This chapter presents new, annotated translations of the extensive summaries and paraphrases of books 1 and 5 of Agatharchides’ lost work On the Erythraian Sea (written c.145 BC) that were made by Diodoros (book 3), Strabo (book 16), and especially Photios (Bibliotheke, codices 213 and 250). Additional testimonia and fragments are arranged as five extracts. The chapter introduction reviews Agatharchides’ career, his writings, and his scholarly milieux in Alexandria and later (probably) Athens, and upholds the view that On the Erythraian Sea was a self-contained work, not part of a larger whole. The geographical and ethnographic material in this work–a historical work–is distinctive for being based on information from Ptolemaic commanders and explorers, and remarkable for its sympathy with some of the Ptolemies’ oppressed subjects. Agatharchides’ depiction of these peoples implies an evolutionary scheme of development–from hunter-gatherers to pastoralists to farmers–such as Dikaiarchos (Chapter 9 of this volume) had suggested in his philosophical works. The surviving summaries include remarkable passages on elephant-hunting and the sufferings of gold-miners; but Agatharchides’ work was more often accessed through its reworking by Artemidoros (Chapter 18) than read in its own right. A new map highlights the principal places and peoples mentioned by Agatharchides in East Africa and Arabia.

This chapter presents a new, annotated translation of the Circumnavigation of the Erythraian Sea (commonly known by the Latin title Periplus maris Erythraei or PME). Erroneously attributed to Arrian (see Chapter 27 of this volume), it was probably written in the 1st century AD, a generation or two before he was active, by a Greek-speaker from Egypt. The chapter introduction shows how the work is unlike any other that we have, in being a detailed overview of regions east of Egypt from the point of view of an experienced trader (possibly the Sosandros named by Markianos in Chapter 34), though also drawing upon a variety of written sources of disparate character. Consequently, we are presented with a combination of navigational information, useful to those commissioning or planning trade voyages, with enlivening facts such as marvels (paradoxa) that signify to the reader that its author is an educated man. He had perhaps been recruited to write a handbook for merchants, at a time when Roman naval presence in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean was increasing. Most famously, the work contains a plethora of information about specific commodities traded in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, exports from particular ports, and where those goods originated. A detailed map shows many of the ports mentioned in the text, while another clarifies the relationship between the prevailing winds of the Indian Ocean and the maritime itineraries described.

This chapter aims to analyse the interactions between Jews and Christians in sixth-century South Arabia, offering some reflections on the broader Late Antique socio-economic and political map. The first part reconstructs the spread of Christianity in South Arabia and the events leading to the massacre of the Christians of Najrān in 523, presenting a comprehensive analysis of this period through a reading of literary and epigraphic material. It argues that economic reasons were the main motivations behind the negus’s invasion of South Arabia and that faith was exploited as a casus belli. Conversions tended to be the cumulative result of socio-economic networks and migrations, as the exchange of ideas followed that of resources. As such, the depiction of the massacre of Najrān as a ‘religious slaughter’ reflects more the ‘religious’ character of the available literary sources than the actual unfolding of the events. The second part of the chapter focuses on the Red Sea Christianities. It examines the religious allegiances of the Aksūmite negus Kālēb and the Ḥimyarite king Abraha, shedding light on the several stages involved in the Christianisation of these two regions and reconstructing the events that led to the collapse of Ḥimyar.

The Sultanate was a global state that interacted with regimes in North, West and East Africa, Mediterranean Europe, Asia Minor, the Arabian Peninsula and Southwest Asia. Its ideology of diplomacy focused on maintenance of the balance of power extant during the formative stage of its founding: control over the Syrian Littoral and Red Sea nautical routes to South and East Asia. Senior officers appointed from Cairo ruled Syrian provincial capitals as viceroys, tying them directly to the imperial center. On the Red Sea coast of Arabia (Hijaz), the Hasanid Sharifs of Mecca exercised local political authority, but from Baybars’ reign were compelled to comply with the Sultanate’s commercial and fiduciary policies over the spice trade. Tensions in Southeastern Asia Minor heightened when objectives of territorial stasis advocated by the Mamluks clashed with aims of territorial conquest asserted by the Ottomans. Regional principalities pursued their own goals of autonomy with varying degrees of success. The international system of commerce, centered on Venetian and Mamluk exploitation of trade routes to Asia through the Red Sea, was decisively altered by the Portuguese entry to the Indian Ocean. When the Ottomans defeated the Cairo Sultanate, its centrality in the global environment was already diminished.

