The Sailing Scribe: Mansur al-Khariji and the Oceanic Worlds of the Gulf

Abstract

How did Gulf nakhodas [dhow captains] produce the routes they traversed around the Indian Ocean? This article draws on the writings of one Kuwaiti nakhoda , Mansur bin Ibrahim al-Khariji (1879-1954) to explore the intellectual labour that made movement and circulation in the Gulf and Indian Ocean possible. His manuscript, which he composed after a long sailing career, includes notes on navigation, transactions, and the political geographies he crossed, together with stanzas of poetry. His notes shed light on the workings of a world in motion; of institutions and ideas that animated circulation around the Gulf and Indian Ocean. Through engagement with al-Khariji’s writings, this article offers reflections on a nautical world that has been pushed to the margins of a terrestrially moored historiography.