Dhow sailors traditionally used ‘kamal’ for celestial navigation
A traditional Arab sailing vessel with one or more lateen sails is called a Dhow. They were primarily used along the coasts of the Arabian Peninsula, Pakistan, India, and East Africa. Larger dhows had crews of approximately thirty, while smaller dhows typically had crews of around twelve.
Up to the 1960s, dhows made commercial journeys between the Persian Gulf and East Africa using sails as their only means of propulsion. Their cargo was mostly dates and fish to East Africa and mangrove timber to the lands in the Persian Gulf.
They sailed south with the monsoon in winter or early spring and back again to Arabia in late spring or early summer. The term “dhow” is also applied to small, traditionally constructed vessels used for trade in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf area and the Indian Ocean from Madagascar to the Gulf of Bengal.
Such vessels typically weigh 300 to 500 tons, and have a long, thin hull design. Also, it is a family of early Arab ships that used the lateen sail, on which the Portuguese likely based their designs for the caravel known to Arabs as sambuk, booms, baggalas, ghanjas, and zaruqs.
For celestial navigation, dhow sailors traditionally used the kamal. This observation device determines latitude by finding the angle of the Pole Star above the horizon.