The Lion of The Sea

posted on: Jun 7, 2021

By: Ahmed Abu Sultan/Arab America Contributing Writer

During the Age of Exploration, there were many navigators who traveled the world seeking an adventure across the open seas. During the troubling times, many explorers struggled to find a path to avoid the taxation of passage. One explorer named Vasco de Gama was lost in the Arabian Sea until he met the legendary Lion of the Sea. Ahmed ibn Majid helped guide Vasco using maps the technologies the west was blind to. Eventually, a maritime path was initiated between India and Europe.

Early Life

Ahmad ibn Majid, also known as the Lion of the Sea, was an Arab navigator and cartographer born 1432 AD in Julfar. He was born in a family famous for seafaring; at the age of 17, he was able to navigate ships. Ibn Majid died around 1500. He became famous in the West as the navigator who helped Vasco da Gama find his way from Africa to India. Ibn Majid was the author of nearly forty works of poetry and prose. His father too was a man of the sea, but one with unique foresight. He insisted that a clear understanding of the Quran and its spiritual guidance would be as important to the boy. Additionally, any knowledge he could teach his son about sailing, the seas, and the countries he would eventually sail to would be helpful. 

From Ibn Majid’s first short voyage at the age of seven, the young sailor became a student, not only of winds, currents, and tides, but the moon, sun, and stars as well. The purpose of such learning was so he could understand where he was, compared to where he was going. During his youth, he navigated ships, he memorized and gained an understanding of the path initiated by the Holy Quran. He mastered the navigational learnings of his father, Ibn Majid and went to sea as a competent helmsman. Using a navigator, he progressed quickly to the rank of Mu’allim, which parallels the title Master Mariner. He spent most of his life in Muscat due to its massive and famous port.

The Lion of the Sea

History within the Middle East praises Ibn Majid with the invention of the navigator’s compass. However, Chinese sailors have been using a form of the device since 500 years earlier. During the 13th century, the original compass, which simply consisted of a magnetized iron fish floating in a bowl of water, changed because of an Italian trader, who fixed a slimmer magnetized needle to an axis. What Ibn Majid did do, however, was to pull all of the parts together, and place them in an oscillating box, which allowed the compass itself to have much greater stability. Moreover, the inventor of the Kamal is still used by some sailors today. It was a simple contraption, made of a knotted string and a rectangular wooden tablet. The specifically placed knots allowed the sailor’s to measure their latitude using the North Star, and therefore their relationship to their trading ports.

Ibn Majid authored many authoritative navigational studies, including some 40 works of poetry and prose, many of these relating to the seas. A good number incorporated earlier works of other seafarers such as the celebrated three 9th century captains, Layth ibn Kahlan, Muhammad ibn Shadhan and Sahl ibn Aban, as well as those written by his ancestors. However, these were improved by the many years of his own experiences at sea. Over time, his passion for learning and communication meant that he learned Greek, Tamil, Farsi, and many of the East African dialects. He developed too, a religious and cerebral understanding of his world, which led him to yet another legacy as a romanticist, and his poetry and verse too, live long after his departure.

Legacy

Knowledge 

Ibn Majid wrote several books on marine science and the movements of ships. These helped people of the Persian Gulf to reach the coasts of India, East Africa, and other destinations. His interests in astronomy, mathematics, and geography, instilled with such foresight by his father. Over the years led Ibn Majid to an amazing legacy of seagoing literature. He first wrote an encyclopedia, “Kitab al Fawa’id”. In it, he described the history of navigation, and the basic elements of the Arab trading empire. The elements included port locations from East Africa to South East Asia, and the essential differences between sailing the high seas and coastal sailing. He wrote of the possible origins, and effects of hurricanes, typhoons, and the monsoon season on trading voyages. He drew from the experiences of hundreds of fellow sailors, and his father.

Perhaps, his most important work was “The Book of Profitable Things Concerning the First Principles and Rules of Navigation”. The book covers such subjects as the origins and history of Arab navigation up to his time. The bounds of the technology was using compasses, the monsoons, naval routes, and astronomical meteorology. He not only provides incomparable detail on the Indian Ocean, its landmarks, the routes to be used in crossing it, and the region’s chief ports. He also includes information on islands such as Madagascar and Comoros, the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea. The work is incomparable by any other sailing boats’ guidelines.

Vasco da Gama

Ahmad Ibn Majid’s efforts in the mid-15th century helped the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama complete the first all-water trade route between Europe and India by using an Arab map then unknown to European sailors. He used a compass and maps never before seen by Europeans. His expertise helped secure a passage to India. As a result, he opened an important route to Western seafarers and the Age of Discovery. In the eyes of nautical historians, he was, above all, a fountain of knowledge. We learn of him, as a sailor, a scientist, a poet or an inventor, a theologian or a trader. There is a little bit in all of us, wants to be what he is, a legend, earning his title as the Lion of the Sea. 

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