Ahmad ibn Majid

"Let us consider a navigator's manual, published by INSA in 1998 to throw light on "traditional" navigational methods in the Lakshadweep islands. Like so many Arabic navigation manuals, this manual too is attributed to Ibn Majid, the most famous of Arab navigators, who lived in the 15th c. However, it contains updated information found in British sailing manuals of the 19th c. CE. The natural interpretation is that the attribution to Ibn Majid is nominal and symbolic, that the manual has been propagated accretively, motivated by the navigator's life-and-death concern to have the best possible knowledge, and hence the manual has borrowed also from British sailing manuals of the 19th c. It would be laughable to assert that the manual is due to Ibn Majid who had anticipated all this knowledge which was somehow transmitted to the British sailing manuals of the late 19th c. CE."