The term dhow, commonly applied by Western societies to any traditional seafaring vessel used off the coast of East Africa, is “generally assumed to be Arabic in origin." Due to the highly transient nature of early dhows, however, there is very little concrete evidence to trace the original narrative of these ships. Yet, thanks to remaining physical evidence, analysis of locational data and the transfer of stories and accounts throughout many centuries, it has been possible to piece together a rough yet reasonable history of these phenomenal structures. Unsurprisingly though, the account of dhow culture has been tainted by the supposed “European influence” that is paraded over the Middle Eastern history of shipbuilders, travel and connectivity. Therefore, one must argue that, in fact, the influences of the “Portuguese and other boats” , who have visited the Arab gulf since the fifteenth century, were not so much a leading and essential force in the development of the dhow, but were an “alteration in the Indian Ocean” which suggests an “interdependent relationship” of problematic and complex associations between the Portuguese and the Arab sailors.
Before the Portuguese arrived, the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean had experienced centuries of contact through maritime connections. The earliest ships can be dated to roughly 2300 B.C., when vessels from present-day Oman were “trading with merchants of Bahrain, Akkad and the Indus Valley” . It is likely that the trade of goods such as copper, vegetables, spices, cloth, grains, oils and wool would have been transferred from India “to many different Mesopotamian ports” . The Dhow is also associated with the Pearl trade. This specific ship itself, however, is not thought to have come into existence until somewhere between 600 B.C. and 600 A.D. , but this remains conjecture. In fact, the term dhow was first used by British Royal Navy officers Captain Smee and Lt. Hardy in 1811 while visiting Zanzibar . Rather than specifying a specific type of ship, the name was used to denote “a category of ships” , labelling all Arab boats as dhows. This seems to be “as much a social construct as basin thinking” , and it too has its origins in imperialism. If used accurately, the term dhow classifies ships that are “one or two-masted vessels, usually with lateen rigging (slanting, triangular sails)” . Traditionally, these ships would have been sewn together using coconut fibres, “a medieval practice." Of course, given the verbal and dynamic nature of these ships, the term is not constricted to such ships, and it is thought that, whilst there is no direct translation to the Arabic language, it is often “translated as safina (ship) or markab (vessel)” , certainly a generalised term.
With the dhow proliferating rapidly in the sea, there was a huge increase in connectivity due to the multiple opportunities for “social interaction between the sailors and traders with their hosts around the rim of the Indian Ocean” , which gave rise to cosmopolitan populations that began the earliest forms of globalisation. Promoting relationships between multiple civilisations, this was enhanced by free trade unhindered by monopolies or superpower domination, allowing for compassionate associations between cultures. These connections occur due to the dhow being “at the mercy of the seasonal monsoons” , and therefore the route of these boats would have hugged the coast, staying close to land and allowing sailors to set in at night and set out the next morning, staying just a day or two for reprovision. These short stops would provide connections and animated social exchange, thus proving that the dhow is not just a sailing vessel, but “a vehicle for a genuine dialog between civilisations."
There is very little information about how the dhows progressed from their establishment to the fourteenth century, so we can assume that generally, the trade, connections and developments in piloting the ships continued to flourish and progress. Of course, this was not always plain sailing due to the intervention of pirates, with Middle Eastern historian Allen James Fromherz stating that “pirates and merchants shared an uneasy coexistence” as they were “away from the watchful eyes of rulers and sultans” . Aside from this, there seems to have been little change in the dhow industry and culture until the arrival of the Europeans, which is well archived. The sudden expansion of historical documentation during the fifteenth century is attributed mainly to Western influence, with the Portuguese and other European sailors being keen to record their encounters. Paper had been fairly common across the Middle East centuries before and therefore, when the Omani navigator Ahmad ibn Majid an-Najdi wrote his fifteenth century “treatise on navigation and seamanship” , hand written records would have been a well-established form of documentation. In this treatise, the author wrote that Arabs “learned the art of shipbuilding from the prophet Noah who was in turn instructed by God” . The invention that came next, however, was very different to the words of the angel Gabriel and instead took the form of Portuguese explorers.
