Book Review: Arab Seafaring by George Hourani

This is a book review on Arab seagoing by George Hourani. Arab oceanfaring is a classic of its kind. It was premier(prenominal) promulgated in 1951. It was ab initio submitted as a harangue to that university and has withheld the audition of scholarly upbraiding always since.\n\n\nArab seafaring is a classic of its kind. It was first published in 1951. It was initially submitted as a dissertation to that university and has withheld the test of scholarly criticism ever since. The late Professor Hourani investigated plentiful into history largely to introduce the historical background and environment of Arab efforts. This is certainly a notable work, packed with solid selective information resulting from faultless sources, some(prenominal) Arab and non-Arab alike. As the author has put it, It is a history of Arab navigation, but it is not a nautical manual; although it deals only with the period until A.D. 1000, it draws judiciously on later Arab and European texts when t hey can illuminate the past. supra all it welds together a mass of poppycock; as Hourani says, it is a history write both in station and time (p. xii).\n\nThe book is a history of trade routes in the Indian Ocean and of the ships that sailed on them. It is not an economic history. Hence, the products carried as cargoes are referred to only parenthetically. In the first chapter, Hourani traces trade routes in the Pre-Islamic era, when the first Arabs erected a mast and a sail and trusted to the winds on the open sea, and to the mercy of their gods (p. 4). geographics helped Arab seafaring, the Arabian peninsula was bounded by water, and the coral islands of the Red Sea and the Iranian Gulf defend piracy, to which the hungry nomads on both sides were all too prone, concerning it as a simple generation of their desert raids. The narrative picks up with some historical resolution only after the classic conquest of Alexander the Great, although earlier efforts on the authors part takes into belief the seafaring experiences! of the Phoenicians on nates that tracing efforts in the Indian Ocean need not bar those of the Mediterranean. The subject treated in the first chapter include the period before Alexander, the Iranian Gulf in Hellenic and Roman times, the Red Sea during the same era, the Byzantine and Sassanid, and accounts of pack sailing between the Persian Gulf and China in pre-Islamic times with resource material obtain from Chinese, Arab, and Western accounts.\n\n amicable order custom do Essays, Term Papers, Research Papers, Thesis, Dissertation, Assignment, declare Reports, Reviews, Presentations, Projects, Case Studies, Coursework, Homework, Creative Writing, tiny Thinking, on the topic by clicking on the order page.