The Red Sea has historically served as a vital link between the commercial economic zones of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. In the period between approximately 1000 and 1500, shipping in the Red Sea was conducted mainly by Muslim sailors involved in the transfer of a vast variety of commodities between three continents. Merchant networks in the Red Sea, connecting Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, and India, conducted business at times in coordination with, and at other times at odds with, the political powers that ruled the lands surrounding the water. Political authorities in Egypt, the Hijaz, and Yemen attempted to control trade in the Red Sea, with varying degrees of success. The story of shipping in the Red Sea in the medieval period involves the interplay between local, imperial, and trans-regional interests in the economic rewards to be had from a share in a vibrant commercial system. To examine the Red Sea at this time is to consider the local particularities within one node of a much wider economic web that stretched from the South China Sea to the Mediterranean.