What the word “dhow” covers
“Dhow” is a European word, and it has been used loosely. It is applied to a family of traditional wooden sailing vessels from the western Indian Ocean, with different regional names such as boom, sambuk, baghlah and jalibut. These differ in size, hull shape and stern, so no single description fits all of them. What most share is a hull built of wood by experienced shipwrights, usually with a pointed or raised bow, and a rig of one or two masts carrying a lateen sail.
The lateen sail
A lateen sail is a triangular or roughly triangular sail set on a long yard that slopes at an angle to the mast. It is usually described as a fore-and-aft rig, which means it sits along the length of the boat rather than across it, and this lets a vessel sail at an angle to the wind better than a simple square sail. The origin of the lateen is debated. Triangular sails appear in the Mediterranean in late antiquity, and the type later became common across the Indian Ocean, but historians disagree about where and how it spread, and about whether the dhow rig is a local development or an import. The safest statement is that by the medieval period the lateen was well established on Arab and Indian Ocean ships, and it remained the signature of the dhow for centuries.
Sewn hulls and nailed hulls
Early ships in the western Indian Ocean were frequently built without nails. Planks were stitched together with cord made from coconut fibre (coir), and the seams were then sealed with fat, lime or other materials. A Greek-language sailing guide of the first century AD, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, mentions “sewn” boats in this region. Several medieval writers also described the practice, and some explained it, rather speculatively, by saying that ships had to be flexible. A better-documented point is the Belitung shipwreck, found off the Indonesian island of Belitung, which is usually dated to around the ninth century AD. Its hull was held together by stitching and is generally identified as an Arab or Gulf-built vessel, which shows how far these ships travelled.
Over time, nailed construction became more common, particularly in later centuries, and iron fastenings are widely used in the dhows of recent history. The changeover was gradual and varied by region and period. Hulls were typically built shell-first, with the outer planking laid up before internal framing was added, which is a general feature of many traditional boat-building cultures. Hardwoods such as teak, often imported from India, were prized for the planking.
The monsoon and the rhythm of trade
The dhow’s world was governed by the monsoon, a seasonal reversal of winds across the Indian Ocean. In general terms, winds blow from the northeast in the cooler months and from the southwest in the summer. Sailors learned to use the northeast wind to travel from Arabia, the Gulf and India toward East Africa, and the southwest wind to make the return trip or to cross from Arabia and Africa toward India. The system made voyages predictable and also forced sailors to spend months away, waiting in ports for the wind to turn. Those waiting periods encouraged trade, marriages and cultural exchange in ports along the way. The wider ocean system that these ships worked within is covered in the history of monsoon trade winds in the Indian Ocean, and the knowledge of the pilots who steered them is the subject of Arab sea pilots such as Ibn Majid.
Cargo from Arabia to East Africa and India
Dhows carried a wide variety of bulk goods rather than only luxuries. Typical cargoes over the centuries included dates, dried fish, grain, cloth, pottery, spices and timber. From East Africa, mangrove poles for house-building in the treeless Gulf were an important export, and ivory, gold and other products also moved north. Teak and other timber came from the Indian coast, along with cotton textiles and rice. Ports such as Zanzibar, Kilwa, Mombasa, Muscat, Basra and cities on India’s Malabar coast served as nodes in this network. Dhow merchants were often also owners and captains, working in small family or partner arrangements rather than large corporate fleets, a pattern that contrasts with the European chartered companies that arrived in the sixteenth century and later, whose armed East Indiaman ships and fortified bases changed the balance of Indian Ocean commerce.
Decline, adaptation and survival
The arrival of steamships in the nineteenth century gradually took away high-value cargo and long-distance routes from sailing vessels. Colonial rule and later regulation also affected dhow trade; for example, nineteenth-century anti-slavery patrols by the Royal Navy examined dhows in the western Indian Ocean, as the slave trade there, which used various kinds of vessels, was a significant subject of diplomacy. Dhows adapted. In the twentieth century many were fitted with engines, and sails became secondary or disappeared, and builders began to use materials such as fibreglass or steel in some places. Even so, wooden dhows still trade along the coasts of the Arabian Sea, and they remain in use for coastal cargo, fishing and tourism. In places such as Oman, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, traditional building is now also preserved as cultural heritage.
Why the dhow matters to maritime history
The dhow shows that a vessel type can be defined by its environment as much as its design. A lateen-rigged dhow worked within a set of winds, ports and merchant networks that persisted for well over a thousand years, and it linked Africa, Arabia, India and, at times, Southeast Asia and China. Its history is also a reminder that the Mediterranean and Atlantic traditions that dominate many accounts of ships were only part of the story.