The Color Of The Coral The Making Of The Red Sea

Like a bustling super highway, this Middle Eastern sea-road serves the worlds traffic today just as she did in the days of the Phoenicians.

For thousands of years, the Red Sea has seen history made on her waters and along her shores. And for a body of water which began life as a rift in a continent, the Red Sea has made an almost inestimable contribution to the life of her surrounding shores and the world. Today, far from being a relic, she is as vital as ever to the world trade and transportation. Sailors claim that the water itself lights their way. They may be referring to the bio-luminescence seen at night – a glow from those tiny water creatures which gleam so that the bow of a ship four miles away can be made out.

According to the legend, the Red Sea came into being when a king cut a channel through at Babl AlMandab in order that the ocean will flow through and destroy his enemies territory. Thus Arabias break with Africa was a violent affair as the Arab Peninsula pivoted away to the east, creating a mountain wall the entire length of the Red Sea coast. In between, the tectonic movement tore a huge rift in the earths crush from Ethiopia to Jordan, more than 1600 kilometers long, into which poured the waters of the Indian Ocean, carrying marine life with them and creating what is known today the Red Sea.

Like a finger pointing straight at the Mediterranean, she begins at the Strait of Babl al-Mandab, and ends 1.200 miles to the north-northeast at Suez. Through the Strait of Bab alMandab, the Red Sea traffic reaches southward to all the ports of the Far East, though the Suez Canal at the northern tip, her trade sails to all the wharves of the Mediterranean, Europe and North America. Free-flowing trade has always carried new civilizations with it, and the Red Sea has played a significant role in helping to bring together the worlds culture.

Long before the days of the fabled Queen of Sheba, the Red Sea was being traversed by traders, adventurers and conquerors. The access to the Red Sea has always been of paramount importance to those who lived near it. The Red Sea is narrow, no wider than two hundred miles at its maximum. At the Strait of Bal alMandab only fourteen and half miles of water separate its shores. Both shores, east and west, are low mostly sandy tracts, though sometimes swampy, varying in width from ten to thirty miles and suddenly rising into lift tableland. The sea itself is partially filled in by coral-workings, which, extended in parallel lines at a short distance from either coast and have subdivided the sea into three different channels. There are also rocky islets that with the coral reefs, make navigation tricky. Particularly when the water is discolored, navigation has to be managed now by the most modern steamship exactly as it was by the triremes of the ancient Romans – by eye.

As one of the first large bodies of water mentioned in recorded history, it is a major or traffic alley, serving as outlet to the Oceans for its literal states, and on its other hand as a thoroughfare that links the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. The geopolitical position of the Red Sea is of special importance, bordering as it does the eastern coast of Africa and the western coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It is the vital route for the transportation of oil through Bab AlMandab and the south to the Suez Canal in the north. Thus this narrow band of water shared by a number of coastal states is an important shipping lane linking the world major oceans.

THE MAKING OF THE RED SEA
International travel began early in the Red Sea. More than 5000 years ago, rafts, or simple boats dared its waters to bring obsidian – a black volcanic glass that yields sharp blades – from the Arabian Peninsula to Egypt, where it has been found in pre-dynastic archeological sites. More than 3500 years ago, Egyptians pharaohs sent fleets in the Red Sea to visit copper and turquoise mines in the Sinai and to sail much farther south, probably through the Bab al-Mandab and into the Gulf of Aden, to the fabled land of Punt, where "giraffe tails, huge gold rings and incense could be obtained for mere trinkets"

If Jazirat Faraun fits one typical pattern, jazirat Tiran fits yet another. Tiran is another island in the Gulf of Aqaba/Elath. Foods from the southern and central parts of the Red Sea and the Red Sea islands serving as offshore bases/distribution centers which provided security in times of troubles, a typically Phoenician pattern. It may have meant that the Red Sea commerce was for a while in Phenician hands. Phoenicia went to great lengths to obtain tin. As Phoenicians did not neglect commercial opportunities and while being commercial rivals, the Phoenicians were also trading partners or partners in trade with the Arabs on the Red and the Indian Ocean world.

Roman conquest of Egypt trade India and Arabia through the Red Sea reached new peaks.

In the year 21 AD for example trade relations between the Roman Empire and India alone reached a volume of 120 sailings a year. By conquest, the Romans too acquired bases in the south of Arabia in order to secure the safety of navigation. Roman ships regularly left Egyptian Red Sea ports such as Berenike bound for Indian cities, sailing with cargoes of gold, and with the secret of monsoon winds closely held by their navigators. Those ships returned with heavy cargoes of aromatic resins and spices, elephant ivory and silks form the Far East. In the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries Mamluk merchants landed Chinese and Iranian ceramics in medieval Quseir on the Red Sea, which became virtually an Ottoman lake after the Turks took Cairo in 1517. The Turks began sailing the Western Indian Ocean in the 16th century, and the Ottoman lands were the largest market for goods imported through the Red Sea. Pilgrims returning to their home countries took with them not only water from the Zamzam spring at Makkah Mukkarama - and burial shrouds that had been dipped in its blessed water – but also exotic products of the Red Sea trade – Chinese porcelain, metal wares, spices from India and the Moluccas, and scents from Taif and spread them throughout the Arab and Muslim world.

