Dhow
Dhow
!A dhow in the [Indian Ocean, near the islands of Zanzibar on the Swahili coast](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Dhowznz.jpg/250px-Dhowznz.jpg)
Dhow
!Fishermen's dhows moored at Dubai in 2014
Etymology
There are several versions of the origin of the word "dau". Previously, it was believed that it could be of Arabic or Persian origin (and although in the 21st century there is no such word in either Arabic or Persian, some Dutch documents from the 17th-18th centuries indicate that then the Persian word dawh meant "small ship"). Recently, most researchers are inclined to believe that this term comes from daw in the language of the Swahili people in East Africa, which means "vessel". However, regardless of the sources of its origin, the use of "dhow" as a collective term to refer to the boats of the Indian Ocean with characteristic "Arabian" sails, was introduced definitely by Europeans. Since in the European tradition ships were classified mainly according to their sailing equipment, all the ships of the Indian Ocean that carried similar Arabian sails and looked more or less the same to the untrained European eye were known to as Europeans by a single word, "dhow".
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