This book retrieves from the archives people, places and perspectives normally overlooked to tell an original and expansive history of the Qatar Peninsula, paying close attention to landscape and the natural world. The arc of the book moves geographically through the landscape and chronologically through selected sources, drawing on digitised maps, manuscripts, hydrographic surveys, government records, traveller accounts, early photographs, archaeological and ethnographic reports. While these are standard sources recruited by Qatar to tell its own singular, streamlined history, this book is a subversive reading of those sources. It braids together elusive and precarious stories difficult to find, at risk of being lost, and never before brought together into a single volume to write a more complicated story of place. Through them, we can reimagine a place that, like many in the world, works hard to control a limited set of stories about itself. Readers who know something about Qatar will be surprised by the book's nuances and details. Readers who know little or nothing will be drawn in to discover that, even in the most out-of-the-way and inhospitable places, deserts are never empty.

Provides a history of Qatar based on a close reading of archival material

Pays particular attention to landscape and the natural world

Interrogates how Qatar carefully controls the story of the country's history

Autorentext

Sue-Ann Harding is a Professor in Translation and Intercultural Studies at Queen's University Belfast. Her research investigates translation in diverse contexts, particularly in sites of conflict and narrative contestation. She is the author of Beslan: Six Stories of the Siege (Manchester University Press, 2012), has travelled widely, and lived and worked in Doha for almost five years.

Inhalt
Prologue: Murwab.- Introduction.- PART I: MAPS.- 1. Claudius Ptolomaeus, 'Sexta Asia Tabula', 1478.- 2. Carsten Niebuhr, 'Sinus Persicus', 1765.- PART II: LITTORAL.- 3. William Vincent, The Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients in the Indian Ocean , 1807.- 4. G.B. Brucks, Memoir Descriptive of the Navigation of the Gulf of Persia , c.1830.- 5. R. Hughes Thomas, Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government , 1856.- 6. W.G. Palgrave, Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia , 1865.- PART III: DESERT, SEA.- 7. Hermann Burchardt, 'Ost-Arabien von Basra bis Maskat auf Grund eigener Reise', 1906.- 8. J.G. Lorimer, Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia , 1915.- 9. The Arabian Mission: Quarterly Letters From the Field, 1899-1906.- 10. Handbook of Arabia , 1917.- 11. Bertram Thomas, Arabia Felix: Across the Empty Quarter of Arabia , 1932.- PART IV: SKY.- 12. Coll 5/11 'Air Route to India: Arab Coast Route Emergency Landing Ground at Qatar': Royal Air Force Reconnaissance of Qatar, 9 May 1934.- PART V: METROPOLIS.- 13. Jette Bang and Klaus Ferdinand, Bedouins of Qatar, 1959.- 14. Nobody Gets Hurt Today.- Epilogue: Sheikh Faisal Bin Qasim Al Thani Museum.