al-Taṭawwur al-Tārīkhī li-Madīnat Malaqā wa-Maḍīqihā al-Shahīr wa-Abraz ʻAlāqātihā al-Tijārīyah maʻa al-Minṭaqah al-ʻArabīyah - Khalīlī, Māhir Jabbār; al-Muʼtamar al-Duwalī: ʻUmān wa-Duwal Janūb Sharq Āsiyā wa-al-Ṣīn: Āfāq Thaqāfīyah wa-Tārīkhīyah wa-Siyāsīyah wa-Ḥaḍārīyah (2016) (Kuwālā Lumbūr) (Kuwālā Lumbūr : Markaz Dhākirat ʻUmān, 2016)
The Strait of Malacca is among the most important maritime straits in the world, out of some two hundred straits distributed across the globe, besides being the longest, and it is the most important of the six straits possessing strategic significance — Hormuz, Malacca, Bab al-Mandab, the Bosphorus, and the Suez and Panama canals. Its importance arises from its being an important passage for oil tankers, and from the fact that forty per cent of world trade passes through it at a rate of fifty thousand commercial vessels a year. The southern Arabian Peninsula, the Arabian Gulf and the Mediterranean were bound by trade to Southeast Asia from remote antiquity, given the abundance of precious and sought-after raw materials that local merchants of Java and Serendib carried to the Malay Peninsula, when the Strait of Malacca was the axis of commercial movement in the region, and thence to the lands of the Arabs. Documented studies confirm that Arab merchants knew Southeast Asia from before the Common Era.
Permanent citation identifier: MHF-OMANSEAASIA-019.
Text in Arabic; title also romanized (ALA-LC); abstract and keywords in English.
Keywords: Malacca; Strait of Malacca; Trade history; Arab merchants; Maritime geography; Southeast Asia