Cape Noun

Cape Chaunar, Cap Uarsig, Cape Nun, ''Cap Noun'', ''Cabo de Não'' or ''Nant'' is a cape on the Atlantic coast of Africa, in southern Morocco, between Tarfaya and Sidi Ifni. By the 15th century it was considered insurmountable by Arabs and Europeans, thus resulting in the name meaning cape "no" in Portuguese. Cape Chaunar is the true northern coastal limit of the Sahara desert, although nearby Cape Bojador is frequently mistakenly called this.

History

The thirteenth-century Genovese navigators Vandino and Ugolino Vivaldi may have sailed as far as Cape Non before being lost at sea. It was named ''Cabo do Não'' ("Cape No") by Portuguese mariners during the fifteenth century, being considered the impassable limit for Arab and European sailors, the ''non plus ultra'' beyond which no navigation could occur.
"Quem o passa tornará ou não" (whoever passes it will make it or not), wrote Venetian explorer Alvise Cadamosto in his book ''Navigazione''.
Starting in 1421, exploratory vessels were sent by Prince Henry the Navigator, managing to cross Cape Non and reaching Cape Bojador, then considered the southern limit of the world, stretching into the "dark sea"William D'Hertburn, ''Progress and Prosperity: The Old World and Its Remaking Into the New'', 1911 (Latin ''Mare Tenebrarum'', ''Mare Tenebrosum'' or ''Bahr al-Zulumat'' in Arabic), the medieval name for the southern Atlantic Ocean, inaccessible to the sailors of the time.

References

Sources

Robert Kerr, General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels
* Chambers Book of Daysbr>November 20th

Chaunar

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