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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?
Why Were So Many of the Greek-Arabic Translators Christians?
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.
Performing Authority: the ‘Islamic’ Seals of British Colonial Officers
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.
The 1940s: Perfect Peace in the Midst of War
A document written in the mid-1940s sheds light on how the Bushire Political Residency files came to be so well organised.
‘The life stream of an office’: Instructions for dealing with correspondence at the British Residency in Bushire
A religious disagreement in 1930 between the Sultanate of Muscat and American missionaries in Muscat reveals more than just a battle for souls.
The Affair of the Muscat ‘Christian’ Widow
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.
Anglo-Persian Relations: The British Military Mission to Persia, 1810-1815
Common household practices such as consuming hot soups and drinks when one has caught a cold are rooted in humoral medicine, which was the dominant medical paradigm from the time of Galen to the nineteenth century (and beyond) across much of the world.
Galenic Humoral Pathology
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.
Colonial Knowledge: Lorimer’s Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia
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?
The Taylor Collection
Mathematicians in medieval Islamic societies were the first to grasp the real significance of Menelaus’ Spherics. They followed Menelaus’ approach to spherical geometry and went on to develop spherical trigonometry as an independent branch of mathematics.
Menelaus’ Spherics
Appearing in files from Bahrain in the 1930s, the terms ‘Holi’ (singular) and ‘Hawala’ (plural) are not immediately recognisable to most readers. Gulf History cataloguers take a closer look at the terms to decipher their meanings.
Home and Away: The Itinerant History of the Hawala Arabs
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.
British Naval Bases in the Gulf, 1820-1935: A History of Tensions
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.
Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq and the Rise of Arabic as a Language of Science
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.
Thesiger’s Clothes: Empire and Exploration in the Arabian Peninsula
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.
Khidma: Britain’s Pragmatic Approach to Justice 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?
Technologies of Power: Railway Records and What They Can Tell Us
A little known first-hand account, that the British Agents in Bahrain garnered by chance, sheds light on William Henry Irvine Shakespear’s death.
The Death of Captain Shakespear
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.
British Power, the Al Bu Sa‘id Sultanate, and the Musandam Peninsula, 1800-1932
A vast range of material that spans several thousand years, including a large collection of Arabic manuscripts and material related to the Gulf, is held in the British Library collection.
The British Library: How Many Institutions Became One
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?
George Curzon’s Persia and the Persian Question: Published, yet unfinished?
The private papers of George Nathaniel Curzon offer a window on the workings of the British Empire.
Finding Aid: Mss Eur F111-112 Papers of the Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1866-1925)
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.
Competing Theories of Spherical Trigonometry
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.
Important Work: The British 1820 Survey that Charted the Gulf for the First Time
In the thirteenth century, Ibn al-Nafīs wrote a substantial commentary on Avicenna’s entire Canon of Medicine thereby revising existing understandings of human physiology and anatomy. His theory of the pulmonary transit of blood formed a cornerstone of the modern theory of blood circulation.
Ibn al-Nafīs and Pulmonary Transit
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.
Ibn al-Raqqām’s treatise on sundials
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.
The Flotilla Tour of 1933: A Demonstration of British Naval Power in the Gulf
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.
The Persian Gulf Squadron: British Hegemony in the Gulf?
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.
The Latin Reception of the Arabic Tradition of the Almagest
Astrology was considered a scientific discipline in the Middle Ages, when political powers patronised astronomical research that was considered necessary for obtaining ‘scientific’ astrological predictions.
Sahl ibn Bishr and the Rise of Astrology in Abbasid Times
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.
Claudius James Rich: Administrator, traveller, author, and collector of manuscripts and antiquities
During the evacuation of British forces from Bushire, in the aftermath of the Anglo-Persian War (1856-57), tensions rose between two of Her Majesty’s public servants.
General John Jacob and Charles Murray: Chronicles of a Rancorous Relationship
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’.
The 1930s: the Gulf as ‘Highway between East and West’
‘Islamic’ and ‘Western’ are terms used to describe different styles of binding but experts agree that much further research is required to create more meaningful categories.
‘Islamic Style’ Binding: A Misleading Term Ripe for Further Research
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.
Mapping Aden: The British Occupation of A Vital Trading Port
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 Financial Troubles of Said bin Taimur
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.
Economy in Turmoil: Gulf Trade Hit by Piracy and Famine
From its earliest years the RAF played a vital role in maintaining and strengthening British power in the Gulf.
First Flights: Establishment of an RAF Presence in the Gulf
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.
The Baghdadi Bookseller of Bloomsbury
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.
The India Office Private Papers
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.
Manumission Statements: Insights into the Lives of the Gulf’s enslaved Population
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.
Anglo-Kurdish Relations during the Mesopotamia Campaign (1914-1918)
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.
Pelly’s Unprecedented Trip to Riyadh
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.
St John Philby’s Mission to Najd: Across the Heart of Arabia
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 Emergence of Qatar: Pelly’s Role in Britain’s 1868 Recognition of the State
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.
ʽAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī and the Revision of Ptolemy’s Star Catalogue
What is a kharita, what are its main components, and how was it dispatched?
Kharita: royal letter dispatching in nineteenth-century Afghanistan
A colonial officer named Hickinbotham illustrates the everyday boredom of administrating the Empire with his practical jokes and escapist reading list.
‘Imperial Boredom’ and Imperial Reading
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.
Ice: Hidden Depths below the Surface
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.
Sir Thomas Reade: The ‘Nincumpoop’ Collector of Arabic Manuscripts
When and where did the sciences practised in the Islamic world during the so-called Golden Age originate?
The Beginnings of Science in the Islamic World
Against the dramatic international backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, the British in Constantinople, Syria and Persia ensured that they kept one step ahead of a mysterious French officer.
Napoleon’s Agent: Monitoring the Movements of Monsieur Romieu in the East
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.
The Prize Agents of 1857 and the Acquisition of the Delhi Collection
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.
The usefulness of animals in the Arabic scientific tradition
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?
Skull Measuring, Oil Seepages and Desert Crossings: Bertram Thomas and the Exploration of the Arabian Peninsula
Bahrain’s Order in Council gave the Political Agent the power to, on one hand, issue birth certificates, and on the other, to rule on capital punishment for convicted criminals.
Births, Marriages, Deaths: Bahrain’s ‘Order in Council’ in Action
A number of key moments in the life of Shaikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa are recorded in the India Office Records.
Episodes from the Life of Shaikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa
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 Imperial Railway in British-Occupied Mesopotamia
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.
‘Persian Gulf Tragedy’: the Death and Legacy of John Gordon Lorimer
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.
A Close Relationship: Britain and Oman since 1750
During the first four centuries of Islam, almost all the Greek scientific literature available in manuscripts was translated into Arabic in an effort, centred on Baghdad, known as the ‘translation movement’.
Scientific Translators and Powerful Patrons
Six videos demonstrating the replication of a specific eighteenth-century manuscript's binding by the British Library's conservator, Flavio Marzo.
Replication of an Eighteenth Century Manuscript Binding
Growing tensions between the British and the Sheikh of Dubai led to a gun battle in 1910 that cost numerous lives and did long-term damage to relations between the British and locals on the Trucial Coast.
The Dubai Incident, 1910: A Gun Battle that Damaged British relations with the Trucial Coast
‘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.
Creature Comforts, Wine and Spirits: Inside the Home of a Peripatetic British Agent
There are numerous records relating to high-level British officials in the Gulf, but the letters in the India Office Establishment Files also reveal the working conditions of the lower-paid ranks of Agency staff.
The Menial Establishment in Britain’s Political Agency, Bahrain
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.
The Political Residency, Bushire
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.
Nazi Propaganda in Sharjah during World War II
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.
