Asian and African studies blog

‘Passports and Identity Documents in the Hands of Artists’ is a new single-case display in the British Library’s Sir John Ritblat Treasures gallery. It highlights artists, photographers, designers and arts activists from Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Turkey and Iran who, through artists’ books and artist-led publications, zines, photobooks and print ephemera, have reworked the concept, materiality and function of passports and other bureaucratic documents.

(Left to right) Sorry for Not Attending by Jana Traboulsi (2013) (ORB.30/8742); Hususi Pasaport by Gözde İlkin (2009).
© Jana Traboulsi and Gözde İlkin

Jana Traboulsi’s Sorry for Not Attending (2013) first drew my attention to this theme when I visited the Beirut book-art atelier Plan BEY in 2018. Traboulsi, a Lebanese visual artist, graphic designer and educator, was invited to participate in the ‘No Souls for Sale’ festival at the Tate Modern in London in May 2010. Due to a visa system that restricts Lebanese citizens from travelling easily to the UK, she was unable to attend. In response, she produced an artist’s book entitled Sorry for Not Attending that uses the format of the passport as a critical commentary on not being able to attend one’s own exhibition. Reproducing passport pages, real excerpts of visa applications, maps, stamps, drawings and stickers, she highlights four places—Europe, the United States of America, Palestine, the Asteroid B612—where it is difficult or impossible for a Lebanese passport holder to travel.

Examining the design politics of the passport, Mahmoud Keshavarz writes: “[T]he passport is not neutral but a real and powerful device with its own specific history, design, and politics, mediating moments through which socially constructed power relations can be enacted and performed.” He notes that just as passports “mediate experiences of moving, residing, and, consequently, acting in the world” they can also be “remediated” through cultural and artistic works. He writes: “These works, through acknowledging the brutality of the passport as a system of control, deception, and regulation, try to open this banal booklet and redirect it as an object of thinking, imagination, and memory with the hope of reworking the hegemonic narrative prescribed to them.”

(Left to right) Jawāz Safarī lil-Qirāʼah [My Reading Passport] by al-Jana Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts (c. 2000s) (ORB.30/9506); Leave to Remain: a Single Syrian Grain, Airbourn by Issam Kourbaj (2023) (ORB.30/9576).
© al-Jana Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts and Issam Kourbaj

Thinking together with Keshavarz and Traboulsi’s Sorry for Not Attending, I began to notice other artists who have creatively embarked on a similar process of remediation, using passports and other bureaucratic documents to explore themes of state control, mobility, displacement, exile, memory and identity. A selection of these works, together with Sorry for Not Attending, are included in ‘Passports and Identity Documents in the Hands of Artists’.

‘Passports and Identity Documents in the Hands of Artists’ display installed in the British Library’s Sir John Ritblat Treasures gallery
© Daniel Lowe

Istanbul-based artist Gözde İlkin’s Hususi Pasaport (2009) reflects on political borders referencing the Turkish "Green Passport." Palestinian photographer and graphic designer Majdi Hadid, in his contribution for the Subjective Atlas of Palestine (2007), enumerates the many documents required to travel under Israeli occupation. Jawāz Safarī lil-Qirāʼah [My Reading Passport] (c. 2000s), produced by al-Jana Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts, mimics a visa system as a tool to encourage reading and literacy for Palestinian children living as refugees in Lebanon. Cambridge-based artist Issam Kourbaj's Leave to Remain: a Single Syrian Grain, Airbourn (2023) draws on his own expired Syrian passport, while Adnan Farzat's Forgotten Moments (2020) uses a passport-like format to evoke his memories of Syria that are being slowly erased by time and conflict. Iranian-born artists Batool Showghi and Amak Mahmoodian in The Immigrant Book, No. 3 (2018) and Shenasnameh (2016) draw upon bureaucratic documents to show how identity is defined and fragmented.

Daniel Lowe, Curator, Arabic Collections

Further reading:

Gharbieh, Ahmad. “You Can’t Get There from Here: Notes on the New Lebanese Passport Design.” Journal Safar, vol. 3, 2017. (ZP.9.a.894)

Keshavarz, Mahmoud. The Design Politics of the Passport: Materiality, Immobility, and Dissent. London: Bloomsbury, 2019. (YC.2019.a.5851 and ELD.DS.346541)

Keshavarz, Mahmoud, and Ayla Kekhia. “The Design Politics of Passports: Materiality, Immobility, and Dissent.” Journal Safar, vol. 5, 2020. (ZP.9.a.894)

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.

