<em>Dhow Cultures of the Indian Ocean: Cosmopolitanism, Commerce, and Islam</em>. Abdul Sheriff

Abstract

Reviewed by: Dhow Cultures of the Indian Ocean: Cosmopolitanism, Commerce and Islam Ethan R. Sanders Sheriff, Abdul. 2010. Dhow Cultures of the Indian Ocean: Cosmopolitanism, Commerce and Islam. London: C. Hurst & Company. 351pp. £18.99 (paper). In this study, Abdul Sheriff, a prominent scholar of the economic and cultural history of Zanzibar, and the director of the Zanzibar Indian Ocean Research Institute, has broadened his scope to deliver a much-anticipated and welcome study of the western Indian Ocean world. He has chosen to take a longue durée view, seeking to examine the great movements and not moments of the western Indian Ocean from the first century C.E. until around 1500, just after the intrusion of the Portuguese. Drawing on several intellectual currents of maritime and Indian Ocean scholarship, the strength of the book lies in his ability to collect these themes and fashion them together in a single, highly readable account. The breadth of the research is impressive, as he has not only worked through archives on multiple continents and in several ports around the edge of the Indian Ocean, but utilized a vast array of travelers' narratives, which include Indian, Chinese, Iranian, and Arab sources, and not merely the better-known accounts of Ibn Battuta and other Europeans. Sheriff's breadth is complemented by his innovative use of the dhow as his lens of examination, and he shows how these boats were not merely transporters of goods, but the means of social interaction, which gave birth to cosmopolitan cultures wherever they went. A central theme of the work follows Michael Perason's argument that the period before 1500 was a time when the western Indian Ocean was a mare liberum, or free sea, when trade was not controlled by states and was largely unrestricted. The freedom to trade and follow the monsoon winds created a diverse trading web, connecting the littoral peoples of the region. Sheriff is careful to point out that these maritime societies had a "dual nature": they were not purely land based, nor did they look solely to the sea; they had strong economic and cultural links with the interior peoples, but they also had significant connections, through kinship, religion, and trade, to other cultures across the ocean. Here, Sheriff is inserting a poignant argument into a long-running, but still politically salient, debate in Zanzibar and elsewhere, as to whether the littoral peoples have stronger cultural and ethnic ties to Africa or Asia. He carefully navigates this issue by highlighting the almost symbiotic relationship between the mainland and the maritime worlds of the Swahili people of the East African coast. Following two exploratory and introductory chapters, the text is broken up into four parts. The first describes the geography, cultures, and trade of the three main ecological zones of the western Indian Ocean: the Swahili Coast, the Intermediate Desert Zone (northeastern Africa and the Horn, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Persian Gulf region), and the western Indian seaboard—though the account occasionally forays into the eastern Indian Ocean as well. The second part of the book contains two chapters on dhows and navigation. Sheriff explains that the term dhow is an overarching category, which includes many different kinds of vessels, and even though [End Page 133] the triangular lateen sail was a defining characteristic, there were several other types. He emphasizes that throughout history, these boats adapted to the technological advances and economic needs of the Indian Ocean. He provides a fascinating discussion on the navigational methods invented and incorporated in the Indian Ocean world and paints a vivid picture of what life was like for the dhow crews. The third section moves more chronologically, starting with the early Roman period and then going through the rise of the Sasanian Empire and its most important port city in the Persian Gulf, Siraf. This period was succeeded by a time when the southern Arabian coast exerted the greatest influence, which was followed by the golden age of the Indian Ocean city-states such as Kilwa, Calicut, and Malacca. After these chronological chapters, Sheriff diverges into a helpful discussion on the Indian Ocean connections of the island of Madagascar, which until more recently has...