Ahmad ibn Majid

Who is Ahmad ibn Majid?

Ahmad ibn Majid was a celebrated Arab navigator, poet, and cartographer born in Julfar, a coastal port in the region that is today Ras Al Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates, into a family of seafarers. He compiled detailed navigational treatises drawing on generations of Indian Ocean sailing knowledge, most notably "Kitab al-Fawa'id fi usul 'ilm al-bahr wa'l-qawa'id" (The Book of Useful Information on the Principles and Rules of Navigation), completed around 1490, which recorded sailing routes, star navigation, monsoon wind patterns, and coastal landmarks across the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean. He earned the honorific "Lion of the Sea" (Asad al-Bihar) among Arab sailors for his mastery of celestial navigation and maritime geography. A widely repeated but historically disputed later tradition credits him with piloting Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama's fleet from the East African coast to Calicut, India in 1498, though modern historians debate whether this specific encounter is accurately recorded. Regardless of that disputed episode, his surviving navigational manuals remain a landmark source for understanding pre-modern Indian Ocean seafaring.

Sources: Gerald R. Tibbetts, Arab Navigation in the Indian Ocean before the Coming of the Portuguese (Royal Asiatic Society, 1971) · Ras Al Khaimah National Museum, historical profile of Ahmad ibn Majid · Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Ahmad ibn Majid"