to ‘Aydhab on the Egyptian side, access was only possible during the northeast monsoon, between October and mid-March.

Other specialized knowledge was needed to sail elsewhere: south of the equator, for example, where the monsoons gave way to the trade winds.

The China Sea too had its own wind regime. Only a lifetime of sailing could teach a mu‘allim, or master navigator, the skills upon which the entire trading network depended.

Ibn-Majid: also invented mariner’s compass. However, the mariner’s compass, an Islamic invention, had been used by Arab navigators for several centuries before him.

In his Kitab al Fawa’id,Ibn-Majid seems to have vastly improved upon it. At the same time, he clamed for himself some sort of invention or great mastery over fixing the magnetic needle to the compass. He was proud of the fact that the Arab compass was far superior to that of others as it had 32 sections against their 16.

The last of his approximately 40 known compositions, a poem on the heavens, is dated 1500, Ibn Majid must have died soon after that date, his life spanning the most critical century in the history of the ocean whose currents, winds, reefs, shoals, headlands, harbors, seamarks and stars he spent a lifetime studying.