Cruise Through History - Itinerary 05 - Ports of Arabia to the Atlantic

By Sherry Hutt

Itinerary V of Cruise through History's latest release, eleventh in the series, includes tales found in ports of Arabia, through the Suez Canal, along the southern Mediterranean, to Atlantic Ocean islands and Morocco. Just as travelers left the beginning of human civilization in northeast Africa and traveled west across the north coast of Africa

• Language: English
• Publisher: Motumas Publishing
• Release date: Apr 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781942153221

Book preview

Ancient Fishermen in Nile Delta – Cairo Museum

AT SEA

RED SEA: A LITTLE POLITICAL/BIBLICAL HISTORY

Two topics never discussed in polite company are politics and religion. This story explores both. In the Hebrew creation story, Israelites crossed the Red Sea, moving from bondage to Palestine. The main port of the Red Sea at Suez, two millennia prior to the nineteenth century canal, was a terminal for commerce and warships, enabling the founding of dynasties, cities and nations. Modern Suez of the canal has its own story.

The challenge for this story, which seeks to give life to history for travelers, is to take a place so well known in name, faith and long held opinion of all who share monotheistic cosmology, to tell the tale without stirring further controversy. Dichotomy of stories begins in the Bible. The Bible gives two dates for the Exodus. Religious texts of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all look to the word of a single god, in verse edited by mortals in the sixth and seventh centuries. Religion is taken on faith. It is a choice, not an opinion. Biblical stories of the Torah, Bible, and Qur’an explain the essence of faith.

In the mid-nineteenth century, Biblical-Archaeology was born. Archaeology, a rational, written, organized science, became engrossed in factual proof of events of faith. In some instances, places of the Bible were located, where they should be, establishing a factual basis for historic tales. In other instances, mysteries of faith remain. Archaeologists look into the soil to answer questions. Those who practice their faith look into their soul.

It is a fact that the Red Sea was a point of convergence for ancient people trading from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. The extent of ancient trade networks is remarkable, given available travel technology. Before the advent of sails, galleys of slaves rowed great distances. Sails enabled use of monsoon winds to carry ships from Suez to ports in India.

This story of the Red Sea includes traversing sands of the Sinai, by necessity. That which is known is colorful. The unknown is left to the mystery of faith. This story ends with the Ottoman conquest of old Arabia and the new era of the modern Suez Canal.

Geographical and Geological Fate

Papyrus Flowers – from wall of Egyptian tomb

The Red Sea is a shallow waterway of perilous coral reefs, which reach out from both banks and up from rocks, just below the surface. Only one hundred ninety miles wide, at the greatest width, subject to summer temperatures of 55° centigrade, the Red Sea loses 900 billion square meters of surface water each year, making it the most saline of seas. Humidity over the water is often 75%.

Strong winds rise at random, bringing a haze of dust over the water. From November to March, winds blow to the northeast, and from June to August, winds blow to the southwest. Romans learned to use the wind to facilitate sailing ships, traveling from Suez to India. No humans have learned to cope with the heat and humidity.

From the ancient trade oasis of Suez, at the northern gulf of the sea, to the south entrance to the Red Sea at the Arabian Sea, is a distance of twelve hundred nautical miles. The southern opening to the Red Sea is thirteen miles wide. Ancient fishermen on rafts were blown into perilous coral reefs by monsoon winds.

The Red Sea runs south along the west side of the Sinai Peninsula and east coast of Egypt, making a turn toward the east along the east coast of Sudan and Somalia. The Red Sea runs north along the Arabic Peninsula from Yemen to Saudi Arabia, until the Gulf of Aqaba branches off to the east. The Gulf of Aqaba provides Red Sea access to northeast Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel.

Europe took little notice of any strategic importance of the Red Sea, until the fifteenth century, when Ottoman Turks expanded their empire west, took control of the Mediterranean and curbed access by land and sea to riches of India and Far East. Since the second millennia BCE, traders of the eastern and southern Mediterranean frequented the perilous Red Sea waterway, furnishing luxuries to an expanding market in Europe. Despite heat, wind and sandstorms, the Red Sea was the center of ancient commerce.

Exodus

The story of Exodus from Egypt to the promised land of the Israelites is the foundation story of Jewish faith. The Bible tells of building cities for the long-reigning Pharaoh and names Pithom, a city built by Rameses.¹ When the Pharaoh let the people go from bondage, God led them the long way through the desert, around the Philistines, whose legions guarded the short route across the Sinai.² Despondent in the desert, Moses awakened the faith of the Jews, when he received the Ten Commandments from the Lord at the top of Mount Sinai. Twelve generations from the time of the Exodus from Egypt, the Temple of Solomon was built in Jerusalem.