Legal Business: The Judicial Aspects of British Rule in the Gulf
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.
The British Residency in Baghdad
Beyond Sykes and Picot, the India Office Records reveal the complex historical and political junctures that shaped the map of today's Middle East.
Just a Line in the Sand? The Making of an Arabian Border, 1925
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.
The Arabic Translations of Ptolemy's Almagest
The arrest of a British Subject on spurious charges makes plain Britain’s dominant position in Kuwait in the late 1930s.
The Kuwait Cat’s Meat Crisis
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.
No Place Equal to It: The Omani Lease of Bandar Abbas, Part 1 – 1794-1848
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.
‘Ridiculous Falsehoods’: Archival Sources on Women in Nineteenth-Century Oman
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.
The Impact of the Napoleonic Wars in the Gulf: The Franco-Persian Alliance and Napoleon’s Threat to India
Verbal abuse and physical attacks from those amongst which he lived, and denigration from foreign visitors; all part of the job of being a British Native Agent in Sharjah.
People in the Gulf: Native Agents at Sharjah
For a period of over 150 years, from 1820 until its withdrawal in 1971, Britain was dominant in the Gulf, but the nature of British domination evolved from economic influence to political control, particularly of the Arabian side of the Gulf.
The British in the Gulf: an Overview
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 Qusaybi Merchant Family: Agents and Financiers of Ibn Sa‘ud
How did an illustrated Arabic manuscript on the Art of War come into the possession of an illegitimate son of a King; his extraordinary and ultimately tragic life leading to its acquisition by the British Library?
An Earl, a Collection and a Gun: the Curious Provenance of a British Library Manuscript
How and why did the British Library come to hold 14,000 Arabic manuscripts within its collections?
The Arabic Manuscripts Collection in the British Library
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.
al-Bīrūnī: a high point in the Development of Islamic Astronomy
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.
Arabic Scientific Tradition
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.
Medieval Arabic Formularies: Compounds and Simples
The story of a Qatari shaikh from the early days of Doha.
‘Īsá bin Ṭarīf Āl Bin ‘Alī, Governor of Biddah (Doha), 1843-47
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.
George Barnes Brucks and the First English Survey of the Gulf
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.
The Making of Medical Manuals: The 'Questions and Answers' Format in Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq’s Medical Manuals
A thousand years ago, a high-ranking individual commissioned an astrological text on choosing the best moments to undertake important actions. But the stars held a terrible fate for him and his family.
Viziers, fears, and a manuscript: The tumultuous history of the al-Anbārī brothers
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.
Manumission, Not Abolition: British Mediations over Slavery in the Gulf
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.
The Mobility of Merchants in the Pursuit of Profit: The English Withdraw from Bushire
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.
The East India Company, the problem of “piracy”, and the rise of the first Saudi state
The peoples of the Islamic world excelled at designing and building water-clocks as these manuscripts show.
Robots, Musicians and Monsters: The World’s Most Fantastic Clocks
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.
Berenice Burnt At Sea! A Tale of Fire and Rescue in the Gulf
What was the purpose of Sir Lewis Pelly’s trip through Afghanistan in 1860?
Journey through Afghanistan, 1860
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.
The Shaikh who lost his Shaikhdom, Khaz’al al-Ka‘bī of Mohammerah
During WWII, secret instructions for the interception of post passing through the Gulf were circulated to Political Agents in Bahrain, Kuwait and Muscat.
Invisible Ink: Intercepting Post in Second World War
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.
A Dispensary for Doha: healthcare, subterfuge, and external political influence in late 1940s Qatar
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.
Bahrain’s Chief of Police Visits the UK, 1948
What do the Gombroon Diaries convey about eighteenth-century Persia [Iran] and the Gulf (1708-1763)?
Finding Aid: IOR/G/29/2-14 Gombroon (Bandar ‘Abbas) Diaries and Consultations (1708-1763)
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.
