Articles From Our Experts

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

A minor incident at Basaidu in the 1930s led to the Royal Navy launching its First Destroyer Flotilla on a tour of the Gulf, in a very public display of its naval dominance over the region.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

From the early days of its existence, the East India Company sought a secure base, known as a factory, in the Gulf from which to conduct trade with Persia. In 1763, it finally established a base which would provide some continuity to its operations, namely Bushire.

Around 150 AD Claudius Ptolemaeus wrote the great handbook of astronomy, later known as the Almagest, which became the prevalent handbook for the knowledge of the stars in Europe for about 1500 years. The text was handed on to the Europeans through Arabic translations in the ninth century AD, and translated into Latin in the twelfth century.

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.

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 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.

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.

While Britain more famously held naval bases in Basaidu, Hengam, and Bahrain during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, less is known about the small base on the Musandam Peninsula, which was at one time envisaged as the centre of British power in the region.

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.

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.

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.

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

In 1920, a gift from Ibn Saud in the form of a female oryx was the first ever to have survived the difficult journey from Arabia to London.

In the medieval and early modern periods, the same group of individuals who developed new mathematical methods and theories were often directly involved in the historical, philological preservation of ancient texts.

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.

Over several centuries, the close relationship between individual explorers of the Arabian Peninsula and the British Empire was made clear in often unpublished journals and accounts held in the India Office Records.

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

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 the pre-modern Arabic-speaking lands, as the world over, the lives of people and animals were intertwined in manifold ways. This resulted in the production of numerous Arabic scientific, veterinary, and related texts on the world of beasts.

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.

The Death of Karim Khan Zand, ruler of Persia, in 1779 marked the beginning of a bloody period lasting 15 years and culminating in the rise to power of the Qajar dynasty.

In 1830, the long-term relationship between Prince Najaf Ali Khan Zand and the Government of Bombay was put to the test when the Prince was accused of murder.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The British Government had a strong interest in Kharg, a small, strategically placed island in the Gulf.

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

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.

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.

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.

The movement for political reform in Kuwait in 1938 signified change in the region and highlights the country’s – and Britain’s – response to the ideas and forces that delivered it.

An unassuming financial file that forms part of the India Office Records contains an unexpected example of British, Arabic-language propaganda.

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.

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.

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.

Western naval bases have played a significant part in colonial history, and remain an important factor in international relations today. This article explores the early history of the establishment and proliferation of British naval bases 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.