Stories of Biblical Egypt

No story of the Old Testament is more ingrained in memory than the Exodus. Every spring in the movie version, Charleton Heston starring as Moses, parts company with Egyptian pharaoh Rameses, to lead Israelites across the Red Sea. At the banks of the sea, a magnificent tsunami occurs, just long enough to allow freedom seekers passage. Then pursuing Egyptians on chariots are swallowed by an avenging sea.

When the known dates of the first Temple of Solomon are taken and calculated for twelve generations, the date of the Exodus is in the mid-fifteenth century before the current era (BCE).³ The date coincides with the great explosion on Santorini, which shrouded Crete in an earth shadow, precipitating the decline of the Minoan culture. Dust from the explosion, captured in winds, caused a shadow over the sky of the Nile delta; forced a cloud of locusts to precede it; deposited grains of iron ore in the water, turning the water red; and released a toxic gas, lethal to babies. Such an explosion is capable of creating a tsunami, moving across the Mediterranean, until waves reach the Red Sea.

Rameses II was the pharaoh who built two cities in the Nile delta, of mud bricks, one of which was Pithom. His son, the crown prince, died in infancy. Rameses II was pharaoh in the mid-thirteenth century, two hundred years after the Santorini explosion. His son died around 1259 to 1249 BCE. Thus, the volcanic eruption on Santorini was of no assistance to the Israelites in the time of Rameses. Dates do not coincide with the Temple of Solomon.

Biblical and archaeological scholars, looking for physical proof of the release of Israelites from bondage in Egypt, are stymied by the lack of written record in hieroglyphics of the pharaohs. Lack of inscriptions noting the event is not evidence of non-occurrence. Scribes to pharaohs wrote of achievements. Release of six hundred, or six thousand, or more, slaves would be of no notable consequence.⁴

A battle scene in the temple at Karnak, showing an altercation in the hills of Canaan, has been connected to an incident during the time of Rameses. The so-called Elephantine stele, a large stone epitaph, refers to Asiatics (Hebrews) driven out of Egypt, after receiving gold and silver to assist in their departure.⁵ The Old Testament corroborates taking gold and silver from Egyptians prior to departure of the Israelites.⁶

Route of the Israelites from Egypt to Palestine has not been fixed. Towns of Rameses indicated in story were in the Nile delta. That people would have trudged through swamps of papyrus, is more likely than crossing the Red Sea through coral. Once in the Sinai, the group would certainly avoid the short route across the Sinai, just as the Bible states, to avoid garrisoned soldiers along the Way of Horus, the established road along the Mediterranean coast. Turning south in the Sinai desert, along the east coast of the Red Sea, about half-way down the Sinai peninsula, there are archaeological sites evidencing habitation of a large population, consistent with the thirteenth century BCE. The wells here are called the Wells of Moses. From this place it is not far to Mount Sinai.

The Old Testament was edited in the fifth century. Details helpful to historians may have been cut, while inconsistency, such as in the date of the Exodus led by Moses, remained. Most historians agree with the later, Rameses era, date for the Exodus. The Bible story may reflect a compilation of releases from bondage, joined in a story that explains arrival in the Promised Land.

In 565 CE, the Sacred Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount Sinai was founded near the town of Saint Catherine in the Sinai. Within the walls of the monastery, progeny of the original burning bush of Moses is fostered. It was there, that Helen, mother of the first Christian emperor of Rome, Constantine, built a chapel in 337, to preserve the exact location of the burning bush seen by Moses.⁷ The monastery was built by Christian Emperor Justinian, at the time Constantinople was a major Christian capital, prior to the schism of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian church. This site in the Sinai was known for centuries prior to the sixth century, as the place where Moses received the word of God. It was a continual pilgrimage destination.

Prior to the printed Bible, people knew theological folktales as human history. Faith then, as now, did not require physical evidence recorded, labeled and preserved. The Red Sea holds an indelible place in the history of monotheism. Mysteries remain in domains of faith.

Ancient Trade depicted in Sakkara Temple, Cairo

Ancient Commerce

Egyptians were frequent visitors at docks in Santorini, before devastation caused by a volcanic eruption in the fifteenth or sixteenth century BCE.⁸ Frescoes in homes of wealthy merchants of Akroteri, at the southern end of Thera, the main island of Santorini, show papyrus plants from the Nile delta and pots to store incense. Perfumes and incense were brought from Yemen and Oman, shipped as far as Suez, for further transport. Ancient traders of Sinai peninsula and Egypt made use of water transit to the extent possible.

