Articles From Our Experts

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.

From its earliest years the RAF played a vital role in maintaining and strengthening British power in the Gulf.

The struggle for power in Muscat 1866–68 following the death, in suspicious circumstances, of Sayyid Thuwaynī bin Sa‘īd Āl Bū Sa‘īd, Sultan of Muscat.

Ownership of a medal of the Order of the Lion and Sun becomes the subject of an unseemly quarrel, as related by the British Envoy in Tehran.

Oman’s lease of a major Persian port was defined by obscure origins, and a relationship that was generally uneasy and often contentious – a situation that British authorities were happy to exploit. This is the first article in a series of two.

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

Papers highlighting a difference in 1915 between Western and Arab interpretations of judicial procedure in Bahrain may not be representative of the history of Britain’s jurisdiction in the Gulf as a whole.

A candid exchange between British officials in the 1920s reveals the extent to which Britain had intervened in Bahrain in its own interest.

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.

Pesta and Rifi Songs, which developed in the twentieth century from Iraqi maqam, became more popular because they were recorded on shellac and broadcast throughout Iraq in the mid-century.

Certain collections within the British Library’s manuscript holdings represent dark links between Britain’s nineteenth-century colonial and military activities, and its acquisition of cultural and intellectual heritage.

In spite of legally abolishing slavery in its Empire in 1833, the British Government struggled to eradicate the practice in its protectorates in the Gulf.

The subject of railways appears time and again in the India Office Records. What was Britain’s obsession with them and how did they transform how Britain thought about, protected, and ran its empire?

Although British power in the Gulf was founded on maritime truces with local rulers, in the early 20th century land-based attacks increased, creating the need for new agreements.

Kept alive until today by a very small number of chalgi Baghdad ensembles and through remaining shellac recordings, Iraqi maqam is a sophisticated musical genre from urban Iraq that developed in the 1920s‒1940s.

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.

Much Anglocentric writing on Gulf history credits the British with bringing peace to the region. But how accurate is that narrative? A close inspection of the India Office Records reveals another picture of the British presence in the Gulf.

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.

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

While much remains unknown about the life of the first Meccan photographer, al-Sayyid ‘Abd al-Ghaffār, his 1880s photographs shed light on life in the holy city.

Looking to strengthen Persia as a potential buffer for the defence of India, Britain provided military assistance to the Crown Prince of Persia in his struggle against Russian expansion into the Caucasus.

In November 1917, St John Philby was sent from Basra on a mission to cross the desert and meet with Ibn Sa‘ud. It was an expedition that changed his life.

Faced with the rise of a new power on land and an increase in attacks at sea, the British response at the start of the nineteenth century would lead to a new era of political and military intervention.

Gwadar was an enclave of the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman for nearly 200 years, but records show that while the Sultans were reluctant to lose sovereignty over the territory, they were nevertheless open to negotiations with the British.

The uneasy union between British and Kurdish allies during the First World War gave way to hostilities in the war’s aftermath, as Britain failed to deliver on Kurdish hopes for independence.

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.

With the city of Muscat in disarray and growing dissent on the coast, the absent Imam of Muscat had to rely on his close relative to take charge and defend his territories. The person to assume this mantle? Influential, commanding, and female.

Murder, suicide, communal riots, racial snobbery and a colourful, much-maligned British Agent caught up in the midst of it all: a record of life in Gwadar 1928–32.

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.

Played out against Oman’s imposing geographical position, the British relationship with Oman has changed from that of allies against common foe, through informal British imperial influence to an important trading and strategic partner today.

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.

A document written in the mid-1940s sheds light on how the Bushire Political Residency files came to be so well organised.

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.

Ṣawt, the urban music of the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf, has evolved from diverse musical traditions, including sea music, and was profoundly influenced by Indian, African and classical Arabic music.

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

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 Islamic seal with an unusual bird design appears on a witness statement delivered by the Sheikh of Dubai to the British Resident in The Gulf, following a fatal gun battle in Dubai in 1910.

Today’s leaders look to their medical, economic, military, and other expert advisers, but historically rulers have also consulted astrologers, dream-interpreters, and specialists in other forms of divination and occult sciences.

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.

From its foundation at the end of the eighteenth century, the British Residency in Baghdad occupied a strategically important position, linking together various strands of British imperial engagement in the region.

Though nowadays Qatar is well-known for its immense natural oil and gas reserves and the rapid modernisation of society, it has a rich heritage of music and dance intimately related to pearl-diving, sea trade and Bedouin traditions.

Viewed alternately as both luxury and necessity, ice has been valued in warm climates for millennia. Technological advances altered methods of producing, storing, and using ice, but it remained a highly sought-after and regulated product well into the twentieth century.

Upon the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, instructions sent to the Native Agent at Sharjah on how to visibly mourn her death reveal aspects of the construction of empire via ritual mourning practices.

In the tempestuous history of the British Residency at Mocha, one of the most notable incidents was the bombardment of the city in December 1820. This followed allegations from British officials and Arab leaders of shocking misconduct on both sides.

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.

Sir Lewis Pelly is a key figure in the history of the Gulf who, in his role as Political Resident, was Britain’s senior official in the region from 1862 to 1873. He holds particular importance for Qatar due to his recognition of its independent sovereignty in 1868.

The removal of original backgrounds and inscriptions reveals a tension between the photographers ‘Abd al-Ghaffār and Snouck Hurgronje in terms of their process, approach to and outlook on photography.

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’.

Wherever British merchants, sailors, or officials went, they left behind permanent markers of their presence in the form of cemeteries and other memorials. These cemeteries often caused political and religious issues for both their creators and the rulers of the countries in which they were located.

In 1910, British officials discovered that the Persian authorities at Bandar-e Lengeh were charging travellers a domestic rate to travel to Bahrain, reigniting a decades-long dispute over Persian claims to the islands.

Against a backdrop of bold manoeuvres by different states in the nineteenth century, the British Agent at the Court of the Imam of Muscat wrote numerous letters focused on small matters of prestige.

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.