The Portuguese infiltration of the Indian Ocean came “soon after Vasco da Gama reached India near Calicut, on 20 May 1498” . As the first European to sail to India through the Cape of Good Hope at the southern end of Africa, da Gama opened a range of possibilities for other Portuguese sailors. By the early 16th century, the sailors had begun “a series of campaigns to take control of strategic points throughout the region” , attacking Qalhãt, Qurayyât, Muscat and Khawr Fakkān before Hormuz. For a period of around twenty years, the Portuguese pillaged and obtained a large proportion of land that, as a result, gave them unprecedented control over many influential areas throughout the region, including the “vital eastern passage to China” . Indeed, some narratives accurately describe the severe impression that Portuguese sailors had on the Indian Ocean, through which they “completely dominated and changed its landscape and transformed its economy with their particular form of armed trading” . In an attempt to monopolise the Indian Ocean, the Portuguese “displaced many of the Arabs as the major traders” as well as severely restricting the trade of Omani merchants. There is no doubt then, that the Portuguese infiltration of the Arabian Sea was nothing more than a brutal and unyielding attack on the traditions and engrained cultures that had flourished for centuries.
Other narratives, however, seem to dispel this menacing and authoritarian regime, as some academics have stated, emphatically, that the Portuguese intrusion was actually beneficial to the region as a whole. There was a “sudden change from stitching to nailing” in the 26 construction of Arab ships that coincided with the appearance of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean at the end of the fifteenth century, and this has been thought of as a symbol of the Portuguese culture. As if they were part of the early cultural globalisation witnessed around the coastal ports of the Indian Ocean, there seems to be an idea that the Portuguese, rather than inflicting damage to the region, actually brought with them an idealised and enlightened way to conceive ship building. Whilst it has been previously assumed that the change was merely another improvement in shipbuilding techniques, this is false. In fact, “nailing had been tried and rejected by the Arabs 800 years previously” . Therefore, the reason that nailing became such a prevailing technique in the Arab world at this time was due to the need to adapt to a new way of fighting. The Portuguese brought ship-mounted cannons to the region, which meant the vessels had to be capable of bearing the weight of multiple cannons, only possible through the nailing technique. Undoubtedly, the Arabs felt obligated to carry the same type of weapons in order to compete with the new sailors from Portugal and to protect themselves. Moreover, these nailed ships were better able to withstand the impact of cannon shot and fire and were a sensible logistical choice. Here, one can see that rather than bringing a new knowledge to the region, the Portuguese sailors only bought a rampage that the Arab sailors had to work against.
The framework that dominates the narrative of European intervention in the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean is traditionally orientalist. Defined as “nothing more than a structure of lies or of myths” developed by a “powerful hierarchy of European-Atlantic” elites, the orientalist viewpoint of European sailors as bringing a new intellectual and cultural heritage to this region fails to recognise the undertones of decimation and devastation that paraded the waters. Luckily, however, in the words of Australian author and adventurer Alan Villiers, the dhow trade is “a stubborn plant which has been growing a long, long time” and did not collapse after the Portuguese arrived. Instead, with the defeat of the Portuguese both in Muscat in 1650 and then Mombasa in 1698, “the Portuguese lost their control of the Indian Ocean trade” , and the Omani Yarubi dynasty “reasserted its traditional role as the major trading power” in the Indian Ocean. It is credit to the immense cultural interconnections between coastal regions and the prolonged maritime narrative of the Middle East that, in fact, the dhow still persists today.
Modernisation has played a significant role in decreasing the need for these traditional voyages, and has “almost ended the 4,000-year-old tradition of sailing and building dhows” but there are still dhows in existence. Ultimately, though, these are shadowed by “trucks [that] now transport goods more efficiently, … excellent docking facilities [that] have attracted large ships” and the proliferation of roads between the different Emirates. Instead of providing the most streamlined service, dhows provide a cultural heritage that cannot be forgotten. The reconstruction of an early ninth-century CE shipwreck, The Jewel of Muscat, after its excavation in 1998 and 1999, along with the current reconstruction of “a primitive ship that caused a trade revolution in the Arabian Gulf” at New York University Abu Dhabi, proves that the dhow will remain an essential part of the Middle Eastern country for many years to come. Therefore, the Portuguese intervention, whilst a menacing and threatening intrusion on the Arabian Sea during the fifteenth century, did not positively impact the region, nor completely destroy it. Instead, in the words of historian Ashin Das Gupta, “after the first violent overture, [the Portuguese] settled within the structure and were, in a way, swallowed by it.”
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