Songs of the Arabian Red Sea

Dionisius A. Agius is a Fellow of the British Academy, Professor Emeritus of Arabic Studies and Islamic Material Culture and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, UK. He is the author of numerous publications on the maritime history and culture of the Islamicate Indian Ocean, the Arabian Gulf and the African and Arabian Red Sea including most recently The Life of the Red Sea Dhow (I.B. Tauris, 2019).Muhammad Zafer Alhazmi is Associate Professor at the Islamic University of Madinah, Saudi Arabia he has spent time out in the field in the Hijaz and Northern Tihama regions, documenting the material cultural terminology there and examining its relationship with the people and their coastal landscape. He is the Author of Maritime Terminology of the Saudi Arabian Red Sea Coast: A Lexical Semantic Study (2016).Hasan Hujairi is a Bahraini artist, composer, and researcher whose work explores folk music of the Arabian Peninsula and the Western Indian Ocean.

• List of Figures, Maps, and TablesList of Excerpts of Audio Recordings of Sea SongsAcknowledgementsList of AbbreviationsNote on the Transliteration SystemChapter 1 Songs of a Seafaring People: The AhazijChapter 2 Meeting Singers in the Coastal Towns of Red Sea ArabiaChapter 3 The Sea Town LandscapeChapter 4 The Sea and the MarinerChapter 5 The Musical Landscape in a Historical, Literary, and Cultural ContextChapter 6 The Musical InstrumentsChapter 7 The Nabwas: Sea Shanties and Their MelodiesChapter 8 The Sea Mawwals of the Arabian Red SeaChapter 9 Precursory Raptures: The Call of Northern TihamaChapter 10 The Sea Kasras of the HijazChapter 11 Sea Ballads in Poetry and Song: The Al-Anashid Al-Sha‘abiyya Al-BahriyyaChapter 12 Reflections and ConclusionsAppendicesGlossaryBibliographyIndex

The volume is a rich weaving of the contextual and multifaceted knowledge of its three authors in maritime, cultural, and musical studies. Each chapter deftly connects the people with their music as well as their work and environment. The online recordings linking with the book bring the songs to life.