Since the QDL’s launch, nearly two and a half million images have been published, mainly deriving from two collections held by the British Library: the India Office Records (IOR) and Private Papers, and the Library’s Arabic manuscripts collection. A small selection of items held by the Qatar National Library also features on the website. Published alongside all these images are detailed catalogue descriptions, available in English and Arabic.

The QDL’s expert articles

Since 2014, in addition to producing more and more images and accompanying catalogue descriptions, a dedicated team of experts working on the QDL has published a supplementary selection of 239 expert articles, mostly written by British Library curatorial, conservation, and cataloguing staff, with a small number of guest contributors. These articles are brief yet informative pieces, which aim to appeal to a range of audiences, from the casual reader to the serious researcher. They introduce users to the material, while detailing the records’ provenance and historical significance. They also highlight important subjects and themes and share fascinating stories found within the records.

The homepage of the QDL’s expert articles section

Types of articles

The types of articles vary. There are introductory pieces on the material and the people and organisations behind its creation. There are overviews of certain parts of the collections, be it an IOR series, a set of private papers, or those records relating to a specific subject. There are vignettes shedding light on rare finds and overlooked or relatively unknown individuals. There are country profiles and other articles on specific countries in the Gulf, including this one featuring some of the earliest surviving aerial photographs of Qatar. There are also more discursive pieces, many of which touch on British imperialist interests in the Gulf and the ways in which these manifested themselves.

Alongside these are several articles on the musical traditions of the Gulf, including ones with a specific focus on Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman. Other pieces explore the development of sawt (the urban music of the Gulf, which is thought to originate in Kuwait) in Kuwait and Bahrain, as well as the history of lesser-known musical genres in the region. Part of the partnership’s remit involves the digitisation of shellac recordings from the Gulf and wider region. While the recordings digitised to date are not yet hosted directly on the QDL, some of the music-related articles include embedded Soundcloud tracks.

Introductory articles

It is possible to browse the expert articles via several categories. The first of these, named ‘Introductory Articles’, mainly features short pieces introducing the collections and their creators, and is perhaps the best place to start for those who are new to the material. There is an article on the Library’s Arabic Manuscripts collection, and one on the India Office Records and Private Papers, as well as separate articles that look at the India Office Records and the Private Papers in greater detail. There are also articles on the two organisations that produced the India Office Records, namely the East India Company, and its successor, the India Office.

One of the QDL’s most viewed articles, in English and in Arabic, A Brief History of the English East India Company.

Other pieces within this section provide summaries of certain parts of the IOR collection, including an overview of the IOR Map Collection, and two more articles focusing on IOR maps. In addition, within the same category are several pieces with ‘Finding Aid’ in their titles, each exploring a particular IOR series. Individual series covered thus far include the following: IOR/F/4, IOR/G/29, IOR/L/MAR, IOR/L/MIL, IOR/L/PS/10, IOR/L/PS/12, IOR/R/15/1, IOR/R/15/2, IOR/R/15/4, IOR/R/15/5, and IOR/R/15/6. There are also ‘Finding Aid’ articles on the private papers of two notable British imperialists, Lewis Pelly and George Curzon. Eventually, the range of ‘Finding Aid’ style articles will be expanded to include not only those on specific IOR series, but also pieces on significant subject matter featured across various parts of the IOR collection. The first of these is a piece highlighting the various sources on the QDL relating to Palestine.

An extract from the QDL expert article, Finding Aid: Sources on Palestine.

Other categories and filters

There are several other categories through which to explore the articles. These are as follows: The British Empire in the Gulf; People and Places; Sciences and Medicine; Sound and Music; Arabic Manuscripts; Commerce and Communication; Culture and Religion; Power and Politics. Many of these overlap (i.e. an article may appear in more than one category). It is also possible to filter the articles by country and by date (beginning at pre-1600 and ending at 1900-49). There is insufficient space to go through all the categories here, so what follows is a selection of highlights representing the diverse range of articles.

Articles that illustrate points of intersection between Library collections

There are several articles that are not only interesting and revealing for their subject matter, but which also illustrate points of intersection between the different collections on the QDL. These include two articles on East India Company men who collected Arabic manuscripts, a piece on a Baghdadi bookdealer who also worked as a translator for the India Office, and an article on the imperialist provenance of the Delhi Manuscript Collection.

An extract from the QDL expert article, The Baghdadi Bookseller of Bloomsbury.

Articles resulting from collaborative work between different teams and specialists

Every article published on the QDL requires extensive collaboration, not least in the translation of the text into Arabic and the selection of illustrative images. Some pieces have also required collaboration at the research and writing stages, involving different teams and specialists. These include the following: a piece on the history and imagery of watermarks in paper; a co-authored article on the ‘Bania’ in the Gulf and the ways in which they are depicted in IOR files and volumes; an article on the important historical context behind the use of the term ‘piracy’ among British officials serving in the Gulf. Whilst many articles on the QDL do so implicitly, the latter two pieces explicitly stress the need for the records to be read critically through the prism of certain ideas that were prevalent among colonial officials of the time, especially those relating to racial, cultural, and national distinctions.

An extract from the QDL expert article, The Imagery of Early Watermarks.

Bookends of the British Empire

The QDL features material spanning virtually the entire era of British presence in the Gulf, covering the early 17th century to the mid-20th century. Articles on early British involvement in the Gulf include a ‘Finding Aid’ piece on the IOR/L/MAR series (i.e. the Marine Department Records, dated 1600-c. 1879) and an article on the third voyage of the East India Company (1607-10). Several articles cover the last decades of the British Empire, but two notably address the subject directly. One discusses the personal memoirs of former officers of the Indian Political Service (IPS) and their reflections on the final years of British India, including reminiscences of time served in the Gulf. The other marks a significant turning point in the immediate post-war period, in which the United States replaced Britain as Saudi Arabia’s key western sponsor and protector, thereby paving the way for it to become the predominant imperialist power in the region.

Articles on women in the records

As in many archival collections, women are under-represented in the records, and those who do feature are largely misrepresented. Two distinct but related articles touch on this issue while discussing the roles of women in 19th century Oman. One tells the story of Muzah bint Ahmad Al Bu Sa‘id, who, in the absence of her nephew the Imam of Muscat, took charge and defended his territories. The other challenges long-held assumptions about women in 19th century Omani society. Women are also discussed, albeit somewhat more peripherally, in an article concerning United States Christian missionaries in mid-20th century Bahrain and in a piece on the use of ice in the Gulf.

An extract from the QDL expert article, In the Absence of Men: Female Leaders in 1832 Oman.

Articles on language and terminology

Given the QDL is a bilingual site containing material in numerous languages (predominantly English and Arabic, though various others also feature), it seems fitting to highlight several articles that cover the subject of language and terminology. One is a piece on the Christian Arab Hunayn ibn Ishaq (809-873 CE), who translated into Arabic and Syriac all the books of Galen that were available to him. The article focuses on Hunayn’s bold but crucial decision to translate literally (rather than simply transliterate) essential Greek medical terms, making them comprehensible to all readers of Arabic. Terminology in IOR material is discussed in a trilogy of articles on nautical terms in the age of sail.

An extract from the QDL expert article, Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq and the Rise of Arabic as a Language of Science.

More to discover, and more to come

The sixty articles cited in this post amount to just over a quarter of the total number currently available. There are many more waiting to be discovered. Meanwhile, the team of experts working on the QDL is busy writing and preparing more articles for new and existing users alike.

David Fitzpatrick, Content Specialist, Archivist, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Rustam, the most important hero of Firdawsi’s twelfth century epic the Shāhnāmah has always inspired writers, poets and artists. Nevertheless, many aspects of his life remain disputable. In this blog, I will discuss different views around Rustam's war attire.


Combat of Rustam and Burzū. Isfahan (Iran), 1590-1600 (British Library, IO Islamic 3254, f.182v).
Public domain

In the images of Rustam in the manuscripts of Firdawsi’s Shāhnāmah, Rustam usually wears a helmet made from the head of a tiger or sometimes a leopard, together with brown striped war attire. This interpretation is based on the phrase babr-i bayān, the name given to Rustam’s war clothing in the Shāhnāmah where it is described as fire-proof, water-proof, weapon-proof, dark-coloured and made out of leopard skin.