The study of pre-modern (i.e. pre-sixteenth century) systems of enslavement and slave trading in sub-Saharan Africa have relied heavily on textual, especially Arabic, sources. By contrast, there have been few archaeological studies of these phenomena, although reference is often made to the Trans-Saharan and Red Sea/Indian Ocean slave trades in archaeological studies of early state formation and globalisation on the continent. This chapter provides a brief review of some of the key written sources concerning the presence of slaves in different regions of sub-Saharan Africa between c. 500-1500 CE, and what these can tell us about prevailing systems of enslavement. This is followed by discussion of the limited number of archaeological studies of enslavement during this same period across the continent, their main findings and the key interpretative challenges faced when trying to detect the presence of slaves from material evidence alone. The chapter concludes with suggestions for the direction of future work, laying emphasis on the need for multi-sited projects that aim to reconstruct landscapes of enslavement and how slave-based economies were organised and functioned.

While the Indian Ocean slave trade is at least 4,000 years old, there are three historical periods when this trade expanded significantly: at the turn of the common era (ca. 1st c. CE), the tenth to thirteenth centuries, and the nineteenth century. This chapter analyzes the ebb and flow of the slave trade in the western Indian Ocean and Red Sea region during the medieval millenium, beginning with an evaluation of how the expansion of Muslim societies impacted slavery. The regions discussed include the west coast of India, East Africa, Yemen and Arabia, Ethiopia, Nubia, and Egypt. The roles of urban markets and island entrepôt in the slave trade are discussed as well as the roles played by smaller polities along imperial frontiers. Large-scale wholesale slave trading was uncommon in the medieval Indian Ocean world. Instead, merchants generally trafficked in small numbers of enslaved people as part of larger mixed cargoes of luxury goods and other commodities. Finally, the chapter assesses recent genetics research that is relevant to tracing the movements of people through the regions of the medieval Indian Ocean.

In Majerteenia in the nineteenth century, violence – once the exception in inter-state relations in the region – evolved into a diplomatic strategy that could be instrumentalised for political and financial gain. Chapter 2 reconstructs a series of confrontations between British colonial officials and the rulers of north-eastern Somalia over Somali attacks on seaborne and wrecked ships. The Majerteen coastal elites engaged in a cycle of attacking shipwrecks and signing treaties with the British colonial rulers in Aden to increase regional recognition for their rights as coastal rulers. As the nineteenth century wore on, the British reneged on their promises, relied on duress in negotiations, and engaged in double-dealing with Sultan Uthman’s political rivals, especially a regional governor named Yusuf ‘Ali. Their treaty relations with the British echoed but modified existing agreements with other port-rulers in the region, including the Hadhramis, the Omanis and the Ottomans. By the end of the century, the Majerteen Sultanate would be split in two, carved into mutually antagonistic northern and southern spheres which continue to this day to be rivals, as can be witnessed in the tensions over the extent of Puntland and Galmudug federal states jurisdictions.

The first part of this chapter examines deep-rooted, diplomatic traditions of courtly exchange, international coexistence and commercial cooperation centred around the Majerteen Sultanate in north-eastern Somalia. A network of regional diplomacy first emerged for the purposes of managing shipwrecks and facilitating trade during the Egyptian Middle Kingdom. The Majerteen Sultanate emerged in the eighteenth century and played a critical role in the north-east Africa’s foreign affairs, presiding over a cooperative system of international relations which promoted domestic political stability and protected maritime commerce. Having reconstructed the contours of a regional culture of maritime law and international relations, the second part of the chapter tells the story of the first contacts between Majerteenia and British colonists, a few years after the East India Company’s settlement of the port of Aden in 1839. Early Anglo-Majerteen interactions mirrored the well-established regional model of diplomacy, in which regional rulers created alliances and offered one another mutual recognition as sovereigns. But as the century wore on, British officials became increasingly belligerent; the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the increase in steam traffic tested international relations and the regional maritime framework.

The colonial history of the southern Red Sea region is strewn with the bodies of victims of maritime violence. The chapter introduces the three case studies explored in this study: Majerteenia in north-eastern Somalia, the Zaraniq from Tihamat Yemen in the south-western Arabian Peninsula, and Henry de Monfreid in French Somaliland. The chapter further examines the backstory to a more competitive, adversarial approach to international relations and maritime law, observing that the European culture of international law and international relations prioritised private property rights over international cooperation. Strong ideas about private property rights and competition for influence set the stage for conflict with the southern Red Sea’s more cooperative approach to maritime space and international relations.

The chapter situates Jeddah, the port of Mecca, within the new Islamic polity and the networks of regional and interoceanic trade between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. It traces the competition for control of the Red Sea ports from the expansion of the Ottoman Empire in the early sixteenth century to the establishment of the present system of states, focusing on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These were particularly marked by the introduction of steam shipping and the opening of the Suez Canal, leading to an increased interest of the British and French empires in the region. Ottoman governors further faced powerful merchants in Jeddah as well as the Sharifs of Mecca, who often contested their authority and hampered attempts at provincial and urban reform. After a brief interlude of Sharifian rule (1916–25), ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Āl Saʿūd established his rule over the Hijaz.