THE KAMAL
This navigational device was first used by Arabs in the
9th century. A piece of cord, with knots at fixed
intervals, is threaded through a hole in the centre of a
wooden rectangle. One end of the cord is held in the
teeth and the other at arm’s length. The user sights the
lower edge of the rectangle against the horizon, and the
upper to just occlude Polaris. The dhow’s latitude is
measured by counting the knots between the teeth and
the wood. Kamals were not used outside the Tropics, as
Polaris is too high in the north and sometimes below the
horizon in the south.
ribbing. In shell-building, by contrast,
the outer skin of the hull is built up
from the base.
In the case of the earliest dhows,
this was a simple dugout. Thin teak
planks were sewn to the side of this
to build up a hull. Over the centuries,
a keel replaced the dugout, but the
basic technique, in which the
shipwright created a vessel one plank
at a time, remained unaltered. One
advantage of this technique was its
adaptability. Changes could easily be
made during the process of
construction, simply by adding more
planks, altering their shape, or
attaching them at a different angle.
After European ships – first the
carracks and caravels of the
Portuguese, and then galleons – began
to appear in the Indian Ocean in the
16th century, the dhow-builders
began to nail the planks together
rather than sew them, but shell-
building continued to be the favoured
method.
Several types of dhow evolved
over the centuries to suit different
purposes. They are all characterized
by size and by the shapes of their
hulls. The baghlah, which is now no
longer built, was made for deep-sea
sailing, for example, and carried a
comparatively large crew of 30 or
more. It featured a flat, squared-off
stern, called a transom – with five
windows, and a high poop deck which
was reminiscent of those seen on
the grand European galleons of the
16th century.
Decorated dhows
The ghanjah was another large,
ocean-going dhow with an up-curving
stem – the timber at the front of the
boat – and a sloping transom, which
was usually highly decorated with
often ornate carvings.
Above: A boum in Bandar Kong, a port town of Iran by the Persian Gulf. Boums were
sailships until the 1960s when most were converted to diesel power like this one.
The dhow trade routes from
Arabia to India and East Africa
represent the most long-lasting
tradition of commercial seafaring
in world history.
The battil is a double-ended dhow,
with a long stem post, which ends in a
large, clubbed finial, and a stern post,
which owners often decorate with
pieces of worked leather and shells,
particularly cowries.
Sailing in calmer waters
The badan, a smaller double-ended
dhow with a shallower draught, was
intended to be sailed in coastal waters
and on rivers. It was similar to the
felucca, made for the protected
waters of the eastern Mediterranean
and the Red Sea. They can safely be
crewed by two or three people, and
are still in use today on the Nile,
ferrying up to a dozen people (and
often livestock) across or up and
down the river – just as they have
done for centuries.
Above: Dhows continue to provide
a cheap, reliable form of transport
in Arab waters.
Peter Ifland, author of Taking the Stars: Celestial Navigation from Argonauts to Astronauts
2 THE SULTAN DHOW