Articles From Our Experts

Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq: a Medieval Arab scholar who transformed his understanding of ancient Greek medical texts into manuals for the benefit of many successive generations of students.

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.

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

How do you reduce communication times between the Gulf and India, from months, to a matter of weeks?

Prior to the construction of the Suez Canal, nineteenth-century British officials explored an alternative route between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.

The life and death of Claudius James Rich, author of 'Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan' and the East India Company’s Resident at Baghdad.

The reign of Said bin Taimur was marked by financial troubles from the outset, but despite his more active role in the 1930s, a rebellion in the province of Dhofar ultimately cost him the Sultanate.

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?

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

During WWII food shortages in the Middle East caused by locust swarms were tackled by a largely forgotten, but ultimately successful war supported by British administrators in the Gulf.

Early examples of watermarks in paper can display a variety of seemingly obscure imagery. What were these images attempting to communicate? Why were they used, and what is their significance?

Ptolemaic astronomy became known in mediaeval Europe mainly through translations from Arabic. Latin translations of the Almagest reflect the complex tradition of Ptolemy in the Arab world and show the translators' individual approaches to a demanding and unfamiliar science.

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.

For eight hundred years, the Arabic scientific tradition was superior to that found in western Eurasia. It gave birth to new theories and fields of scientific inquiry that laid the foundations for the Scientific Revolution, and continued to flourish thereafter.

The India Office Private Papers offer a personal perspective on military, political, social and economic history over the period 1750–1947; in their private correspondence and diaries, people could write in different, often more open, ways.

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 AD 137, Ptolemy compiled a catalogue of forty-eight constellations containing 1022 stars. ʽAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī revised critically Ptolemy’s catalogue, added new stars and identified those appearing in the Arabic folk tradition.

How and why were the early voyages of the East India Company made? What were the challenges and first encounters?

With pearling in decline and oil exploitation on hold, what drove Bahrain’s economy between the World Wars?

A religious disagreement in 1930 between the Sultanate of Muscat and American missionaries in Muscat reveals more than just a battle for souls.

Great Britain abolished the slave trade in its Empire in 1807, yet not only did it persist in the Gulf into the latter half of the nineteenth century, it flourished amid ineffectual British efforts towards its suppression.

The words camphor, lemon, syrup and tamarind all derive from Arabic formularies – books in which Arabic-speaking physicians and pharmacists preserved and adapted the knowledge of earlier civilisations and presented new drugs to the public.

Before oil, the inhabitants of the Gulf’s Arab coast depended on diving for natural pearls for their economic livelihoods. And, like oil, it was chiefly European and North American demand that dictated the success or failure of each pearling season.

During a period often characterised as one of decay and decline, the Andaluso-Tunisian astronomer Ibn al-Raqqām wrote his Risālah fī ‘ilm al-ẓilāl, the most important treatise on sundials of the Islamic West. The instruments he describes are much more elaborate and sophisticated than the surviving examples of Medieval sundials from al-Andalus and the Maghrib.

In a pre-internet age of slow-travelling news, just how could a message be sent from London to Basra in 22 days?

Considered deadly to the “European constitution”, the hot and humid climate of the Gulf was blamed for the deaths of countless British officials in the early nineteenth century.

In medieval Islamic societies, education in the mathematical sciences was based not on solving problems, or producing new results, but rather on careful study of the accomplishments of past masters.

During the early ʿAbbāsid period (ninth century CE), a diverse group of scholars collaborated on the long-term project of translating an elaborate work of pure geometry dealing with the properties of the parabola, ellipse and hyperbola – Apollonius’ Conics.

What was the purpose of Sir Lewis Pelly’s trip through Afghanistan in 1860?

Britain’s decision to prohibit the use of modern diving suits and cultured pearls on the Gulf’s pearl banks was intended to preserve the region’s pearling industry, yet ultimately contributed to its slow collapse throughout the 1930s.

Lewis Pelly, Political Resident in the Persian Gulf 1862–72, witnessed rapid expansion in the value of trade in the region as well as political upheaval and crisis caused by famine.

What is a kharita, what are its main components, and how was it dispatched?

The EIC’s departure from Bushire in 1769 was one example of how, in the 17th and 18th centuries, groups of traders would settle, then relocate, along the Gulf coast with great adaptability, going where they could freely carry out their business.

During the American Civil War (1861–65) cotton supplies to Britain’s textile mills dwindled, causing a boom in production elsewhere in the Empire.

When the Residency ship Berenice was destroyed by fire on a trip to Muscat, the Resident in the Persian Gulf endured a ‘week of considerable anxiety’ over-seeing the rescue of 178 men, women, and children.

When Pelly undertook making a trip to Riyadh in 1864–65, he wished to gain intelligence on the Nejd, but also to prove that an Englishman could travel through the territory unmolested.

The short-lived escapades of the Sponge Exploration Syndicate.

For over thirty years, Charles Belgrave was an immensely powerful figure in Bahrain who played an instrumental role in its development but by 1957 he had become so unpopular he was forced to leave and never set foot in the country again.

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.

In the ninth century, Ḥunayn ibn Ishāq decided to explain Greek terminology, instead of simply adopting it, in his translations of the medical treatises of Galen. In doing this he helped establish Arabic as an international language of science.

The shipwreck in 1852 of a merchant vessel off the Oman coast, led to the plunder and loss of enough indigo to supply the entire Gulf region for a year.

al-Bīrūnī’s Qānūn is the most complete astronomical encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. It represents the most successful attempt to correct and rewrite Ptolemy’s Almagest, and was based on the results of three centuries of research in Islamic lands.

The environment has greatly influenced life in the Gulf and Indian Ocean over the centuries. Before the era of steamships, a hugely significant factor affecting life and trade in this region were the winds of the Indian Ocean monsoon.

Among pre-modern Arabic scholars, the Almagest was generally regarded as the most authoritative work on astronomy. This esteem for Ptolemy's text, however, contrasted with a common practice among Arabic readers not to consult the Almagest directly but to rely on later commentaries for studying Ptolemy's theories.

How did a fourteenth century illustrated ‘Treatise on the Art of Riding and using the Instruments of War’ end up in the British Library’s Arabic manuscript collection? A ‘Nincumpoop’ of the Napoleonic era, who moonlighted as an antiquarian, holds the answer.

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

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.

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

Between the world wars, Reza Shah Pahlavi brought great changes to Iran and a challenge to British predominance in the Gulf, the legacy of which is still felt in the region.

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 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.