Charles Belgrave – The Adviser
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?
“Piracy” in the India Office Records: some historical context
Who were the Bania, and how are they depicted in the India Office Records?
The “Bania” of the Gulf
Scribal notes in a Mughal-period manuscript of fourteen musical texts shed light on its historical context and the process of its creation.
A Mughal Musical Miscellany: the creation of Or. 2361
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.
The Response of the Government of India to ‘The Dubai Incident’
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.
Reza Shah Pahlavi and the Gulf
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.
The Accidental Explorer: George Sadleir and Britain’s Entry into Central Arabia
Sir Lewis Pelly was a key figure in the history of the Gulf owing to his role, as British Political Resident, in enforcing the region’s maritime peace treaties from 1862 to 1873.
A Portrait of Sir Lewis Pelly
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.
Translating a Work of Higher Mathematics
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.
Francis Loch and the British quest to eradicate “piracy” in the Gulf
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.
Power and Prognostication in the Cairo Sultanate
As the oil industry developed in the late 1940s, Britain was keen to place a Political Agent in Qatar. To do this the British had to come to an understanding with the Shaikh of Qatar on matters of slavery without being seen to interfere.
Petroleum and the politics of non-interference: the first Political Officer in Qatar
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.
A Considerable Fortune: The Wealth, and Death, of Sheikh Jāsim bin Muḥammad Āl Thānī
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 Brief History of the English East India Company 1600–1858
A candid exchange between British officials in the 1920s reveals the extent to which Britain had intervened in Bahrain in its own interest.
Britain’s ‘interest’ in Bahrain
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.
The Politics of Death: British cemeteries in the Gulf Region
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.
Studying the Mathematical Sciences
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.
The Lesser-Known Early Years of Sultan Qaboos
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.
Arabic Commentators on Ptolemy's Almagest
Britain and its Allies maintained supremacy over the Gulf’s airspace during the Second World War, but mechanical failure could quickly turn the tables, making crewmen dependent on the region’s local population for their survival.
Air Crashes in the Gulf during the Second World War
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.
An Embarrassing Diplomatic Dispute in Baghdad, 1847
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.
The Second World War Comes to Bahrain
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.
A Demonstration of British Firepower on the Trucial Coast, 1949
It was an event that provoked anxiety among Persians and foreign traders alike and was to trigger a period of profound instability in Iran: the death, in 1779, of the ruler of Persia, Karim Khan Zand.
The ‘Dreaded’ Death of Karim Khan Zand, Ruler of Persia
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 Search of Landing Grounds: Views of Qatar from above, May 1934
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.
‘Gibraltar at the head of the Gulf’: The Base that Wasn’t
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.
The Death of Queen Victoria: the Politics of Mourning for the British in the Gulf
How the anti-British sentiments of a British adviser assisted the foundation of Saudi Arabia.
‘Calls himself an Englishman’: The shifting loyalties of Harry Philby
The interception by an East India Company vessel in June 1853, of a Bahrain trading vessel carrying slaves in the Gulf, reveals a story of politics and diplomacy, disease and death.
Diplomacy, Disease and Death: A Story of Georgian Slaves in the Gulf
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.
Reading, transmitting, and making books: The personal touch of Muḥammad Ibn Abī al-Fatḥ al-Ṣūfī, astronomer of Cairo
The remarkable travel journals of an Indian civil servant, who was an eyewitness to the military action at Ra’s al-Khaymah in 1819.
The Manuscript Journals of John Bax
By offering military protection to Qatar, the British tried to ensure access to Qatari oil in the run-up to the Second World War. But why did Qatar need weapons and armoured cars in 1935?
Oil for Military Protection between the Wars: Qatar’s Request for Weapons and the British Response
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.
Emir Faisal’s Diplomatic Mission and Britain’s Reluctance to Invest in Saudi Oil in 1932
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.
Personal Reflections on Life in the Gulf during the Last Years of Empire
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