13 · The Role of Charts in Islamic Navigation in the Indian Ocean GERALD R. TIBBETTS The existence of indigenous navigational charts of the voyage.7 Barros wrote in the 1540s and could have read Indian Ocean is suggested by several early European Varthema's work, which was in many editions by that sources, the earliest of which is the brief mention of date, including an edition in Spanish published in Seville mariners' charts by Marco Polo. First, in connection with in 1520. There are other occasions when Barros seems Ceylon Polo mentions "la mapemondi des mariner de cel to have incorporated later materials into his version of mer,"! a reference that can only refer to a nautical map the earlier Portuguese accounts of the Indian Ocean, so of some sort. Second, in connection with the Indian west some doubt is cast on the accuracy of his statement. coast he refers to "Ie conpas e la scriture de sajes rnar­ In 1512 another possible local chart is mentioned by iner."2 This first word has been translated as "charts," Afonso de Albuquerque in a letter to the Portuguese king and strangely enough it is the very word (al-qunbii~) used Manuel. He reports that he had seen a large chart belong­ by Abmad ibn Majid (fl. A.D. 1460-1500) in connection ing to a pilot on which Brazil, the Indian Ocean, and the with portolan charts.3 Far East were shown. This chart can only have been very The other sources are Portuguese and come from the sketchy, for the Portuguese pilot Francisco Rodrigues period when that country had reached these parts. The (who had seen and copied this Javanese chart) produced Portuguese mention these charts in some detail. Accord­ charts about 1513 in which the coasts not already sailed ing to Joao de Barros, Vasco da Gama was shown charts by the Portuguese were shown in a very imperfect way.8 of the coast of India at Malindi before he set out for the first time to cross the Arabian Sea. The text states that a 1. Marco Polo, II milione, ed. Luigi Foscolo Benedetto (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1928), 176 (MS. fol. 77d), and The Book of Ser Marco Moor of Guzarat, named Malemo Cana ... had Polo the Venetian, concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, shown him a map of all the coast of India, with the ed. and trans. Henry Yule, 3d rev. ed., 2 vols. (New York: Charles bearings laid down after the manner of the Moors, Scribner's Sons, 1903), 2:312-13. which was with meridians and parallels very small (or 2. Benedetto's text, 209 (fol. 93a), and Yule's translation, 2:424 (note close together), without other bearings of the com­ 1). pass; because, as the squares of those meridians and 3. For Ibn Majid, see below and also Gerald R. Tibbetts, Arab Navi­ parallels were very small, the coast was laid down by gation in the Indian Ocean before the Coming ofthe Portuguese (Lon­ those two bearings of north and south, and east and don: Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1971; reprinted west, with great certainty, without that multiplication 1981), 272. 4. Gaspar Correia, The Three Voyages of Vasco da Gama, and His of bearings of the points of the compass usual in our Viceroyalty: From the Lendas da India ofGaspar Correa, trans. Henry [Portuguese] maps, which serves as the root of the E. J. Stanley (London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1869), 137-38 4 others. n. 2, quoted from Joao de Barros, Asia: Decada I, bk. 4, chap. 6 (1552), Barros also notes that certain Moorish charts show the by Stanley in a footnote to Correia's text. 5. From Joao de Barros, Asia: Decada III, bk. 3, chap. 7 (1563); Maldives beginning on the latitude of Mount Eli (in Mal­ mentioned by Avelino Teixeira da Mota, "Methodes de navigation et abar) and continuing on to join the land of Java and the cartographie nautique dans l'Ocean Indien avant Ie XVle siecle," Studia coast of Sunda.s 11 (1963): 49-91, esp. 71. A chart was also mentioned by Ludovic Varthema in 6. Ludovic Varthema, The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema in his Itinerario when he traveled between Borneo and Java Egypt, Syria, Arabia Deserta and Arabia Felix, in Persia, India, and Ethiopia, A.D. 1503 to 1508, trans. John Winter Jones, ed. George sometime before 1508. Here the captain of the ship he Percy Badger (London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1863), 249. sailed in "had a chart which was all marked with lines, 7. On Correia, see note 4 above; Fernao Lopes de Castanheda, His­ perpendicular and across."6 toria do descobrimento & conquista da India pelos Portugueses, 8 It is interesting that only the account of Barros respect­ vols. (Coimbra: loao da Berreyra e loao Alvarez, 1552-61). ing Vasco da Gama's voyage includes the note about the 8. Afonso de Albuquerque, Cartas de Alfonso de Albuquerque, 7 vols. (Lisbon: Typographia da Academia Real das Sciencas, 1884-1935), Arab charts; they are not mentioned by Correia or Lopes 1:64-65; see also Teixeira da Mota, "Methodes de navigation," 73 (note de Castanheda, who published earlier accounts of the 5). 