Articles From Our Experts

Following the formation of Saudi Arabia in 1932, Britain continued to maintain close relations with the new state’s founder and ruler, King Ibn Sa‘ūd, although it would eventually be supplanted by the United States in its role as Saudi Arabia’s key western sponsor and protector.

Salim Rashid Suri, an Omani ṣawt singer and oud player became famous as the ‘singing sailor’ and for developing a truly unique style, which took influence from musical sources across the Middle East and India.

A small selection of memoirs by retired political officers provides a unique insight into one generation’s experiences of living and working in the Gulf.

Despite inauspicious beginnings, Shaikh Aḥmad al-Jābir Āl Ṣabāḥ’s official visit to England in 1919 proved a success.

An Italian bombing raid brought Bahrain into the Second World War’s ‘zone of operations’, sparking fear amongst Bahrainis and concerns amongst the British over the safety of the islands’ strategic oil installations.

George Barnes Brucks was the first Englishman to survey the Gulf’s coasts in the 1820s. But while Brucks’s charts were quickly replaced by more accurate maps, his writings offer fascinating historic insight into the region.

When Captain Francis Erskine Loch arrived in the Gulf, he very quickly made an impact that would continue to have implications for British attitudes to the Gulf for over 200 years.

An overview of records on the Qatar Digital Library originating from the Political (External) Department (IOR/L/PS/12), including a description of the records and the subjects they cover.

A small, unprepossessing file from the India Office Records contains some of the earliest surviving aerial photographs of Qatar, captured as the country was about to enter a new chapter in its history.

J. G. Lorimer’s Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia has long been used as a central source for the study of the region. Yet, it is essential to understand the contexts of its production in order to fully appreciate its content.

A number of key moments in the life of Shaikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa are recorded in the India Office Records.

Until the 19th century, European powers considered much of the Gulf coastline to be hazardous, but the 1820 survey recorded vital details that contributed to later British involvement in the region.

Bertram Thomas completed his historic crossing of the Empty Quarter in 1931, then the largest territory in the world outside Antarctica still unexplored by Europeans. But why is he still a minor figure in the history of exploration and Empire?

Captain Owen’s plan to take over the portal town of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean put British officials in a contentious situation with the Sultan of Muscat and Zanzibar.

From 1900 to 1933 the Persian Oil Concession was the backdrop to a stand-off between the British and newly-renamed Iran.

The 1948 visit of Shaikh Khalīfa bin Mohammed Āl Khalīfa to Britain on a training trip arranged by the British Council provides an early example of cooperation between Britain and Bahrain in matters related to policing and security.

The private papers of George Nathaniel Curzon offer a window on the workings of the British Empire.

The 1930s was the decade that transformed the Gulf from its role as conduit between Britain and her empire to a strategic locus in the run-up to the war and a ‘highway between east and west’.

At the height of the Napoleonic Wars, Britain’s concerns over a possible French invasion of India through Persia led to its deepening intervention in the Gulf.

Musandam’s majestic sea cliffs, inlets, and strategic location have always attracted the attention of external powers. British support in enforcing the writ of the Sultan of Muscat on the Peninsula has been vitally important since the mid-nineteenth century.

The sources of the British Library’s Arabic scientific manuscripts are many and various. Here we discover an individual who contributed to the collection and lived an adventurous life in London and the Middle East.

How the anti-British sentiments of a British adviser assisted the foundation of Saudi Arabia.

In the early 20th century, British Officials responsible for the administration of justice in cases concerning British subjects and foreigners in the Gulf had to maintain a delicate balance, so as not to stoke bad relations between neighbouring states.

While much of the world was experiencing the effects of global war in the first half of the 1940s, the Gulf by contrast was an oasis of calm.

Ibn Saud’s quest for recognition of his Arabian Kingdom, and how British Government officials turned their backs on the largest reserves of crude oil in the world.

At the time of Sheikh Jāsim bin Muḥammad Āl Thānī’s death in 1913, his great wealth was revealed to the British in intelligence reports sent by Yūsuf bin Aḥmad Kanoo.

How geophysicists working in the Gulf were able to contribute in the 1930s to the scientific community’s understanding of the earth’s magnetic field.

The death of an African sailor who had been severely flogged for attempted desertion, exposes the brutal nature of early nineteenth-century maritime life, in which justice could be as capricious as a strong tailwind.

Archival records on the Qatar Digital Library can help to challenge traditional assumptions and paint a fuller picture regarding the role of women in nineteenth-century Oman.

The remarkable travel journals of an Indian civil servant, who was an eyewitness to the military action at Ra’s al-Khaymah in 1819.

Qatar’s exploratory wells were drilled relatively late, although Major Frank Holmes sought an exploratory lease in 1922.

How did an Agent of the East India Company use his position to collect the manuscripts that went to form the basis of the British Library’s Arabic-language collection?

