The second edition of popular science essays on the history of Arabic navigation by Theodor Adamovich Shumovsky (born 1913), the oldest living Russian Arabist, student of Academician I.Yu. Krachkovsky. The first edition appeared in 1964 and has long become a bibliographic rarity. The book provides a lively and fascinating account of the importance of navigation for the Arab-Muslim East from antiquity to the beginning of modern times. The colonial-era Orientalist image of Arabs as “savage sons of the desert” must be rejected. The Age of Great Geographical Discovery relied heavily on the achievements of medieval Arab geographers and navigators. Long before the European advance to the East, they mastered the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. Arab pilots took part in the sea expeditions of European discoverers. The book is based on a study of the unique Arabic manuscripts of the Vasco da Gama pilot Ahmad ibn Majid and Sulaiman al-Mahri (15th century), whose works were translated by T.A. Shumovsky into Russian.