Pharaohs of the Old Kingdom, who were pyramid builders of three millennia BCE, and Middle Kingdom pharaoh temple builders, of the second millennia to mid-sixteenth century BCE, knew their world was special. They demanded and received riches to the extent of the known world. Hieroglyphics evidence a desire to build a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea, and a channel from Suez to the Mediterranean. An inland channel from either sea, facilitated transit of precious metals or gems to palaces along cities of the Nile.

Pharaohs had the capability to build major earth moving projects. They possessed engineers and a massive, coerced labor force. Plans to complete Suez and Nile canals came to a halt in the eighteenth and fourteenth century BCE, upon repeated advice from oracles, warning against incoming transport of goods, which could also enable marauders, desirous of looting the kingdom. Ancient Egyptians knew where they were vulnerable.

In 610 BCE, Pharaoh Necho I, of the late period of Egyptian leaders, moved against advice of the oracles, when he began a channel. Necho II completed a channel from the Nile to inland lakes, at the cost of 100,000 lives. He extended the channel toward the Gulf of Suez, when oracles convinced him to stop. Ships of these pharaohs rowed across the Mediterranean and around Africa. Their emissaries traded wisdom with Greeks. Historical wisdom of the oracles, reflecting on the Assyrian invasion of 669 BCE, chose isolation over exposure to war. When invaders came, they utilized Necho’s canals.

Fortress of Babylon Under Streets of Cairo Today

Peace for Egyptians came to an end, even without a canal, when Persians invaded in 525 BCE. Conquering Persian king Darius I finished the canal begun by Necho II. Where he linked the Nile with the Red Sea, Darius built his city of Babylon, now known as Cairo.

Son and successor to Darius, Xerses, took command of an army and navy, which controlled the eastern Mediterranean, until defeat of his navy by the Greeks, near the port of Piraeus. Greek victory, at the Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE, began decline of the Persian overseas empire. It enabled Greeks to rebuild the Parthenon, launching the Golden Age of Greece. Marble used to rebuild the Parthenon was quarried in eastern deserts of Egypt and floated up the Red Sea.⁹

The death blow to Persian dominance of Egypt was struck by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE. The young, Greek general, of the largest empire assembled in the Mediterranean, established his city, Alexandria, on the banks of the Mediterranean Sea, the better to facilitate transport of troops. He was crowned pharaoh in Memphis, capital of ancient Egypt. The Golden Age of Greece ended with the death of Alexander, simultaneously enabling one of his generals, Ptolemy, to launch a dynasty of Ptolemy pharaohs of Egypt. To legitimize that dynasty, Ptolemy wanted the body of Alexander buried in Egypt. He proclaimed himself successor god.

The world will never know what the power couple of the ages, Caesar of Rome and Cleopatra VII, the last Ptolemy pharaoh of Egypt, might have accomplished, had he not been murdered, and she left with the option of death by asp in 30 BCE. After some internal bungling, Romans made Egypt a vassal, to siphon off its wealth. Romans established two trading ports south of Suez, on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea, one named Berenice, after the mother of a Roman emperor.

Romans understood how to harness seasonal monsoon winds, to enable travel rapidly up and down the Red Sea, in the era of sail-powered ships. Typically, Rome conquered territory and built roads for military purpose, in order to bring wealth of vassal lands to Rome. Beyond the Nile Valley, with its productive farmland, the desolate sands south of Egypt, the Sudan and Arabian peninsula, were daunting, even to Romans. Romans ceased expansion of the empire with Egypt, content with enriching Rome through Red Sea trade, extending trade routes to India and the Persian Gulf.

A popular publication of the first century of the Christian era, Periplus, was a merchant’s guide to navigation of the Red Sea.¹⁰ Written in Greek and fragmentary Latin by a Greek, living in Roman era Egypt, the book is a manual for those sailing the Red Sea, Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf, all of which is referred to in the manual as the Erythraean Sea. The book was modeled after an earlier book of navigation of the Black Sea.

Periplus indicates ports, sailing time between ports and descriptions of harbor entrances. Cautions note where pirates lurk. When Periplus was later translated in medieval Europe, the information was a continuing valuable resource for merchants.

