ARTICLE The Red Sea under the Caliphal Dynasties, c. 639–1171 Timothy Power Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, UAE Correspondence Timothy Power, Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, UAE. Email: timothy.power@zu.ac.ae Abstract Students of world history will be familiar with the Red Sea as a strategic communications corridor linking the Mediter- ranean to the Indian Ocean. This paper examines the Red Sea region between the seventh and twelfth centuries, when it was ruled by a succession of Islamic caliphal dynas- ties, namely, the Umayyads, ʿAbbāsids, and Fāṭimids. It first sets out a sketch of the political history of the Red Sea and its constituent hinterland polities, including particularly Egypt, Sudan, al‐Ḥijāz, and Yemen, drawing attention to epi- sodes and processes in which the Red Sea was significant. A section on Africa and Arabia explores the Red Sea as a zone of economic and social interaction; another section deals with the historic shift of Indian Ocean trade from the ʿAbbāsid Persian Gulf to the Fāṭimid Red Sea. Finally, the impact of the Red Sea on its constituent hinterland polities and the wider sweep of Islamic history is considered. 1 | INTRODUCTION The Red Sea is a globally significant communications corridor linking the Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean. The route was pioneered by Graeco‐Roman merchants in the wake of the conquests of Alexander and first peaked under the Julio‐Claudians (27 BC–AD 68). The Red Sea again became the preeminent global east–west maritime route following the decline of ʿAbbāsid Baghdād and rise of Fāṭimid Cairo in the tenth century. Yet the Red Sea was more than just “a sea on the way to somewhere else” (Facey, 2004, 7). The Red Sea region possesses an internal coherence relevant to the political and economic fortunes—or indeed the social and cultural development—of its constituent regional entities. This has tended to be overlooked in the standard histories. For example, whilst the contribution of the Red Sea “India trade” to the Fāṭimid economy will often be referred to in a history of Egypt (e.g., Brett, 2010, 32), the role of the Red Sea in the Arab conquest or maritime contacts with al‐Ḥijāz in the Arabisation of Upper Egypt are usually skipped over. One of the aims of this paper is therefore to open up Red Sea perspectives on the local history of hinterland polities. DOI: 10.1111/hic3.12484 History Compass. 2018;e12484. https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12484 © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hic3 1 of 12