Kachchhi-Gujarati navigation in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: an intangible knowledge system, charted

Abstract This article offers a detailed analysis of a Kachchhi-Gujarati manuscript chart of the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden dating probably from the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries and held at the Royal Geographical Society–Institute of British Geographers in London (mr Asia S.4.). The origins and possible dating of the manuscript are examined. Astronomical data inscribed on the chart, establishing latitude and providing sailing directions, are identified, interpreted, and projected. Its Devanagari toponyms are transcribed and identified with real-world locations. Coastal profiles and unnamed features representing significant navigational landmarks are individuated. Islamic buildings depicted on the chart are identified as specific regional mosque-shrines. The presence of Ottoman and other regional polities are inferred. The place of the chart within an early modern tradition of western-Indian navigational manuscripts and a wider Indian Ocean tradition is explored. Our analysis establishes the chart as a detailed and highly practical navigational work—countering earlier scholarly denigrations of its accuracy. In contrast, we show it to be one of the most detailed surviving indigenous navigational charts produced in an Indian Ocean tradition.