Sea commerce, of the first century of the Christian era, coordinated with overland routes, or replaced overland options where lords of the land charged exorbitant tolls for use of roads. When Romans raised rates on traffic through Petra to 25%, traders took goods from India by sea to Suez and overland to the Mediterranean. Statues from India were excavated in Pompeii, confirming the broad expanse of ancient Red Sea trade.

Periplus advised merchants what to bring in trade and what goods to expect in return, at each port. Cloth and paper from Egypt were added to shipments of wine and metals from Rome, which were loaded onto ships in Suez for transit to India ports. In early centuries of the Christian era, spices, gems and silks from India were in demand in Rome.

Medieval to Mid-Nineteenth Century Politics of the Red Sea and Sinai

Evidence of broad trade is found in coins excavated in layers of city sites in the ancient to medieval world. Kings promoted dominance of a region, by minting coins with their image. To mint coins required a period of peace and access to resources of gold, copper, or tin. Coins were valid as currency during reign of a king. Periplus notes which coins were accepted currency at which ports. Gold, wine and spice were always good currency.

Coins minted in Rome have aided dating ancient sites in India and in reverse. In the sixth century of the Christian Era, Byzantine emperors of Constantinople, such as Justinian in the mid-sixth century, had sufficient power and stability in their domain to have their currency accepted throughout Red Sea commerce. Little changed when the Arab-Islam conquest began in 630 CE.

Arab-Islam conquest of Red Sea kingdoms began in the mid-seventh century. Mohammed traveled from Mecca with generals, not apostles. In many instances, conversion to Islam in early medieval Arabia brought unity among disparate warring tribes. Unity, whether religious or political, enabled safe transit and continuation of trade. Trade financed construction of mosques and administration of cities by sultans.

Egyptians looked to the general of Mohammed, Amr Ibn Al A’as, to free them from Romans. In 639, an army of four thousand soldiers relegated Romans to history. The Amir El-Moemeneen (Amro Ibn Elias) created a waterway from the Nile to the Red Sea in 640, to facilitate transport of grain from Egypt to Jeddah, the port serving Mecca. Pilgrims on hajj to Mecca were more numerous than locals could feed from within the Arab peninsula. The canal was blocked in 767 by Abbasid caliph El-Mansur, in order to cut off supply of grain and starve Medina. His objective was to siege rebellious Muslims holding the city. Water and food were tools of control.

Scholars of this period of history are clear that the Arab-Islam conquest was not a jihad of religious purification, but of religion in furtherance of a stable society. Leaders of conquest appreciated that wealth grows in times of peace and is dissipated in times of war. The hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, increased business in Red Sea ports after Arab populations moved across the Sinai into Egypt, in what is described as Arab-Islamification of Egypt. Throughout the spread of Islam, Muslims, Jews and Christians continued to engage in business transactions across the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.¹¹

Between the tenth and fourteenth century, Arab-Islam became a majority population in Egypt. Native Egyptians were referred to as Copts, a reference to Egyptian Christians, a sect of Christianity disavowed by Byzantine church leaders in Constantinople and the pope in Rome. Egyptians were mostly monotheistic since the second century, if not Copts, then Mu’minin, the Believers.¹²

Early Christian Cairo

Cavern Church Babylon

Ottoman Turks grew from a small band in thirteenth century Asia, to a massive empire that enveloped Asia and moved west toward Europe. Official religion of Ottoman sultans was Islam. With each conquered realm, local political organizations and religions were tolerated, as long as taxes were paid. Conquest was economic, not religious. Strength of the empire was in efficient civic administration and avoidance of local strife.

Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, ended the Byzantine Empire and devastated the religious center of the Eastern Orthodox church. Byzantine control of trade in Egypt was eliminated. Ottoman troops occupied the Sinai as of 1517. By the time the Ottoman sultan’s talented general, Mohammed Ali, entered Cairo in 1805, transition of Egypt to an Arab-Islamic-Ottoman vassal state was accomplished. Egypt became, as it remains, 90% or more Islam and 10% or fewer Copt.

Mohammed Ali was an Albanian; proof positive that Ottoman sultans promoted generals on the basis of ability. He was sent to Egypt to drive out Napoleon’s army. By 1805, Napoleon’s empire was crumbling, as was the unwieldy Ottoman Empire. General Ali declared himself governor of Egypt, that is, the Khedive. In doing so, he began a new, stable, political dynasty. It was his stated ambition to create a vast and wealthy kingdom from the Nile to the Euphrates rivers. Ambition and dreams were limited by opposition of powerful local leaders in Jordan and Syria. Mohammed Ali’s domain reaffirmed the territory of Egypt, to include the Sinai peninsula.