Some verses in the Shāhnāmah indicate a magical nature for the babr-i bayān. These verses, however, are later additions and contradict other descriptions of the clothing. Elsewhere, Firdawsi describes it as normal attire under which Rustam sometimes wears chain mail, and most of the time two pieces of armour. The babr-i bayān does not even make Rustam invulnerable — as demonstrated by the life-threatening injuries he suffered in his fight with Isfandiyar.

The Sīmurgh heals Rustam after his fight with Isfandiyar. India, 1719 (British Library, Add. Ms 18804, f.71r)
Public domain

The word ‘babr’ is used to refer both to the animal ‘tiger’, and to Rustam’s dress, leading to the general assumption that ‘babr-i bayān’ means clothes made of tiger skin. Hence the decision by most illustrators of the Shahnāmah to depict Rustam in brown striped clothing resembling tiger skin.

Bizhan rescued by Rustam. Samarkand (Uzbekistan), 1600 (British Library IO Islamic 301, f. 142r)
Public domain

In addition to his tiger skin jacket, Rustam usually wears a leopard-headed helmet. However the leopard/panther skin was not used exclusively for depicting Rustam as is shown by the image below of the White Demon who is typically portrayed as leopard-skinned.


Rustam kills the White Demon. Isfahan (Iran), 1630-1640 (British Library, IO Islamic 1256, f.79r)
Public domain

In some traditions, not directly derived from the Shāhnāmah, after Rustam had killed the White Demon, he crafted a helmet from his severed head. This had the effect of making him seem even more terrifying.


Rustam sees the dungeon. Iran, 1604 (British Library, IO Islamic 966, f.64v)
Public domain

Most scholars, like the illustrators, agree that ‘babr’ is an animal but, unlike the illustrators, there is no consensus among them about what animal the word refers to. One group associates ‘babr-i bayān’ with animals such as otters, beavers, and even dragons. In narratives such as the Farāmarznāmah and Gurani epic stories, ‘babr-i bayān’ is a dragon which is killed by Rustam and its skin is used as war clothing. The interpretation linking ‘babr-i bayān’ with beavers or otters relates to the garment of Anahita, the goddess of water in the Avesta. According to the Zoroastrian Avestan hymn Ābān Yasht, Anahita wears a garment made from the shining skin of three hundred ‘bauuri/bawri’ - believed to mean beaver or otter in Avestan. Some scholars, notably Mahmud Omidsalar believe that ‘bauuri/bawri’ evolved to ‘babrag’ in Middle Persian, then to ‘babr’ in New Persian, a second meaning, alongside ‘tiger’, which has since been forgotten. Other scholars, however, prefer the straightforward meaning ‘tiger’ while noting that the tigerskin is not unique to Rustam but is worn by other characters in the Shāhnāmah and throughout world mythology.

As with ‘babr’, different roots and interpretations have been proposed for ‘bayān’. Khaleghi-Motlagh suggests that Bayān is a place in India while Māhyār Navābi proposes that it is the New Persian form of the Old Persian genitive plural ‘bagānām’ and Middle Persian ‘bayān’ meaning ‘of the gods.’ These, and other etymologies suggested at various times can be followed up in the reference sources cited below.

Last words

Considering Firdawsi’s description of the babr-i bayān in the Shāhnāmah and descriptions of Rustam’s clothes in other sources alongside the clothes of heroes, gods, and goddesses in world mythology, it seems clear that it is a tiger’s skin and its colour, as seen in many manuscripts, is red-brown. Elsewhere, the word ‘bawr/būr’ has been used in the Shāhnāmah as an adjective for red-brown horses. Rakhsh, Rustam’s horse, is also described as bawr/būr.


Rustam captures his horse Rakhsh. Isfahan (Iran), 1604 (British Library, IO Islamic 966, f. 54v)
Public domain

It seems that in depicting Rustam's war attire, the artists of the Shāhnāmah were inspired by other narratives including folkloric stories, as well as Firdawsi's descriptions. This can be seen in illustrations in which Rustam wears a helmet made of a leopard or demon's head while he does not have such a helmet according to the text of the Shāhnāmah. Dressed in this war attire Rustam appears even more powerful and frightening.

