The location of Tabai (Periplus Maris Erythraei 12–13)

Abstract

The Periplus Maris Erythraei, written probably in the latter half of the first century ad, is a guide for merchants trading with eastern Africa, Arabia, and India. The anonymous author lists the various ports along the routes, indicating for each the facilities to be found and the objects of trade to be bought or sold there.A few of the ports are well known and can be identified with certainty. Many which are also mentioned in other writers, such as Strabo or Ptolemy, can be identified with varying degrees of certainty. The most difficult are those that occur only in the Periplus. One such is Tabai, on the African trade route.