Compelling insights into Qatar’s history

By Denise Marray

Gulf Times Correspondent/London

The first phase of an ambitious project supported by Qatar Foundation to digitise archived materials at the British Library and make them available to a range of audiences in the UK, Qatar and the wider world is on target for launch this autumn, Gulf Times has learnt.

Discussions are underway about planning and co-operation over the next phase.

Gulf Times was recently introduced to members of the 40-strong  British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership team responsible for the task of making the British Library’s archive materials accessible to the wider public. The work includes preparing the documents – often highly valuable and in need of sensitive handling – for photography and digitisation.

Most importantly, especially for the non-specialist wishing to access the documents, the digitised documents are accompanied by expert commentary that helps the reader to understand their meaning and the context in which they were written.

Richard Gibby, head of the British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership project, said: “Both the British Library and the Qatar Foundation are interested and keen to extend the project and to go into further phases of digitising material. A key desire for both Qatar Foundation and ourselves is to make this material accessible for use by educators, students, school children and the general public.”

The portal will be bilingual in English and Arabic.

Correspondence relating to the granting of oil concessions by the ruler of Qatar to the Anglo Persian Oil Company (APOC) in the 1930s makes for fascinating reading. This is history brought to vivid life through documents that are being made widely available through the collaborative efforts of the Qatar Foundation, Qatar National Library and British Library.

Talking about the scale of the project, Gibby explained: “For the first time we have been able to put together a whole end-to-end process – right from bringing the material up from our storage basement through the conservation, imaging and digitisation process, the creation of metadata cataloguing and then the creation of the interpretative materials. To the best of my knowledge I am not aware of any other project in any other library that’s really managed to do that before.”

Valentina Mirabella, archive specialist, India Office Records, gave the background to the Qatar Oil Concession documents. She pointed out: “The importance of oil as a resource in Qatar only grew after the crisis of the pearling industry, which was partially brought about by the introduction of cultured pearls by the Japanese into the market. The fall in the value of luxury goods after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 also played its role in realigning the Qatari economy towards oil.”

Mirabella described how, despite the first licence for oil exploration being granted by Sheikh Abdullah bin Jasim al-Thani to the Anglo Persian Oil Company in 1932, work was disrupted by the onset of World War II. Thus, it was not until 1949 that oil exports began, an event as she said, with some understatement, “that was to determine the beginning of a new era for Qatar”.

There are 10 volumes of correspondence between APOC, the British government and the ruler of Qatar regarding the concessions for oil extraction and exploration. Seeing the documents, with the signatures of all parties, makes for compelling reading.

The correspondence is contained in the records of the East India Company (1600-1858). The focus is on the territories now included in India, Pakistan, Burma and Bangladesh and their administration before 1947.  The records  include source materials for neighbouring or connected areas at different times, covering not only South Asia, but also Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Africa.

Mark Hobbs, subject specialist, India Office Records, presented a 1933 map showing the Gulf coast section of the London to Karachi air route established in the late 1920s. It shows the fuel facilities, emergency landing strips and sea plane anchorages and the places where the British were looking to negotiate landing strips and re-fuelling facilities.

He said: “Every day as we go through the files we find new information. We never know what’s in a file until we open it and start reading through it. That’s the really enjoyable part because you never know what you are going to find next.”

Some of the materials being made widely available give fascinating insights into matters that resonate today. Bink Hallum, Arabic scientific manuscripts curator, showed us a beautifully-illustrated 13th century manual of equine health discussing the good and bad points of horses, their training, diseases and treatment.

Asked how it was possible for the colours in the illustrations to be so vivid after such a long passage of time, he explained: “The paints were made from mineral substances which don’t fade over time. It wasn’t uncommon to make blue from crushing lapis lazuli, the black inks were carbon based, and of course the gold is real gold.”

He pointed to a charming inscription made at the beginning of a treatise on the construction and use of sundials by the esteemed thirteenth century scholar, Ibn Al Raqqam. The scribe who copied this work includes a personal blessing for the author: “May God grant him a long life and brighten his sky with happy stars.”

Flavio Marzo, the conservation studio manager, who has previously worked in the Vatican Library and the Bodleian Library at Oxford, heads the team responsible for assessing items prior to being put through the digitisation process. He explained that tightly bound volumes presented the biggest challenge when it comes to preparing items for digitisation.

He added that the project afforded the team a great opportunity to do some conservation work on the manuscripts. “Without doing a major intervention there is an opportunity to extend the lifespan of the item by improving the housing or doing little repairs. We are not changing the nature of the items with extensive treatment but we are stabilising items for the library.”

Fiona Clancy, imaging manager, showed us the room where the photography is done. She explained: “The number of pictures or captures a day depends on the material. For maps it can take longer and some materials need conservation before we take the image. This facility is state of the art: the cameras we use here are usually used for fashion photography. The quality of the digitisation is exceptional.”

George Weyman, project manager, Content, said: “We want to digitise surrogates that will last as long as the originals or longer. I think this project is a huge opportunity: we want to present the materials in a multi-lingual way to diverse audiences and to enable a new historical discussion around the content.”