Julian Jansen van Rensburg – författare

The Socotra archipelago lies approximately 135 nautical miles (Nm) northeast of Cape Guardafui, Somalia and 205Nm south of Rās Fartaq, Yemen. The archipelago is made up of four main islands, Socotra, cAbd al-Kūri, Samḥa and Darsa, of which Socotra is the largest and most densely populated. The population of Socotra is divided between the interior pastoralists and the coastal fishermen and traders. While scholarly studies concerning the interior population abound, the fishermen of Socotra have received comparatively less attention and little about them or their traditions is known. This research seeks to address this balance by analysing the Socotri maritime traditions and addressing the question as to how social, environmental and technological influences have shaped the maritime traditions of the fishermen of Socotra. The primary data forming the basis of this book is author’s ethnographic fieldwork carried out on the islands of Socotra and Samḥa between 2009 and 2010. This data is incorporated within a transdisciplinary framework that looks at some of the essential factors of historical, archaeological and environmental evidence to gain a holistic insight into the spatial and temporal factors affecting the maritime traditions of the fishermen.

The Seminar for Arabian Studies is the principal international academic forum for research on the Arabian Peninsula. First convened in 1968, it is the only annual academic event for the study of the Arabian Peninsula that brings together researchers from all over the world to present and discuss current fieldwork and the latest research. The Seminar covers an extensive range of diverse subjects that include anthropology, archaeology, architecture, art, epigraphy, ethnography, history, language, linguistics, literature, numismatics, theology, and more besides, from the earliest times to the present day or, in the fields of political and social history, to around the end of the Ottoman Empire (1922). The Seminar meets for three days each year, with an ever-increasing number of participants coming from around the globe to attend. In 2016 the fiftieth meeting took place, in which sixty papers and posters were presented in London at the British Museum, where this prestigious event has been hosted since 2002. The Seminar also regularly hosts a special session focusing on a specific aspect of the Humanities on the Arabian Peninsula, enabling a range of experts to present their research to a wider audience. In 2016 this special session was entitled ‘Textiles and Personal Adornment in the Arabian Peninsula’, which provided a fascinating overview of research on dress, textiles, and adornment in the Middle East.