The typical Indian Ocean history does not lend itself to social history or to close looks at the daily lives of actual humans. It can read like a 5,000 years-long weather report interspersed with lists of trade goods—a massive amount of research and scholarly synthesis that is more than a little dry. The other common feature of the Indian Ocean genre is recourse to Braudel’s longue duree, which allows authors to use more recent anthropological work to try to illuminate social and cultural practices from the distant past.1 Thus, a description of life on board a twentieth-century dhow might serve as an approximate guide to life on a twelfth-century ship. It might not be perfect for the task, but it is the best that we could do for now.
Lambourn’s book, which is built around a list that was scribbled into the margins of a letter, represents a...