A cultural exchange on the Maritime Silk Route

"The #Jewel of #Muscat" ... in Singapore! . Built by 35 men, this reconstructed 9th century hand-sewn #dhow inspired by a 1200 yrs old shipwreck, set sail on Feb. 2010 on a #route traced by their forefathers. . Since then it has been a royal #gift bestowed from #Oman to #Singapore to #commemorate their roots in centuries of #trade and #exchange. . Read more about this journey on my bio link or directly at el-musafir.com/singapore

Una foto publicada por ريكاردو Calderón (@el_musafir) el 17 de Sep de 2016 a la(s) 11:50 PDT

The Maritime Silk Route was not only a thoroughfare for commodities but also a highway for cultural exchanges were art, food, languages and modern technologies were also exchanged. Through this maritime highway, religious traditions were also brought to different places throughout the route and thus Christianity, Islam, Judaism and many more were also extended throughout Africa, China, and South East Asia.

Travelers such Ibn Battuta, Faxian, Admiral Zheng He, and Marco Polo used commercial trade vessels to different ports of call throughout this Maritime Silk Route.

One of these ports of call was Muscat in the Sultanate of Oman. Muscat was an important ancient trading port linking Africa and Europe and as early as the 9th century, there was already an established trade route to ports in the Far East.
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In 1490, the well known Omani navigator Ahmad Ibn Majid had described Muscat as a port without equal and so different Omani vessels would depart from Muscat across the Sea of Oman and the Arabian Sea to places such as Calicut, India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) through the Bay of Bengal to the strait of Malacca, to the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra before heading north to Vietnam and Guangdong through the South China Sea.

The above route followed the above-mentioned ​Maritime Silk Route. It is worth noting that well before the 7th century, Arab seafarers had discovered the secret of the trade winds which contributed to their successes as maritime traders.

The Jewel of Muscat

On July 2010, the reconstructed 9th century dhow sailed into the harbor of Singapore thus completing a joint project of the governments of Oman and Singapore.

The design of the Jewel of Muscat was based on an archaeological evidence of a shipwreck found off Belitung Island in Indonesia. Its builders used traditional materials and construction techniques such as timber from Ghana to make up the ship's planks. If you look closely, you will notice that it was also built without nails as the planks were sewn together with coconut fiber and sealed with a goat fat mix with lime.

The awesomeness of this navigation between Arabia and the Far East completed on July, 2010 is that its crew experimented with 9th century navigation methods throughout the entire journey.