256 The Role of Charts in Islamic Navigation in the Indian Ocean 257 Finally, the famous map of PIrI Re)Is that is dated 1513 extent representative of all Indian Ocean sailing.12 In the (pp. 269ff. and fig. 14.5) mentions that one of its sources same way, navigation in the Mediterranean was common is an Arab map of India (CArabf Hint fJartisi). The prob­ to all sailors around its shores (see chap. 14). It is also lem is that the eastern part of PlrI Re)Is's map has not clear from the texts mentioned above that Mediterranean survived. It is not possible to check this information, and methods were not used by Indian Ocean navigators. Ibn his Arab map may have been similar to those of the Arab Majid, a prolific writer and an experienced navigator in classical geographers and may have been used only for the Indian Ocean, wrote as if he was acquainted with place-names. That PlrI Re)Is also mentions other Arab Mediterranean practice and derided the use of the qunba§ maps and maps drawn in the days of Alexander the Great and scale of miles, which were not required by the Indian leads one to suppose he might mean classical Arab maps Ocean pilot.13 Both of these things were probably not of Ptolemaic origin. He contrasts these with Portuguese known at all to the average pilot in the Indian Ocean, maps of India and China that are "geometrically drawn," and both refer to the methods used in connection with as if the Arab maps were not.9 the portolan chart. In fact, the qunbii§ (comparing the Thus, although neither the map of Albuquerque nor information given by Marco Polo above) may be the that mentioned by PIrI Re)Is may have been practical portolan itself. navigational charts, the charts mentioned by Barros and One might therefore expect these Arab navigational Varthema were presumed to be so by those Europeans texts to throw some light on the existence and form of who saw them. The references of Marco Polo may also charts the Arabs used for sailing in the Indian Ocean. have genuinely referred to Indian Ocean navigational Some scholars have anticipated a study of these texts by charts, although they are too short to give us any practical details. They could, however, indicate that examples like 9. Afetinan, Life and Works ofPiri Reis: The Oldest Map ofAmerica, Yola~ those mentioned by Barros and Varthema existed almost trans. Leman and Engin Uzmen (Ankara: Turkish Historical Soci­ ety, 1975), 32. For the word barti, see p. 206. That this is the first two hundred years earlier. One might therefore expect known use of the word in Turkish and that all early uses of the word to find remains of actual charts, traces of their influence, seem to be navigational does not imply that cArabi Hint bartisi means or even descriptions from Arab sources. Yet none of these an Arab chart of India. It would most likely be an Arab map of India, have been forthcoming. 1o and I suspect the original map of PIrI Re)Is is a hybrid like that of al­ SifaqsI (see figs. 14.24 and 14.25). At the time of Vasco da Gama, there was in circulation 10. The reference to "charts and itineraries of mariners" reported to in the Indian Ocean a considerable amount of Arab navi­ come from the text of the Arab geographer al-MuqaddasI's A~san al­ gationalliterature in the form of practical advice for nav­ taqasim (see the edition Descriptio imperii moslemici, ed. Michael Jan igators and pilot guides for the coasts of the Indian Ocean de Goeje, Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum, vol. 3 [Leiden: E. and China seas. A few examples of this literature have J. Brill, 1877; reprinted 1906, 1967], 10), is a false one and of no importance to us here (see William C. Brice, "Early Muslim Sea-Charts," survived in the Arabic works of Ibn Majid and Sulayman Journal ofthe Royal Asiatic Society ofGreat Britain and Ireland [1977]: al-MahrI, who wrote in the later fifteenth century and 53-61, esp. 54). The text uses the word dafatir, which has been trans­ the early sixteenth, respectively, and in the Turkish adap­ lated by Ranking and Azoo in their edition of al-MuqaddasI's text by tation of Sulayman by SIdI CAlI ~elebi (SeydI CAlI Re)Is) the double phrase "charts and itineraries" (AlJsanu-t-taqasim fi written about 1550.11 These works are very detailed and macrifati-l-aqalim, ed.