Classic Ships of Islam

Dr Dionisius A. Agius is a Fellow of the British Academy. He currently holds the Al Qasimi Professorship in Arabic and Islamic Material Culture at the University of Exeter and is affiliated with King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah. Originally from the Island of Malta, he read Arabic and Islamic Studies at the Université St-Joseph, Beirut, the Pontificio Istituto di Studi Arabi, Rome, and University of Toronto. An ethnographer, and linguist with particular expertise in Arabic semantics he has, for the past twenty-five years, focused on the traditional watercraft of the Western Indian Ocean, past and present, studying their typology and provenance as well as the people of the sea, their folklore and belief. Author of In the Wake of the Dhow: The Arabian Gulf and Oman (2002, 2010) and Seafaring in the Arabian Gulf and Oman: The People of the Dhow (2005, 2009), the latter being awarded a major book prize by The Abdullah Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah Foundation and the British-Kuwait Friendship Society. His latest work, Classic Ships of Islam: From Mesopotamia to the Indian Ocean (2008) was given Honourable Mention by The Keith Matthews Prize and was Highly Commended by The Keith Muckelroy Memorial Award.

Honorary Mention for Best Book published in 2007 on a Canadian nautical subject from the Canadian Nautical Research Society.Awarded Honourable Mention by The Keith Matthews Prize in 2008 Highly Commended for the Keith Muckelroy Memorial Award 2009, Nautical Archaeology Society."Für Interessierte am arabischen Schiffbau mit Sicherheit eine willkommene Bereicherung, liegt doch mit dieser Studie eine Publikation vor, die nicht nur schiffbautechnische, sondern auch geo-politische Aspekte umfassend und facettenreich darstellt." – Thomas Feige, in: Das Logbuch 44.4 (2008)"Rarely do books come along that make such a demontrable contribution to the field of maritime history as Dionisius Agius's Classic Ships of Islam, a work that effectively re-lays the foundation for the study of Muslim shipping in the western Indian Ocean." – Lincoln Paine, in: The Northern Mariner / Le Marin du Nord, XVIII.2 (2008), 120-122"As a reviewer seeking to do full justice to this complex work one would almost have to match Agius word-for-word, so rich is the study in its assessment of sources, the arguments of other scholars, and its overall sweeping contribution to the much-neglected field." – Kenneth McPherson, in: Nautical Archeology 38.1 (2009), 180-182"The book [...] advances our understanding of Islamic material culture as well as social and economic history and offers a fascinating journey into the past, to borrow Agius' heading of Chapter One of his book." – Yaacov Lev, in: Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 38 (2011), 391-395