Böcker av Dionisius A. Agius

First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Few images are as evocative as the silhouette of the Arab dhow as, under full sail, it tacks to windward on glittering waters of Red Sea before moving across the face of the rising or setting sun. In this authoritative new book, Dionisius A. Agius, one of the foremost scholars of Islamic material culture, offers a lucid and wide-ranging history of the iconic dhow from medieval to modern times. Traversing the Arabian and African coasts, he shows that the dhow was central not just to commerce but to the vital transmission and exchange of ideas. Discussing trade and salt routes, shoals and wind patterns, spice harvest seasons and the deep and resonant connection between language, memory and oral tradition, this is the first book to place the dhow in its full and remarkable cultural contexts.

The development of the Siculo Arabic group of varieties in the early medieval period took place while Sicily was under two cultural influences: the Latin and the Byzantine. This book explores the Arabic spoken by both Arabs and non-Arabs in that region, during that period.

This book is a study of the seafaring communities of the Arabian Gulf and Oman in the past 150 years. It analyses the significance of the dhow and how coastal communities have interacted throughout their long tradition of seafaring.