Page 117 - Arabian Studies (I)

Arabia in the Fifteenth-century Navigational Texts 101

NOTES

1. All these works can be found in the Bibliothcque Nationale Mss. Arabc
2292 and 2559, which were published by Gabriel Ferrand (See Bibl. Note).
2. A poem rhyming in tif from Leningrad contains material on the Red Sea
and will not need to be quoted here. (Oriental Institute B 992). Published by
Shumovsky in 1957 (See Bibl. Note).
3. Serjeant, R. B. The Portuguese off the South Arabian coast, Oxford 1963,
pp. 105, 108.
4. Ibid., 54, n. 5.
5. Ibid., 101, n. 5.
6. For details of the measurement of star altitude sec my Arab navigation in
the Indian Ocean, 312-54; a brief summary can be found under my article on
isba* in the new edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam.
7. QutamF, ‘Isa: Dalil al-muhtar fi 7bn al-bihdr. 3rd cd. Kuwait 1964. p. 51.
8. Ms. Arabe 2292, f.66r.l .17. See my Arab navigation, 213.
9. The mathematics for this can be found in my Arab navigation, pp. 299, ff.
10. Cf. Admiralty Geographical Handbook,//iff# and the Persian Gulf 1944,
\
130,135.
11. Ms. Arabe 2292, f.66r.l .8 and my Arab navigation, p. 213.
12. daharab may be Arabi 1. in the northern part of the Gulf.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The texts of I bn Majid and Sulaiman al-Mahn from the Bibliotheque Nationale
were published in phototype by Gabriel Ferrand (Instructions nautiques et
routiers arabes et portugais, 3 v., Paris 1921-8). Other texts by Ibn Majid were
unearthed in Leningrad and published by T. A. Shumovsky (Tri neizvestnie lotzii
Ahmada ibn Madjida, Moskva 1957). My own work (Arab navigation in the
Indian Ocean before the coming of the Portuguese, London 1971) gives an
English translation of Ibn Majid’s longest prose work, the Fawa'id, together with
detailed notes on the navigation and topography. It also contains a compre­
hensive bibliography. After this work had reached the press the volumes of
Ibrahrm Khun were published by the Arab Academy of Damascus, al-'Ulum
al-bahriyah ‘inda Varab, Part 1, 2v., 1970), and several articles by H.
Grosset-Grange on the technical aspects of Arab navigation appeared in the
journal Navigation (Paris 1966,1969, 1972).
The Portuguese maps and charts are dealt with in detail by A. Cortesao, and
A. Tcixeira da Mota (Portugaliae monumenta cartographica, 5 v., Lisboa 1960)
but sufficient material on Arabia together with analytical comments can be
found in Kammerer {La Mer rouge, lAbyssinie et PArabie aux XVIe et XVHe
siecles, 3 v., Cairo 1947-52).