Articles From Our Experts

The family background, business activities, financial and political influence of the Qusaybi brothers, the eventual division of the family business, and their commercial and political legacy.

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

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 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 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?

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.

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.

Cultural appropriation was as much a part of empire as military force. The use of ‘Islamic’ seals by British colonial officials is one example of this.

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.

Although relatively little is known about the early years of Sultan Qaboos bin Sa‘id Al Bu Sa‘id, his experience of growing up secluded in Salalah may well explain the solitary nature of his fifty-year rule.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

With the oil industry booming in Bahrain in the early 1930s, BAPCO oil workers, amongst others, lobbied for the first cinemas to be established.

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.

‘What can I buy from the current post holder?’ was the first consideration of a newly appointed British Agent in the Empire. Frequent moves meant that provisions, furniture and necessities for entertaining were bought and sold rather than transported with Agents from post to post.

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?

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.

An enormous effort was made to translate almost all known Greek literature into Arabic during the 8th to 10th centuries, and Baghdad was at the centre of this work. Why was it that so many of the translators were Christians?

Only by mapping and surveying Aden fully were the British able to plan for its reconstruction and fortification, thereby facilitating trade and other shipping to and from India and beyond.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In the Sultanate of Oman, traditional music, poetry and dance are still part and parcel of everyday life and national celebrations alike.