Арабы и море. По страницам рукописей и книг - читать онлайн книгу. Автор: Теодор Шумовский cтр.№ 51

Ferrand G. Madagascar et les iles Uaq-Uaq // Journal Asiatique, 1904. X serie, T. III.

Ferrand G. Les iles Ramny, Lamery, Wakwak, Komor des geographes arabes et Madagascar // Journal Asiatique, X serie. 1907. T. X.

Ferrand G. Voyage du marchand arabe Sulayman en Inde et en Chine redige en 851, suivi de remarques par Abu Zayd Hasan (vers 916), traduit de l’arabe avec introduction, glossaire et index par G. Ferrand. Paris, 1922.

Ferrand G. Le pilote arabe de Vasco da Gama et les instructions nautiques des Arabes au XV-e siecle // Annales de geographie, 1922. No. 172.

Ferrand G. Les instructions nautiques du Sulayman al-Mahri (XVI-е siecle) // Annales de geographie, 1923. No. 178.

Ferrand G. L’element persan dans les textes nautiques arabes des XV-e et XVI-е siecles // Journal Asiatique. T. CCIV. 1924.

Ferrand G. Jbn Majid // Introduction a l’astronomie nautique arabe / Sous la dir. de G. Ferrand. Paris, 1928.

Ferrand G. L’amiral Sidi ‘Ali et le Мuhit // Ibidem.

Ferrand G. Le mu‘allim // Ibidem.

Ferrand G. Sulayman al-Mahri // Ibidem.

Ferrand G. Le Wakwak est-il le Japon? // Journal Asiatique. T. CCXX. 1932.

Gaudefroy-Demombynes M. Les sources arabes du Muhit turc // Journal Asiatique, X serie. 1912. T. XX.

Gildemeister J. Uber arabisches Schiffswesen // Gottinger Nachrichten. 1882.

Griffini E. Intorno alle stazioni lunari nell’astronomia degli arabi // Rivista degli Studi Orientali. T. I. 1907.

Hornell J. A Tentative Classification of Arab Seacraft // Mariners Mirror, January 1942.

Hourani G.F. Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times // Princeton Oriental Studies, 1951. No. 13.

Kahle P. Nautische Instrumente der Araber im Indischen Ocean // Oriental Studies in Honour of Curserji Erachji Pavry, 1933.

Moreland W.H. The Ships of the Arabian Sea about A. D. 1500 // The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Vol. I, IV. 1939.

Nad (a) vi S.S. Arab Navigation, Adapted from Urdu by Syed Sabah Uddin Abdur-Rahman, Fellow of Shibli Academy, Azamgarh // Islamic Culture. Vol. XV. 1941. No. 4; Vol. XVI. 1942. Nos. 1, 2, 4. Nafis, Ahmad. The Arabs’ Knowledge of Ceylon // Islamic Culture. Vol. XIX. 1945. No. 3.

Nainar S.M.H. Arab Geographers’ Knowledge of Southern India. Madras, 1942.

Prinsep J. Note on the Nautical Instruments of the Arabs // Ferrand G.

Introduction a l’astronomie nautique arabe. Paris, 1928. Saussure L. de. Commentaire des Instructions nautiques de Ibn Majid et Sulayman al-Mahri // Introduction a l’astronomie nautique arabe / Sous la dir. de G. Ferrand. Paris, 1928.

Saussure L. de. L’origine de la rose des vents et l’invention de la bous-sole // Ibidem.

Sauvaget J. Sur d’anciennes instructions nautiques arabes pour les mers de l’Inde // Journal Asiatique. T. CCXXXVI. 1948.

ARABS AND THE SEA: after old manuscripts and books

by Theodor Shumovsky

The Arabs have long been taken for underdeveloped nomadic tribes came from wild deserts. Many European observers of the two last centuries associated them with the dry Land, and not with navigation across the immense Ocean on whose coasts many Arab peoples have been living and sailing from the old times. This wide spread but misleading Orientalist vision dating back to the era of the first colonial encounters between the Europeans and the Arabs is contested in the book written in 1962 by a St.-Petersburg historian Theodor Shu-movsky, the renowned authority in historical geography of premodern Arabic navigation. The second corrected edition of the book comes out in 2010.

A thorough examination of old Arabic manuscripts and modern academic scholarship led the author to the conclusion that before the advent of European sailors the Arabs had succeeded in creating an original art of navigation. The sea was present in their traditional culture that is witnessed in its well-known literary monuments including the Qur’an. Shumovsky argues that achievements of the pre-modern Arab navigation much contributed in discoveries happened in the Indian and Pacific Oceans at the Age of Exploration when the Europeans intensively investigated and mapped the World. This is not a tale full of sound and fury. It should be noted that the famous Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama opened the maritime way from the Western Europe to the Oriental Seas in the fifteenth century following instructions of his Arab pilot Ahmad ibn Majid from Julfar or Ra’s al-Khaymah in Oman. The latter composed in verses three sailing directions whose unique copy was preserved in the collection of Arabic manuscripts at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St.-Petersburg. This important source was introduced into the research use, translated and commented by Shumovsky who devoted to its study almost half a century from 1938 to the mid-1980s. In the 1960s-1980s the first Soviet edition of Arabic sailing directions (1957) was republished in Portugal and the Middle East.

In Oriental studies Shumovsky is known for his exploration of pre-modern Arabic navigation. Later, in 1995, he published the first Russian translation of the Qur’an in verses. In this respect Shumovsky followed the way of his teacher academician Ignatiy Krachkovsky who had also prepared academic Russian translation of the Qur’an from Arabic, and much contributed in investigation of the Arabic medieval geography and literature as well. Arabists of the St.-Petersburg classical school, the author belongs to by training and research interests, got accustomed to confine themselves with textual analysis. As a rule they are not interested in the historical context of manuscripts they study missing real people who wrote, read and copied these texts. Contrary to such an approach that still dominates Orientalist academic works, a popular book of Arabs and the Sea deals not only with old Oriental manuscripts but also with scholars’ work under them. The author has a flowing pen that allows readers traveling in the unmemorable years of his youth at the University from which he failed to graduate in 1938 due to the first arrest by the NKVD, following step by step a detective story of sensational research finding of Arabic manuscripts of Ahmad ibn Majid and his contemporary Sulayman al-Mahri, discussing Shumovsky’s innovative ideas about Arabic navigation and translators’ skills.

Shumovsky continues his autobiographical account of the work under Arabic sailing directions plunging more and more into the history of sailing culture in the Middle East and North Africa. Popular character of the book allows him to move freely from one historical period and region to another. The second part of this work contains fascinating narrative of navigation and sea exploration among the pre-modern peoples in the Middle East beginning from the maritime discoveries happened in Pharaonic Egypt under the reign of Queen Hatshepsut in the fifteenth century B.C., through sailing navigation as it was developed in Ancient Phoenicia and South Arabia including description of the expedition carried by the Carthaginian explorer of the African coast Hanno the Navigator in the sixth century B.C., oversea voyages ordered by Ptolemaic Egypt till maritime raids and trade navigation occurred under the Caliphate and its successor states until the Ottoman sailing of the early modern times. The last part of the book introduces readers into medieval Arabic sailing directions focusing on the Book of Useful Information on the Principles and Rules of Navigation or Kitab al-fawa’id fi usul ‘ilm al-bahr wa-l-qawa‘id by Ahmad ibn Majid. Known under this spicy Oriental title this solid work was, in reality, a detailed encyclopedia of the Arabic navigational lore as it was practiced in the Indian and Pacific Ocean on the eve of the European colonial conquests.