Untold lives blog

Sharing stories from the past, worldwide

25 October 2024

Celebrating Ten Years of the Qatar Digital Library: Memorable Highlights – Part 3

Launched on 22 October 2014, the Qatar Digital Library (QDL) was developed as part of a longstanding partnership between the Qatar Foundation, the Qatar National Library, and the British Library.  The partnership includes the digitisation of a wide range of material from the British Library’s collections, aimed at improving understanding of the modern history of the Gulf, Arabic cultural heritage, and the Islamic world.

Following on from parts 1 and 2, in this concluding part, members of the team of experts working on the QDL reflect once more on memorable material that they and former colleagues have encountered during the last decade.

Excerpt from an administration report of the Persian Gulf  1945Excerpt from an administration report of the Persian Gulf, 1945 – IOR/R/15/1/720, f. 92r

The application of OCR to digitised records just before the QDL’s launch in 2014 enabled a response to a query from a geology professor at the University of Baluchistan, Pakistan, who was looking to find archival material on the 1945 Makran tsunami, as part of UNESCO commemorations on the tenth anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

A minute paper by Isaiah Berlin  dated 5 January 1944A minute paper by Isaiah Berlin, dated 5 January 1944 (not 1943, as stated in this copy) – IOR/L/PS/12/2124, f. 36r

As a cataloguer – and no doubt as a researcher too – when reading official government papers, it is rare to find something so candid and revealing on a single piece of paper.  Most often, things are implied rather than stated explicitly, across hundreds of pages and throughout dozens of files and volumes.  Inside this India Office Political and Secret Department file is one of those rare finds: a copy of a minute paper by the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who at the time was working in the British Embassy in Washington DC.  Writing in January 1944, Berlin reports on having seen an extract from a secret report by the United States War Department, which outlined the long-term strategic interests of the US in Saudi Arabia and recommended that ‘no effort should be spared to develop close relations with King Ibn Saud’.  British officials responded with extreme scepticism; however, in just a few years, the US replaced Britain as Saudi Arabia’s key western sponsor and protector, and soon become the predominant imperialist power in the region.

Excerpt from an English translation of The Oriental geography of Ebn Haukal  an Arabian traveller of the tenth centuryExcerpt from an English translation of The Oriental geography of Ebn Haukal, an Arabian traveller of the tenth century – 306.37.C.18, pp. 39-40

The description of Palestine pictured above comes from an 1800 English translation of The Oriental geography of Ebn Haukal, which was written in 977 CE.  At a time when Palestinian history and lived experience is denied and devalued more than ever, brushed over with colonial myths about ‘making the desert bloom’, this account (one of many sources on Palestine that feature on the QDL), with its descriptions of ‘all the hills of Palestine ... covered with trees’ and ‘much fruit, olives, and figs’, constitutes evidence of a flourishing Palestine from more than a millennium ago.

Inscription at the start of a journal kept by Henry CrosbyInscription at the start of a journal kept by Henry Crosby – IOR/L/MAR/A/XXIX, f. 7v

Within the records of the India Office’s Marine Department (IOR/L/MAR) are two ship journals, IOR/L/MAR/A/XXIX and IOR/L/MAR/A/XXX, which appear to assert that a ship named the Roebuck was in two different places at once. How was this mystery solved? By assiduous cross-referencing.

IOR Cataloguing Team, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

 

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