Jewel of Muscat
Videos, photos and information on the reconstruction of a 9th-century Arab ship, and its historic voyage from Oman to Singapore.
Which document is the square rig of the "Jewel" based on?
Tom Vosmer, Jewel of Muscat's Director of Construction, replies:
The square rig of the Jewel of Muscat is not based on any single document, but a collection of evidence, primarily iconographic. Virtually all the early (15-16th century) European illustrations of indigenous ships of the Indian Ocean show Arab ships with square rig. The ships depicted in the Book of Fixed Stars (10th century, Al-Sufi) are all square rig. The ships illustrated in the Maqamat of Al-Hariri (13th century) are certainly not lateen (triangular sail) or settee-rigged. In fact, the presence of a crow’s nest atop the mast precludes the handling of a settee sail in the normal fashion. The Arab ships illustrated in the Lopo Homem (Miller) Atlas of 1519 are all square-rigged.
In 1508 the Portuguese described an Indian Ocean sail shape that is moving toward the settee design (triangular with the forward corner cut off), but which has not yet developed into a full settee sail type. The length of the luff is 4/5 the leach. There are no ninth-century documents illustrating western Indian Ocean rig (although a few bas-reliefs or painted images in India dating from the 3rd to 6th centuries definitely show square sails). A gaffito excavated by Dr David Whitehouse at medieval Siraf shows multiple square sails on a ship. The ‘lateen’ type sails pictured in some Indian reliefs and hero stones and alleged to be pre-12th century are not securely dated.
I believe the settee sail, nearly ubiquitous in the western Indian Ocean today, was developed locally. The set-up and handling of the settee rig are completely different from those of the dipping lug or Mediterranean lateen, upon which some speculate it was based (while some believe the Med sail developed from western Indian Ocean settee design). This is clearly incorrect, as the Med had lateen sails as early as the 3rd century.
It is a common misconception that the ‘triangular’ sail so common in recent centuries in the western Indian Ocean has been there since the dawn of sailing. In reality it developed only about 500 years ago.