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38 ARAB NAVIGATION THE NAVIGATORS AND THEIR WORKS 39
whom he obtained or inherited information. Not only does he draw : of the original three or of the respective grandsons we cannot say—
on the experience of his fellow countrymen but also continually in fact the only fact we can establish from this is that Ibn Majid
definitely had earlier written material on navigation—at least one
mentions the practical results followed by navigators of Gujerat,
manuscript nearly 300 years old—on which to base his work. In
Konkan, Coromandel and sometimes other places, especially for
navigation in the areas where one would expect their experience to another place—11th fd'ida—he speaks again of an “old Rahmanj”
be greater than that of the Arabs. The second half of the seventh which may be another work or one already mentioned and again he
refers to a navigational author as “al-Ustadh” (the teacher)—could
fd'ida may be taken almost literally from a Chola pilot’s sailing
directions. Even a knowledge of Mediterranean sailing is shown at this be yet another author or a previous one?
the beginning of the fourth fa'ida, although the source for this is In addition to these other works, Ibn Majid relied on and drew
from his own earlier works, correcting them and comparing them
completely hidden. All this experience (tajriba) was acquired over a
long life devoted to Indian Ocean navigating and as he states one of with the work he was writing—how much we can call these sources
or just earlier expressions of his own practical experience is doubtful,
the reasons for writing the Fawd'id was to make this experience
available to other people both then and after his death. but he certainly took these works into account when planning and
composing the Fawa'id. Those works which are quoted in the
However Ibn Majid besides being a practical man was a well-read
man and he continually mentions other written works which he has Fawa'idare mentioned elsewhere, but the Hamya, his earlier poetical
encyclopaedic work, is the basis on which he built or refused to
used as sources or from which he has given quotations. He has
“written, selected and experimented”48 himself in order to produce build the present work and the Dhahabiyat an almost contemporary
this work and it is important to note which works he has drawn on work with the Fawa'id, is quoted so many times as to make a
as opposed to those which he has merely used for quotations to reference to it in this place essential. How much the various bits and
illustrate his text. pieces, which, as I have described in the previous section make up
the Fawa'id, can be described as sources is difficult to say. They may
Thus Ibn Majid is constantly comparing the various works which
be original works broken up into the Fawa'id, but they never appear
he has used and mentions the “ancient and the later writers” or
compares the navigators (“men of this science”) with the astron separately and may only have been originally notes expressly written
omers. In fact the works consulted can be divided into two classes, to go into an encyclopaedic work like the Fawa'id at a later date.
The astronomical or geographical sources for the Fawa'id are
(a) works of other navigators and (b) works of the classical Arabic
geographers and astronomers. It is difficult to see whether the latter more definite for they are works which have come down to us and
we can check their contents from sources other than the text of our
are the ancient writers and the former the modern ones or whether
the two divisions cut across each other. ' — own author. In addition, in the fifth fa’ida, Ibn Majid gives us a
bibliography of works which he knows will be of use to the navigator
Of the navigational , works Ibn Majid continually mentions the
\\ and presumably which he found useful himself. Several of these are
works of the “three lions,” his predecessors, Laith b. Kahlan, \
quoted elsewhere in the book, although it is sometimes difficult to
Muhammad b. Shadhanand Sahl ibn Abban, but it is doubtful
{
whether he possessed their works and actually consulted them before check from where his information is obtained when it is obviously
from some classical work and not navigational in origin. Thus in
writing any more than Sidi £elebi did nearly a hundred years later.
It is possible that they were, regarded as founders of the written the ninth fa'ida in describing the coasts of the world, he draws all
of his information from non-navigational sources—either classical
tradition of which Ibn Majid was.a part. In the Fawa'id he mentions
using a Rahmanj (pilot guide or roteiro) dated a.h. 580 (a.d. 1184/5) authors or from verbal traditions originally derived from classical
which was in the handwriting of a grandson of one of these—from authors. Some of the facts in this fd'ida cannot be traced in their
the text it would seem'of Laith'b. Kahlan—and in several other
i present form to extant geographical works. ;
places he mentions a work-written by Ibrahim b. Hasan b. Sahl The works quoted in the fifth fd'ida which are also quoted else
where in the text and hence used definitely when writing the text are
b. Abban.4? Whether these were the same manuscript or two different
ones is difficult to establish and whether they were (or it was) works as follows. ‘ ,
1. The Taqwim al-Bulddn of Abu’l-Fida, written in a.d. 1321 is
« f. 31r, i; IQ; trans/p. 130. ‘PV/V. . mentioned several .times throughout the text. .
47 But see the alternative theory of Sauvaget on pp. 4-5 and note 6, p. 5.
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