As the global economy strengthened, Yemeni merchants flouted Ottoman prohibitions on trade and exchanged precious Yemeni coffee for imported Chinese porcelain, fabrics and spices brought by Dutch, English and Indian ships to Mocha. A British sea captain, writing in 1723 gives us a hint of the sights and smells of this busy harbor,

"full of English free merchants, Portuguese, Banyans, and Moors, vessels from Bossorah, Persia and Muskat all trading in coffee and myrrh, frankincense and aloes Soccatrina from Socotra, white and yellow arsenick, some gum Arabicum some balm of bilead, that comes from the Red Sea". The coffee trade from Yemen up the Red Sea was so important that it made up two thirds of the value of Egypts foreign imports in the second half of the 18th century. At Suez, the fastest camels awaited the news of the coffee fleets’ arrival in September or October, so as to race the 145 kilometers to Cairo with news that could make – or cost – fortunes on the coffee futures exchange. Re-exported through Alexandria, half of Egypts imported coffee eventually reached Ottoman and European markets. The Red Sea served as the gateway to Europe for many eastern products and trade on the Red Sea, despite the notorious risk of navigation in its reef- studded, coral – lined waters.

Although European ships had been sailing to Suez since the 16th century, the European ships brought Chinese export porcelain, designed for the Middle Eastern market featuring floral designs to Mocha and Jiddah to trade for coffee. Arab and Muslim ships took the goods along the next leg north in the Red Sea. Southbound, their cargoes included iron and Ottoman - subsidized supplies of wheat, oil, lentils and beans for Jiddah. The sea link between Jiddah and Suez was considerably more important than historians had realized earlier. We know that Indian ships periodically carried goods north to Suez, for French and other merchants during the 17th and 18th centuries. Bt the later 18th century, again a French traveler commented that most Arab ships in the Red Sea had been built in India. For much of the 17th and 18th centuries, strong commercial ties existed between Egypt and India, so it would not be surprising to find Indian shipbuilding techniques adopted by Egyptian builders.

Problems of water and coal supply were solved by establishing a fueling station at Port Said and on Perim Island in the gate of Bab alMandab. Until World War I the shores of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden were under the domination of the Turkish Empire, the British Empire, France and Italy. In the twentieth century the Red Sea reached the zenith of its importance as oil gradually replaced coal as fuel in industry – power generation and transportation in Europe and America. New supertankers, operating at relatively low costs were built and transported oil around the Cape of Good Hope to the Western industrialized world. More recently, a stream of oil begun to flow through the Red Sea.

By 1990 the water of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden washed the coasts of ten independent states: Egypt, Sudan, Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, (Ethiopia), Djibuti, Somalia and Yemen. The important fact, however is not the great number, but their diversity and heterogeneity in almost every respect, natural resources, wealth, social development, history, religion, ideological orientation, tradition, form of government and relations to the outside powers. The Red Sea nevertheless preserved its importance as an outlet to the Indian Ocean for the literal states. Egypt since has undertaken important works for deepening of the canal which enable large ships to travel through it.

The Red Sea region is nevertheless relatively poorly explored. Its marine riches from the mangrove swamps of the south , through the spectacular coral reefs of the center, to the sea-grass beds of the north. The Red Sea marine, life, isolated in a long sleeve of water, developed away from its Indian Ocean beginnings. Thus were created the unique life forms found in the Red Sea today and on Arabian soil, where, for example, four out of 10 insect species are endemic, that is, found nowhere else in the world. The Indian Ocean still passes over the shallow threshold of the Bab al-Mandab to replenish the Red Sea, and flow the thousands of kilometers of coral cliffs, atols, reefs and lagoons, which give the sea some of the most stunning underwater landscapes in the world. In the southern Yemeni portion of the Red Sea, abundant plankton supports an immense chain of life. Microscopic creatures support triggerfish, boat fish and great variety of gobies and prawns. Where they meet the land, the nutrient-rich waters of the south have also created mangrove swamps – the domain of crabs, rock skippers and herons. But by the time the water reaches the central Red Sea – drawn north by evaporation from the surface – the Indian Oceans flow is depleted of nutrients, marine life there is concentrated on deep coral walls. These coral cliffs stretch north for a thousand miles to the Gulf of Aqaba, where sand washed down from coastal mountains provides ideal conditions for great meadows of sea grasses. Within its boundaries there remain some of the richest coral – reef systems in the world. The Yemeni Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, for example contain some of the most important coastal and marine environments and resources in the world. Almost no rivers flow into the Red Sea except for the Bardra in the Sudan. One of the characteristics of the Red Sea is its high salinity. The flora of the Red Sea is mainly tropical, similar to the vegetation of the Indian Ocean and in particular to that of the East African Coast. The most spectacular in color, shape and behavior among inhabitants of the coral reef are the tropical fish. The observed color change likely gave the water its present name, the Red Sea.

THE FUTURE
Good policies and promising potential should leave the countries of the region in position to complete. Sound financial management, creation and maintenance of favorable provisions for domestic and foreign investment, expansion of democracy and improvements in provisions for enforcing social justice – once set in motion economic growth feeds itself. When communal bonds unite a group of people, great success is possible. But such bonds can develop only when personal interests are subjugated to goals which carry in them the essential virtues of humanity. The broader the basis for action, the greater the good which can be achieved. And conversely, the greater the potential good, the more powerful the support behind it. A spirit of cooperation steadies the boat, but it helps to have a beautiful island to row towards.

For a community power lies not in its numbers, but in the diverse skills and resources of its members. Just as the stoutest walls are reinforced with many different materials, so the strongest groups allow differences to co-exists inside the whole.

THERE MUST BE NOT A BALANCE OF POWER BUT A COMMUNITY POF POWER NOT ORGAZIZED RIVALRIES BUT ORGANIZED PEACE.