Preface

Summary

This is not a book about ships, nor is it a book about naval sea battles. On these there is already a great deal of published material, and the most useful of these are referenced in the bibliography and notes. Mention is certainly made when pertinent of specific ships and particular battles but only for the purpose of highlighting the actual subject of the book – Islamic state navies during a period that runs, very approximately, from the sixteenth century through to the mid-nineteenth century. So as not to be held hard and fast to an exact set of dates, I have simply used the cover-all term ‘age of fighting sail’. Of intent, this is a book which examines how the three great Islamic empires, Ottoman, Mughal and Persia, together with a number of smaller states and sultanates, set about establishing navies during the age of fighting sail, and the purpose and function of those navies.

The term ‘fighting sail’ in itself refers to an age in which high-sided, squarerigged, timber-built sailing ships, armed with cannons mounted broadside, dominated the sea lanes of the world. In origin, such ships go back to the early fifteenth century, when European nations with an Atlantic seaboard began to develop such vessels for the purpose of extending trading links into more distant waters. This is a point that has to be fully recognised from the outset, that all of the Islamic states included in this study were prompted into the construction of high-sided, square-rigged warships by those developments taking place in Western Europe. Essential, therefore, is an understanding of how this technology was transferred and how quickly the Islamic states adapted themselves to the design, construction and handling of such ships.

Little in the English language has previously been written on the subject of Islamic navies, and that which has fails to address the whole epoch of fighting sail, concentrating on specific events or tightly managed periods. In particular, this is a direct result of an ethnocentric approach led by naval historians, who often take a nationalistic view towards their subject. When writing about navies of the Islamic world, English-language naval historians most frequently do so as a result of a western navy of interest making direct contact in some way, possibly through battle or a temporary alliance, with a navy from the Islamic world.