Papers from the forty-third meeting of the Seminar for Arabian Studies held at the British Museum, London, 23-25 July 2009 || A possible Upper Palaeolithic and Early Holocene flint scatter at Raʾs ʿUshayriq, western Qatar (original) (raw)

Researchers from the MARES Project visited Yemen in February 2009 in order to investigate the building and use of traditional wooden boats ("dhows" in English) in the country. The survey covered the coastline from Aden to al-Salīf in the Red Sea, and visited centres of dhow building and use, including Ghurayrah (Ghureira), al-Mukhā (Mocha), and al-Khawkhah (Khokha). The project's aim was to assess the state of the industry, establish a vessel typology, understand construction processes, learn about the use of these vessels, and compile a lexicon of boatbuilding and nautical terms. This article offers the preliminary findings of the survey, pending more comprehensive publication in the future. The survey found that, in all locations visited, the building of new vessels had rapidly diminished in the preceding decade, and has now all but ceased. The only ongoing activity witnessed during the survey was repairs to existing wooden craft. In formerly large boatbuilding centres, builders of wooden boats, mostly elderly, have ceased work, while younger men were building fishing craft using fibreglass -the material used in the great majority of vessels in Yemen today. A preliminary typology of surviving vessels was established. The double-ended cargo-carrying zaΚāyim (sg. zāΚīmah) and zawārīk (sg. zārūk) were recorded only as abandoned hulks. Double-ended Κabārī (sg. Κobrī) and the transom-sterned "large hūrī" (pl. hawārī), with its stern-quarter "fins", continued to be used in small numbers for seine fishing and transporting livestock. Again, most examples were abandoned. Various forms of small log and plank hūrī "canoes" were observed, few still in use, while the log-raft ramas survives on the Red Sea coast. The terms used for these vessel types form part of a linguistic survey of dhow activity in Yemen.