The present volume, Storytelling, Seafaring, and Travel Writing: The Arabian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, is based on a major conference held in 2018 at the Department of Arabic and Translation Studies at the American University of Sharjah. The conference aimed at understanding the multi-faceted interaction between storytelling, maritime travel, and textual representation, with a particular focus on the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. The undertaking was conceived in order to challenge conventional approaches to travel writings and maritime cultural exchanges by adopting an interdisciplinary approach that integrates historical, philological, literary, religious, and other approaches. The conference, which brought together scholars from different disciplines, was able to achieve this by opening up a discussion on how these themes can be analyzed within a more complex and more extensive analytical framework that goes beyond the confines of any one discipline.
At its core, this volume is therefore based on the notion that the study of storytelling and seafaring cannot be undertaken from one methodological perspective. Rather, it is the combination of the insights provided by various disciplines that helps to shed light on different facets of historical events, concepts, and cultural impact. The contributions presented in the collected essays manifest this commitment to a pluralistic research strategy and approach the subject from a number of perspectives and methods. This has resulted in a book that not only contributes to the existing research literature but also provides a basis for future cross-disciplinary research. The volume is centrally concerned with the literary, historical, and epistemological problems of travelling and seafaring narratives in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. The contributors investigate a wide range of sources—Classical Arabic, Persian, and Urdu travelogues, historical chronicles, and postmodern fiction—to contribute new insights to the debate and key themes. This enables a more complex understanding of how movement, real and imaginary, has been discoursed, fought for, and transformed over time and space. It also engages with poststructuralist theories of otherness and knowledge production that have been at the heart of recent debates about movement and encounter.
This set of contributions emerged from a process of continuous discussion and reflection, which was initiated during the 2018 conference and ended with the present collection of essays. In this sense, this book is not merely a set of random essays but rather a clear indication of how different disciplinary approaches were productively combined during the initial conference. Moreover, the editors are convinced that intercultural dialogue and research in this area are of utmost importance in addressing some of the most critical and pressing issues of the 21st century. By looking at historical and contemporary interactions through the lens of storytelling and seafaring, this volume adds to the understanding of cultural entanglements and the continuing importance of intellectual exchange across regions and traditions.
This project has been supported by the Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities (AGYA), the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), and the Sharjah Museums Authority. Their interest in and support of this undertaking to promote interdisciplinary learning and research on significant issues of our time have been instrumental in accomplishing this work. We would like to convey our thanks to these institutions for their support.
We are equally grateful to all the contributors to this volume, the reviewers, and the interlocutors who have enriched the scholarly discussion on storytelling, seafaring, and travel writing. It is our hope that this volume will be received not only as a contribution to the field but also as a stimulus for future research and interdisciplinary reflection on some of the problems it raises.
Nuha Alshaar, Beate Ulrike La Sala, David Wilmsen
March 2025