Ptolemy also says that he has heard from traders that the direction from Arabia Felix to Aromata is southwest not due south.Huntingford 1980, pp. 173–74. He places Aromata on the Gulf of Aden and not in the Indian Ocean.
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He places Aromata 6°N, while Marinus places it 4.25°N. He cites a certain Dioskoros for the location of Cape Prason, the southernmost point the Greeks reached in Africa, being "many days" beyond Rhapta. He then estimates the distance from Aromata to Cape Prason as 20.67° of latitude.Berggren and Jones 2000, p. 76.
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Casson 1989, pp. 59, 115. Aromata was the sixth port after Zeyla (Aualites), Berbera (Malao), Heis (Moundou), Bandar Kasim (Mosullon) and Bandar Alula (Akannai).Huntingford 1980, p. 83.
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According to the 2nd-century Geography of Ptolemy, a merchant named Diogenes, returning from India, was driven south by a north wind as he approached Aromata. He sailed for 25 days with the coast of the Troglodytae on his right (west) almost as far as Rhapta in Azania. Citing Marinus of Tyre, Ptolemy adds that a merchant named Theophilos sailed from Rhapta to Aromata in twenty days with a south wind blowing. Ptolemy emphasises that these were single sailings and he does not know the average number of days to sail between Aromata and Rhapta.J. Lennart Berggren and Alexander Jones (eds.), Ptolemy's Geography: An Annotated Translation of the Theoretical Chapters (Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 68.
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It also exported grain, rice, sesame oil and cotton cloth.Sunil Gupta, "Aromata Emporion", in Roger S. Bagnall, Kai Brodersen, Craige B. Champion, Andrew Erskine and Sabine R. Huebner, The Encyclopedia of Ancient History (Wiley, 2012), p. 754. According to the Periplus, a ship warned at Aromata of an approaching storm on the Indian Ocean could take refuge at Tabai (Chori Hordio), two days' sailing and on the other side of the cape. The Monumentum Adulitanum is a 4th-century monumental inscription by King Ezana of Axum recording his various victories in war.
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Aromata, like all other ports on the Gulf of Aden, was independent and ruled by its own chief. Its major exports were frankincense and all grades of cassia (gizeir, asuphe, magla and moto).Huntingford 1980, p. 124. It may have served as a major transshipment port for goods coming from India and Southeast Asia, the latter being the main source for cassia.
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Aromata (Greek: Αρώματα, lit. "spices, aromatics"), also called the Spice Port,Lionel Casson (ed.), The Periplus Maris Erythraei: Text with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 115. was an emporium and seaport in the Horn of Africa, today a part of Somalia. It lay near the tip of Cape Guardafui, which was itself called the "promontory of spices" (Aromaton akron, Αρώματον ἄκρον).
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Yuzo Shitomi suggests that it may in fact have been Ḥaḍramawt in South Arabia. L. P. Kirwan distinguishes two lands of incense: that of the Monumentum Adulitanum (which he places in South Arabia) and that of the Christian Topography itself (which is the Aromata of the Periplus and Ptolemy).L. P. Kirwan (1972), "The Christian Topography and the Kingdom of Axum", The Geographical Journal 138(2), 166–177.
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The Pinax theatri botanici (English, Illustrated exposition of plants) is a landmark of botanical history, describing some 6,000 species and classifying them. The classification system was not particularly innovative, using traditional groups such as "trees", "shrubs", and "herbs", and using other characteristics such as utilization, for instance grouping spices into the Aromata. He did correctly group grasses, legumes, and several others. His most important contribution is in the description of genera and species.
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Shitomi (1997), "A New Interpretation of the Monumentum Adulitanum", Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko 55, 81–102. or "frankincense country":McCrindle 2010, p. 63. > I subjugated the peoples of Rauso who live in the midst of incense-gathering > barbarians between great waterless plains. British Anglican priest William Vincent described the region of Rauso as stretching westwards from Aromata all the way to the hinterlands of the hitherto prospective Adal Kingdom.
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Goldenberg, David M. "It Is Permitted to Marry a Kushite." AJS review 37.1 (2013): 29-49. However, the overlapping analysis frequently places the core of Ajan Coast in the region of the plains beyond the promontory (Ras Hafun) that follows the Horn's headland. The Ajan Coast was bordered to the north by Aromata, to the west by Rauso, to the south by various peoples including the Zanj and Tunni and to the east by the Indian Ocean.
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The Monumentum Adulitanum is a 4th-century monumental inscription by King Ezana of Axum recording his various victories in war. It is lost, but its text was copied down in the 6th century by Cosmas Indicopleustes in his Christian Topography. It describes how Ezana conquered a land and people called Rauso to the west of Aromata. The description of the land is congruous with modern-day Dollo Zone and Haud.Stuart Munro-Hay, Aksum: An African Civilization of Late Antiquity (Edinburgh University Press, 1991), p. 187.
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Whilst the classification system Gaspard Bauhin used was not particularly innovative, using traditional groups such as "trees", "shrubs", and "herbs", and for instance grouping spices into the Aromata, he did correctly group grasses and legumes. It is most likely that this is the work which led Carl Linnaeus (inspiration for the Linnean Society) in deference to the Bauhin brothers 200 years earlier to honour Casper and his brother Johann by naming the genus Bauhinia after them in his 1753 Species Plantarum whose prime importance is perhaps that it is the primary starting point of plant nomenclature as it exists today.
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Shipwreck off Guardafui in 1905 Referred to as Aromata promontorium (Greek: Αρώματον ἄκρον) by the ancient Greeks, Guardafui was described as early as the 1st century CE in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, along with other flourishing commercial settlements on the northern Somali littoral. The name Guardafui originated during the late Middle Ages by sailors using the Mediterranean Lingua Franca: "guarda fui" in ancient Italian means "look and escape", as a reference to the danger of the cape.Piratestan In the early 19th century, Somali seamen barred entry to their ports along the coast, while engaging in trade with Aden and Mocha in adjacent Yemen using their own vessels. Due to the frequency of shipwrecks in the treacherous seas near Cape Guardafui, the British signed an agreement with sultan Osman Mahamuud of the Majeerteen Sultanate, which controlled much of the northeastern Somali seaboard during the 19th century.
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