Red Sea and Persian Gulf Island Polities in the Tenth–Fifteenth Centuries

Approached with the historical and historiographical lens of large territorial states, port cities of the western Indian Ocean in medieval times appear geographically peripheral, and environmentally, politically and socially marginal, or are rendered virtually invisible.  This is particularly true of a series of city states flourishing on islands in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf between the 10^th and the 15^th centuries.  In light of relatively recent work on littoral societies and island states by Indian Ocean historians Michael Pearson, Edward Alpers, and others, this paper reviews the history and historiography of island entrepots such as Sawakin, Dahlak, Kish, and Hormuz, all of which are usually excluded from treatments of “Indian Ocean islands.”  These islands can be said to form a subgroup of a more broadly conceived Indian Ocean island world.  This investigation exposes the ways in which the medieval and modern historiographical traditions converge to produce blindspots that elide the history of these fascinatingly diverse places.  The paper highlights the role of these island states in the trade system that linked the medieval Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean worlds, and outlines the political and social dynamics that obtained in their polities.  A comprehensive review of the historical data, including medieval merchants’ correspondence from the Cairo Geniza, epigraphic sources, as well as more traditional geographical texts, chronicles and travel accounts, reveals that these islands were not (just) settlements perched on environmental margins, places of exile, or even bases of predatory maritime action, but (also) vital commercial entrepots, nodes in the early Indian Ocean slave trade, and most importantly, seats of local dynasties and polities making specific claims of sovereignty and occasional bids for some kind of territorial control.