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Geography & Navigation
Ibn Majid
Master of navigators — 1432–1500 CE / Julfar, Oman
The most famous navigator of the eastern seas, author of The Benefits of the Principles of Marine Science, an encyclopaedia of stellar, compass and monsoon navigation. Popular tradition remembers that he guided Vasco da Gama's fleet on the India route (1498); no one after him invented the science of navigation his books taught.