Articles From Our Experts

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.

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.

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.

An overview of the records created by the UK’s Political Agency at Kuwait between 1904 and 1949, and an examination of some of the subjects covered.

During WWII food shortages in the Middle East caused by locust swarms were tackled by a largely forgotten, but ultimately successful war supported by British administrators in the Gulf.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

An overview of records on the Qatar Digital Library originating from the Political (External) Department (IOR/L/PS/12), including a description of the records and the subjects they cover.

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.

A guide to the East India Company ships’ journals and related records (IOR/L/MAR/A and B series files) and miscellaneous East India Company and India Office marine records (IOR/L/MAR/C files) on the Qatar Digital Library.

A government department unique in its scope and power, the India Office had a profound impact on the history of the Gulf.

The Persia Collection: casting light on Britain’s thorny relationship with Persia [Iran] throughout the 1930s, Second World War, and Anglo-Soviet Occupation.

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

When and where did the sciences practised in the Islamic world during the so-called Golden Age originate?

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.

A 1787 letter requesting plants from the Persian Gulf for a newly established botanical garden in Kolkata illuminates the way in which the pursuit of scientific knowledge became part of the EIC’s global economic endeavour.

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?

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

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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’.

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

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

Wherever European navies sailed, they introduced their own designs of ships and adapted those they saw being used locally. This is the second article in a series of three by the author, providing context and explanation for nautical terminology in the India Office Records.

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.

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.