Remembering the Sea: Personal and Communal Recollections of Maritime Life in Jizan and the Farasan Islands, Saudi Arabia

This is the final version of the article. Available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.People create narratives of their maritime past through the remembering and forgetting of seafaring experiences, and through the retention and disposal of maritime artefacts that function mnemonically to evoke or suppress those experiences. The sustenance and reproduction of the resulting narratives depends further on effective media of intergenerational transmission; otherwise, they are lost. Rapid socio-economic transformation across Saudi Arabia in the age of oil has disrupted longstanding seafaring economies in the Red Sea archipelago of the Farasan Islands, and the nearby mainland port of Jizan. Vestiges of wooden boatbuilding activity are few; long-distance dhow trade with South Asia, the Arabian-Persian Gulf and East Africa has ceased; and a once substantial pearling and nacre (mother of pearl) collection industry has dwindled to a tiny group of hobbyists: no youth dive today. This widespread withdrawal from seafaring activity among many people in these formerly maritime-oriented communities has diminished the salience of such activity in cultural memory, and has set in motion narrative creation processes, through which memories are filtered and selected, and objects preserved, discarded, or lost. This paper is a product of the encounter of the authors with keepers of maritime memories and objects in the Farasan Islands and Jizan. An older generation of men recall memories of their experiences as boat builders, captains, seafarers, pearl divers and fishermen. Their recounted memories are inscribed, and Arabic seafaring terms recorded. The extent of the retention of maritime material cultural items as memorials is also assessed, and the rôle of individual, communal and state actors in that retention is considered. Through this reflection, it becomes clear that the extra-biological memory and archive of the region’s maritime past is sparse; that intergenerational transmission is failing; that the participation of state agencies in maritime heritage creation is highly limited; and that, as a result, memories current among the older generation have limited prospect of survival. These memories, recorded and interpreted here, identify the Farasan Islands as a former centre of the pearling industry in the Red Sea, and identify them and Jizan as open to far-reaching maritime-mediated cultural influences in an era before the imposition of the attributes of the modern nation-state.This study was funded by the Golden Web Foundation (UK registered charity number 1100608), with additional support from the Seven Pillars of Wisdom Trust (UK registered charity number 208669)

Classic ships of Islam : from Mesopotamia to the Indian Ocean

This book charts the development of Islamic ships and boats in the Western Indian Ocean from the seventh to the early sixteenth century with reference to earlier periods. It utilizes mainly Classical and Medieval Arabic sources with iconographical evidence and archaeological finds. Maritime activities in the region resulted in a cross fertilization, not only of goods but also of ideas and culture which gave an underlying cohesion to the Arabian, Persian and Indian maritime peoples. This study has led to a re-evaluation of that maritime culture, showing that it was predominantly Persian and Indian, with Chinese influence, throughout the Islamic period until the coming of the Portuguese, as reflected in nautical terminology and technology

The verbal sentence in written Arabic

This study is concerned with the Arabic verbal sentence structure and the main purpose is to examine the elements of this structure - both the verb and the agent - and their relationship, investigating the classical and modern grammarians' views. Therefore, this research is not based on any single aspect within this structure. The general trend of this research is from the general to the particular; hence a discussion on the parts of speech precedes an analysis of the verbal sentence structure since it is composed of these parts (noun and verb). This study concentrates on syntactic and semantic issues that relate to verbal forms and the agent. In addition, an attempt is made to compare the essential characterisers of Arabic verbal sentence with English sentence structure. This thesis consists of eleven chapters. Chapter One is an introduction. Chapter Two presents a brief account of the three Arabic grammar schools of thought and their methods. In Chapter Three I review the literature related to the verbal sentence. Chapter Four discusses the points of view of medieval and modern grammarians regarding parts of speech and the types of sentence. The fist element of the verbal sentence (the predicate) is examined in Chapters Five and Six; Chapter Five focusing on the transitive and intransitive verb while Chapter Six is in a passive voice. The second element of the verbal sentence (the subject) is examined in Chapters Seven and Eight; Chapter Seven showing the difference between agent and subject terminology and the rules related to them. Chapter Eight is on the deputy agent, examining the reasons for the omission of the agent, the types of deputy agent and the element which takes an agent's place. The basic word order of verbal sentence and the alternative word order forms are analysed in detail in Chapter Nine while Chapter Ten concentrates on the concept of the tense and aspect and the primary and secondary types of them. Chapter Eleven summarises the main findings of the study and makes recommendations for future research.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo