Monsoon Dhows

Sailors have harnessed the Indian Ocean’s monsoon winds for at least two millennia. The Swahili term “dhow” encompasses a diversity of sailing ships, from coastal fishing boats to ocean-going vessels. Dhows drew the cosmopolitan urban communities of Indian Ocean world together. The seasonal patterns of monsoons meant that sailors would stay in distant ports for months at a time. They took sojourns in the cities of east Africa and the Horn, the Arabian Peninsula, Persia, India, and beyond to China, Sumatra and Java. Dhow routes created intricate loops of cultural exchange – gold and cotton, migrants and merchants, and marriages that tied together people from distant lands. Indian Ocean cities and their citizens continue to reflect the long duration of this cultural dynamism.

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“An old Muscat dhow, Zanzibar Harbour. These big dhows come down to Zanzibar during the N.E. monsoon and return during the S.W.” [album caption, Ost-Afrika]

Photographer unknown
Albumen print
Zanzibar, c. 1900
56.1.56.2 Courtesy the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies Winterton Collection, Northwestern University

Travel across the Indian Ocean was seasonal. The northeast monsoon winds of December and January brought dhows south towards Zanzibar and Madagascar. The July southwest monsoon drove winds from the south and west, from east Africa towards Oman, the Persian Gulf, and India. The monsoons meant that sailors, pilgrims, merchants, and traders spent several months in each port before returning. They learned languages, worked, and sometimes married, electing either to settle in a new place or bring a foreign wife home.

Photographer unknown
Silver gelatin print
Kenya c. 1900
36.1.26 Courtesy the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies Winterton Collection, Northwestern University

Likely taken while moored off Zanzibar’s coast, this image nevertheless conveys great drama and movement, reflected in the sky scattered with clouds, and the dhow’s billowing, half-raised lateen sail. The image reveals the intricacy of the dhow’s rigging. The fact that its crew assembled for the photographer suggest a well-considered and composed moment.

Photographer unknown
Silver gelatin print
Kenya c. 1900
36.1.30 Courtesy the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies Winterton Collection, Northwestern University

The first ocean-going dhows along the east African coast were documented around 90 BCE. They were discussed at length in Periplus, a Greek trading guide to the Indian Ocean, written in the 1st century BCE.

The east African coastline and islands—Zanzibar, Madagascar, the Comoros, and others—were plied by dhows sailing along trade routes to the Arabian Peninsula, Red Sea, and India. Omani traders began to settle at Mogadishu and Malindi around 690 BCE. Persians from Shiraz settled in Kilwa from 957 BCE, and goods from Arabia are in evidence in Zanzibar from 1107 BCE.

Photographer unknown
Silver gelatin print
Kenya c. 1900
36.1.11 Courtesy the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies Winterton Collection, Northwestern University

Navigating the Indian Ocean has long been dangerous, requiring skilled pilots and agile sailors. Sailors from Africa’s eastern islands supplied important manpower and goods to the Indian Ocean trade and drew large numbers of traders.

Swahili port towns gained significant wealth from the 9th century, exporting hardwoods and timber to Siraf in the Persian Gulf, ivory to India and China, and laborers to Mesopotamia. Swahili coast towns were great importers of cloth, beads and Chinese pottery.

Photographer unknown
Silver gelatin print
Kenya c. 1900
36.1.35 Courtesy the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies Winterton Collection, Northwestern University

Observers from the first century BCE to the Victorian era have commented on sewn dhows, which were stitched rather than nailed. Using coir ropes, builders sewed planks together at their edges, then reinforced the hull with ribs. Inside, coir padding pressed on the joints to prevent leaking. Sewn dhows had more flexible hulls and were prized for their resiliency navigating the coral reefs prevalent on the east African coast.

Sewn dhows routinely took long-haul routes between east Africa and China, though the technology fell into disuse by the 1930s.

Photographer unknown
Silver gelatin print
Kenya c. 1900
36.1.16 Courtesy the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies Winterton Collection, Northwestern University

The Indian Ocean ecology brought diverse regions of the coastlines into close contact and interdependence. Tropical forests in east Africa and India provided the raw material of shipbuilding, and shipyards dotted the Swahili and Indian coasts. India’s cotton for sails, iron nails, and coir ropes were essential materials. The Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf, lacking these resources, supplied men, traders and laborers, who spent much of their time abroad and at sea. Eventually shipbuilding also took off on the Arabian coast.

Photographer unknown
Silver gelatin print Kenya c. 1900
36.1.8 Courtesy the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies Winterton Collection, Northwestern University

Sailing along the coast required knowledge of currents and the land. However, crossing the ocean required the expertise of a navigator or “mu’allim’ who could calculate routes according to the stars.

More than forty of the writings of the famed 15th century navigator and pilot Ibn Majid have survived. His Al Sufaliyya centers on sailing from western India to the east African coast and islands, Zanzibar, Kilwa, the Comoros, Madagascar, and Sofala, where gold, people, and copper were brought from inland Zimbabwe.

Photographer unknown
Silver gelatin print
Kenya c. 1900
36.1.23 Courtesy the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies Winterton Collection, Northwestern University

Sailors were at sea about ten months of the year and formed part of a larger floating community unified by their movement. Many sailors belonged to different sects of Islam, but there was a relative levelling of status on board. Women were very rarely passengers. The restrictions of community requirements for marriage from one port of origin could be abandoned at another destination.

Photographer unknown
Silver gelatin print
Kenya c. 1900
36.1.26 Courtesy the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies Winterton Collection, Northwestern University

Dhows are given names based on the shape of the stern (back end), hull (body of the vessel) and stem (where the mast rises). Some dhows are double-ended, and others have a characteristic square stern, like that seen far right.

The distinct types and names were the result of the criss-crossing of ideas and technologies across the ocean over millennia.

Photographer unknown
Silver gelatin print
Kenya c. 1900
36.1.46 Courtesy the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies Winterton Collection, Northwestern University

Because of polygamy and the seasonality of their work, sailors often took wives in many ports. People in Zanzibar claim ancestry from Tanzania, Nyasaland, Andalusia, Yemen, Egypt, Oman, Persia, Circassia, Hydramaut, India, Java, and China. The resulting family ties, migrations, diverse resources, and mingling cultural traditions form a deep history of globalism across the Indian Ocean.

Photographer unknown
Silver gelatin print
Kenya c. 1900
36.1.43 Courtesy the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies Winterton Collection, Northwestern University