Palace & Mosque of Mohammed Ali

Egyptians look to Mohammed Ali as the leader who brought them out of tyranny of the Mamelukes and into the nineteenth century, European world. Mamelukes began their time in Egypt as warrior-slaves of Fatimid rulers of Egypt. Fatimid leaders, descendants of the Prophet Mohammed, through his sister Fatima, established Cairo as their capital in 969. Two centuries later, Mamelukes overthrew Fatimids and took control of Egypt.

When Mohammed Ali arrived in Cairo, he observed corrupt remnants of Mameluke rule. One night he invited Mameluke leaders to a dinner, where wine service was generous. Tipsy guests left the dinner, through a narrow passageway. Gates to the passageway were shut, leaving Mamelukes trapped. They were shot in the trap, ending their rule of Egypt.

In 1833, French engineers approached Mohammed Ali, seeking his support for a canal from the port of Suez on the Red Sea, to a port on the Mediterranean. He was not interested. Plague raged through Cairo about this time. Creation of a Suez Canal waited for another khedive, in another story. Mohammed Ali died in 1849. His grandson Khedive Ismail begins that story, and a new era of commerce on the Red Sea.

Tomb Mohammed Ali

OMAN

MUSCAT/SALALAH: ENTER THE WORLD OF OLD ARABIA

Oman is the place to visit old Arabia. Informed by Islam, culturally Arab, and fully invested in the technology of the twenty-first century, Oman retains its historic identity. Two generations back, people road donkeys through city streets. Today, new sections of Muscat and Salalah are like any modern city. The stories are unchanged. Then and now, these cities survive on international trade. Trade goods have evolved.

The overwhelming portion of the population of Oman is indigenous Arab. Their ties to the desert are deep. Social cohesion has sustained a lifestyle, which exudes confidence in self-definition. Perhaps the relaxed environment generated by locals is what makes Westerners feel comfortable peering into history, little known outside of Arabia.

In Oman culture is a blend of historic and new, informed by history. A cruise port visit to Muscat, the nation’s capital, on the Gulf of Oman, or Salalah, near the border with Yemen, on the Indian Ocean, provides an ideal opportunity to consider origins of Arabic culture. Oman is ninety percent Islam. Arabic culture predated Islam and grew with Abrahamic religion, as it placed religious practice into the natural rubric of daily life. This story is not a study of Islam, except to the extent religion and culture are inseparable.

One fact of Oman, consistent through time, is that the country and its people have looked outward, to the sea and across the land, to sustain their communities. Although the oldest harbor of Muscat looks into a walled city, the wall protected the wealth of seafaring merchants from thieves, who might be drawn in from the desert by full storehouses. Until the Portuguese arrived in the late fifteenth century, Omani sailors had little competition and little to fear from ships arriving at their docks from across the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea.

Oman was the source of the most prized commodity of the ancient world: frankincense. Trees in the west of Oman, toward the Yemen border, near the town of Dhofar, were the source of the highest quality beads of amber perfume. Today, the port of Salalah is the place to purchase frankincense in a lose crystal form, marketed since long before Romans arrived in ancient Oman.

An explanation is appropriate on terms ancient and old Arabia. Ancient is usually assigned to a time prior to written record. In the Arabic world, writing goes back for a millennium prior to Christ, so the term is applied in this story to a time prior to arrival of Romans, around the first century of the current era (CE). Old Arabia, as it is used in this story, refers to the first century forward, until the nineteenth century opened Arabia to international homogenizing technology. Modern in Oman is a late twentieth century development. Descriptive terminology is not a science. This is, after all, light reading for travelers.¹³

Origins of Arabic Culture

Some of the earliest humans walked lands of east Africa and the Arabian peninsula. Three thousand years before the Christian era, people formed tribes and developed trade networks. An Assyrian scribe wrote of Arabs, who possessed a thousand camels, which crossed the desert in 853 BCE.¹⁴ The island of Arabs noted in the Book of Isaiah includes present day Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Oman, as well as the United Arab Emirates and Gulf states of Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar.¹⁵

The Queen of Sheba’s visit to King Solomon in Jerusalem, in the tenth century BCE, and her return home to raise their child, is a matter of study and interpretation, that crosses all three Abrahamic religions and the length of the Arabic world, into Ethiopia. Versions of the story differ between Biblical and historic versions. On one aspect of her travels, all sources agree. The queen, or emissaries of south Arabian leaders, traveled along trade routes, which were well established.¹⁶

Black Sheba by Conrad Kyeser