Arab navigation in the Indian Ocean before the coming of the Portuguese being a translation of Kitāb al-Fawāʼid fī uṣūl al-baḥr waʼl-qawāʼid of Aḥmad b. Mājid al-Najdī
Written by Ahmad ibn Majid al Najdi
The sailors who traversed the Indian Ocean in medieval times must have possessed some sort of navigational science, for they travelled for weeks at a time without sighting land. Classical Arabic authors like Masüdi and texts like the ‘Aja’ib al-Hind give us a glimpse of this science and the Portuguese authors who sailed in the early days.
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