Articles From Our Experts

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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’.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

In the immediate post-WWII period, despite British opposition, the U.S. sought to increase its influence in the Gulf by distributing propagandistic material in Arabic.

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.

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

The name Mīr Muhannā is much celebrated in Iran today because he stood up to imperialism and won.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

A number of key moments in the life of Shaikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa are recorded in the India Office Records.

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.

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.

Six videos demonstrating the replication of a specific eighteenth-century manuscript's binding by the British Library's conservator, Flavio Marzo.

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.