Red Sea Folk Beliefs: A Maritime Spirit Landscape

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The Red Sea brings together the coastal communities and seafarers of Africa and Arabia through a variety of folk beliefs and superstitions, which manifest something of a common tradition through time and space. This article explores a conceptual framework that might be called a "spiritscape," an amalgam of ideas and practices that embrace multiple layers of human and nonhuman relationships and interactions within the landscape and seascape of the Red Sea world.