Britain’s historical presence in the Gulf was based on a claim to be fighting “piracy”. But what did British officials mean by this, and how was it interpreted by the region’s residents?

New communication technologies transformed bookkeeping practice at the British Residency in Bushire.

The vast trove of material held at the British Library that pertains to Britain’s Colonial exploits owe their present organisation in part to the early acknowledgement by officials in the EIC and India Office of the importance of record-keeping.

Over 800 manumission statements, collected by numerous British administrators in the Gulf over the course of three decades, offer invaluable insights into the lives and labours of the enslaved peoples of the Gulf region.

There are many different types of vessels used from the Red Sea to India. All of them have developed over the years to suit the local conditions. This is the third article in a series of three by the author, providing context and explanation for nautical terminology in the India Office Records.

Ships have always been important in the history of the Gulf, and therefore are prominent in the India Office Records and other documents on the QDL. This is the first article in a series of three by the author, providing context and explanation for nautical terminology in the records.

During WWII, secret instructions for the interception of post passing through the Gulf were circulated to Political Agents in Bahrain, Kuwait and Muscat.

Sharjah 1940, and Nazi radio broadcasts in Arabic filled the air, stirring pro-German sentiment amongst the town’s inhabitants – and provoking consternation amongst British officials.

A colonial officer named Hickinbotham illustrates the everyday boredom of administrating the Empire with his practical jokes and escapist reading list.

For over a hundred years, in tandem with the colonisation of Palestinian land, Palestinian history has been systematically erased, suppressed, and distorted. The QDL however contains multiple sources on Palestine and Palestinians.

What do the records created by the British Political Agency at Muscat have to offer us?

The story of a Qatari shaikh from the early days of Doha.

Fifteenth-century Cairo was the place to be for astronomers and mathematicians. One scholar left his particular mark in a surprising variety of ways on the manuscript records of the period.

An overview of records on the Qatar Digital Library created by Britain’s Residency Agency in present-day UAE (IOR/R/15/4), including a description of the records, the subjects they cover, and how they are organised.

Keen to maintain peace and wary of inflaming relations with the Trucial Shaikhs, in 1910 the Government of India censured those responsible for a bloody bombardment of Dubai and its aftermath.

What do the Gombroon Diaries convey about eighteenth-century Persia [Iran] and the Gulf (1708-1763)?

The death of the Persian Ambassador in Bombay almost spelled disaster for relations between Persia and British India in July 1802.

The British military constructed miles of railway in Mesopotamia during their war against the Ottoman Empire in the early twentieth century. In doing so, they also laid the foundations for a post-war colonial regime.

The culmination of extensive travel and research, George Curzon’s Persia and the Persian Question was a critical success. Yet was its author happy with it?

The untimely death of John Gordon Lorimer, acting Resident in the Persian Gulf 1913–14, was seen as a tragedy. Yet, his legacy – in the form of his Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia – emerged forty years later and has remained central to the study of the Gulf ever since.

The life and times of Shaikh Khaz’al bin Jābir bin Mirdāw al-Ka‘bī (1861-1936), the Emir of Mohammerah and chief of the Banu Ka’b tribe.

In the immediate post-WWII period, despite British opposition, the U.S. sought to increase its influence in the Gulf by distributing propagandistic material in Arabic.

From its origins as a small London enterprise, the East India Company (EIC) emerged as a powerful commercial and political organisation, whose presence in the Gulf helped shape the region’s modern history.

A little known first-hand account, that the British Agents in Bahrain garnered by chance, sheds light on William Henry Irvine Shakespear’s death.

What was the life of a diver like and how did the trade function? Papers in the India Office Records provide some fascinating clues.

In the late 1940s an American Mission Hospital was in development in Doha. The response of British officials seems to have been motivated more by the demands of the nascent oil industry and concerns over loss of influence than intrinsic concern for the health of the people of Qatar.

The first crossing of the Arabian Peninsula by a European, revealed in glimpses by the early correspondence of the Bushire Residency, was indicative of the East India Company beginning to look beyond the Gulf littoral and into Central Arabia.

In the wake of Indian independence and the United States’ increasing presence, British administrators sought to remind the Gulf’s inhabitants of who remained nominally in control of the region.

The Persia Collection: casting light on Britain’s thorny relationship with Persia [Iran] throughout the 1930s, Second World War, and Anglo-Soviet Occupation.

During the Anglo-Soviet occupation of Iran, Britain established the Anglo-Iranian Relief Fund not only to deliver humanitarian aid to the Iranian people, but also to justify and promote its military presence inside the country.

During the nineteenth century, the Gulf was a hive of economic activity, with merchant ships carrying precious cargoes back and forth to India, making fortunes for traders. But it could also be hazardous for sailors.

Not all prisoners during wartime are soldiers. During the First World War, many countries interned “enemy” civilians.