The First Explorers- Arab Traders in the Indian Ocean

You may be wondering why a reproduction of an Arab souk, a Middle Eastern market, has been placed in the Western Australian Maritime Museum. Well, the answer is simple, but not well known. Hundreds of years before European seafarers began exploring and trading around the Indian Ocean the Arabs, among others, had been exchanging goods with other people in the region. The cargoes carried by the outward-bound dhows (traditional sailing vessels) represent the basic products of the Arab world of those days- wheat, barley, cloth, dates and salted fish. The Arab traders pretty much stuck to the places where the most sought-after goods were found, such as the Malabar and Coromandel coasts of India, the east coast of Africa and Indonesia. To profit in the trade took business acumen, to survive in the trade took seamanship.

Through initially tentative exploration, the Arab seafarers drew maps, discovered previously unknown places and built up a knowledge of the weather patterns in the region. Trade became a cyclic undertaking, getting to sea at the end of the monsoon, taking the best route to your destination, negotiating for and loading a cargo, then getting back to your home port before the next monsoon. As indicated here, unless you were involved in local trade, you could only complete one return-voyage per year, but the profits were worth a king’s ransom. That is what brought the European powers around the world to the Indian Ocean. 

One of the many lane entrances to the Souk in Bur Dubai.
Credit: Clémence Jacqueris, licensed under CC-BY-SA-4.0