Articles From Our Experts

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.

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.

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.

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.

A vast array of cartographic material has been hidden amongst the India Office Records’ administrative files; this material provides a fascinating insight into the workings of British imperial knowledge gathering in the Gulf and beyond.

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?

How and why did the British Library come to hold 14,000 Arabic manuscripts within its collections?

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.

An overview of India Office Military Department records relating to Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and the Arabian Peninsula.

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.

An overview of the records in the IOR/F/4 Series, including how they were created, their format, and subject matter.

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.

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.

This article looks at the India Office Records Map Collection’s holdings relating to the Arabian Peninsula and The Gulf. It considers why the India Office assembled such a significant collection for so distant a region, and outlines the variety and organisation of the material.

An overview of the records created by Britain’s Political Residency at Bushire between 1763 and 1948, including a description of the records and the subjects they cover.

The vast trove of material held at the British Library that pertains to Britain’s Colonial exploits owe their present organisation in part to the early acknowledgement by officials in the EIC and India Office of the importance of record-keeping.

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.

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.

The peoples of the Islamic world excelled at designing and building water-clocks as these manuscripts show.

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.

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.

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 vast archive known as the India Office Records, occupying approximately nine miles of shelving in the British Library, contains the documents created or received in London by three organisations crucial to the British colonial effort in the period 1600–1858.

A guide to the Departmental Papers: Political and Secret Separate (or Subject) Files (IOR/L/PS/10), describing what the files represent, their subject matter, how they are organised, and the different types of papers they contain.

There are many different types of vessels used from the Red Sea to India. All of them have developed over the years to suit the local conditions. This is the third article in a series of three by the author, providing context and explanation for nautical terminology in the India Office Records.

What do the records created by the British Political Agency at Muscat have to offer us?

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.

An overview of the records created by the Bahrain Political Agency, 1899-1953

‘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.

The Private Papers of One of the Gulf’s Most Important Political Residents, 1862–72, provide a fascinating insight into British Policy in the period as well as providing a more personal insight into the life of a British official.

An East India Company diary from the early nineteenth century demonstrates some of the challenges encountered when cataloguing older India Office records.

Not only did the Asian subcontinent’s hot and humid climate present a significant threat to the health of British administrators, but it also presented new challenges to their business of recordkeeping.

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.