The history of the Arabian Gulf has been closely connected with the British presence in the region for centuries. This presence is not limited to political affairs. It began, most notably, with commercial activities, and later expanded into political, military, and diplomatic spheres. This presence left behind a vast body of documents, correspondence, reports, and maps, making the British archives one of the richest sources for studying the modern history of the Arabian Gulf region.
In the 1990s, an ambitious scholarly project was launched in Qatar under the sponsorship of the Hassan Bin Mohammed Historical Studies Center. The project aims to identify, collect, translate, and make available a large collection of historical documents and old and rare maps relating to the history of Qatar and the Arabian Gulf states, preserved within the records of the British Government of India, which later became part of the holdings of the British Library.
In this episode of the Archivology podcast, Mr. Ahmad Ubaid, a specialist in photographic archives, hosts Mr. Mohammad Hammam Fekri, Heritage and Rare Books Advisor at Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, Director of the Hassan Bin Mohammed Historical Studies Center, and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Riwaq Al-Tarikh wa Al-Turath.
Mr. Fekri discusses his extensive experience with this documentary collection, including how it was formed, its nature, the subjects it covers, and the administrative channels through which its records were transferred within British institutions in India before ultimately becoming part of British archival collections. He also addresses how an important part of this body of knowledge was made accessible to Arab readers and researchers through collection, photography, translation, and publication.
The discussion also examines the activities of the British East India Company in the Gulf and the establishment of a network of agencies, residencies, and centers connected to its commercial interests in the region. It traces the evolution of these institutions' roles over time, extending beyond trade to political, military, and diplomatic affairs. Through this vast network, thousands of letters, reports, and records were produced and accumulated, which became essential material for understanding many aspects of the history of Qatar and the Arabian Gulf.
The episode does not treat the archival document simply as an ultimate witness to history. Rather, it poses a deeper question: To what extent can such documents be relied upon in writing history?
In this context, Mr. Fekri discusses the importance of document criticism, warning against presenting archival documents as absolute truths or necessarily neutral accounts of historical events. He notes that a document is written at a specific time, for a specific purpose, and by an individual or institution possessing particular perspectives and interests, and operating within specific circumstances. Hence, it should be subjected to criticism, comparison, and scrutiny, and should be linked to other documents before historical conclusions are drawn upon it.
From this perspective, he critiques some common sayings such as “no history without a document” emphasizing that the absence of a document does not necessarily mean the absence of the event, just as its presence does not make everything it records an absolute and unalterable truth. Thus, the document is one of the tools for understanding the past, alongside local narratives, other historical sources, maps, photographs, oral testimonies, and other forms of evidence.
The episode also highlights the experience of publishing the encyclopedia Qatar and the Arabian Gulf States in Indian Archive Documents, one of the most prominent outcomes of this project. The encyclopedia made available a wide range of documents relating to the history of Qatar and the region, arranging them chronologically thus enabling researchers to trace political, social, economic, and military events and developments, and to compare different documents and records.
This is an episode about the journey of the document as much as it is an episode about the history of the Gulf: from the British offices, agencies, and residencies in the region, to the records of the Government of India, and from there to British archival institutions, before the content of some of these documents were made accessible to the Arab reader, in translated and organized form for research and study.
The episode is, at the same time, a testament to an experience that spanned years in searching for, collecting, translating, and publishing of historical documents, while raising a question that remains relevant to every researcher of history:
Does a document tell us what actually happened, or does it tell us what its writer chose to record about what happened?