Alireza Sedighi, Curator, Persian Collections, British Library
With thanks to my colleagues William Monk, Michael Erdman and Ursula Sims-Williams
CCBY

Further reading

Sajjād Āydinlū, “Rūykardī digar bih Babr-i Bayān dar Shāhnāmah”, Nāmah-i Pārsī 4.4 (1378/1998).
Dj. Khaleghi-Motlagh, “Babr-e bayān”, in Encyclopaedia Iranica online, 1988, updated 2011.
Mahmoud Omidsalar. “The beast Babr-e Bayān: Contributions to Iranian folklore and etymology”, Studia Iranica 13.1(1984), 129–42.
Mukhtariyan, Bahar، “Babr-i bayān va jāmah-ʼi  bavrī-yi Ānāhīt”, Justār’hā-yi Adabī 186 (1393/2014).

For over three centuries scholars have been intrigued with the life and poetry of the Mughal princess, Zebunnisa (1639-1702), the eldest daughter of Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707). True to her name which means ‘Ornament of Women’, she was learned, and an active patron of poets and scholars. She collected books and corresponded with prominent Sufis of the time.[1]  That she would have composed verses in Persian would have been natural since many elite women in Persianate societies did so, but the attribution to her of a substantial body of poetry in the form of a dīvān, comprising about five hundred ghazals and some other poems, actually dates to a few decades after her death and later. In keeping with the spirit of the spurious and suggestive portrait below that was meant to represent Zebunnisa, along with poems attributed to her, over time her biography was spiced up with the inclusion of scurrilous stories of romantic escapades.[2]

A Bejeweled Maiden with a Parakeet (Metropolitan Museum of Art 2011.585)
Public domain

The corpus of poems known to be composed by Zebunnisa is known as the Dīvān-i Makhfī (makhfī means 'the hidden one'). This was thought to be an appropriate penname (takhallus), a common convention in premodern Persian and Persianate poetry, for a Mughal princess. It is true that female poets particularly used pennames such as makhfī, nihānī, and ‘ismat, and often there were multiple poets who wrote under the same name. Among Mughal women, Salima Begum (granddaughter of Humayun by his daughter Gulrukh Begum), Salima Sultan Begum (Akbar’s wife), Nur Jahan (Jahangir’s wife), and Zebunnisa are all said to have chosen the penname Makhfī, but there are only a few lines attributed to the first two. To complicate matters, there were also at least two male poets who also wrote as Makhfī: one was Makhfi Rashti, who flourished in Safavid Iran in the sixteenth century, and the other was Makhfi Khurasani, an Iranian émigré in Mughal India in the seventeenth century.[3]  A close examination of the poems would suggest that some or many of them were by the second of these two male Makhfis and not by Zebunnisa. This, however, is a complicated philological problem that cannot be solved here.

Writing a few decades after she lived, Mughal men of letters of the mid-eighteenth century such as Azad Bilgrami in his biographical dictionary, Yad-i bayz̤ā (IOL Islamic 3966, ff. 112-263), and Lachhmi Narayan Shafiq in his Gul-i ra‘nā (IO Islamic 3692 and 3693 and Or. 2044), only mentioned a few verses by Zebunnisa Begum.


Entry on Zebunnisa, Lachhmi Narayan Shafiq, Gul-i ra‘nā (British Library Or. 2044, ff. 79v-80r)
Public domain

Interestingly, it is in early nineteenth century Iran that a Qajar prince, Mahmud Mirza, who in his Nuql-i majlis, first mentions seeing a copy of Zebunnisa's dīvān that someone had brought to Iran from India. By the nineteenth century, anecdotes about her witty exchanges and dalliances with male poets appeared in works such as Muhammad Riza Abu’l-Qasim Tabataba’s miscellany, Naghmah-yi ‘andalīb (British Library Or. 1811), as well as in published anthologies of Persian and Urdu poetry composed by women. By the end of the century, several short biographies of her became popular which provided romanticized narratives of her as a learned but lonely princess who ended her life as a prisoner due to her father’s cruelty. As far as her poetry was concerned, serious scholars such as Shibli Numani and Abdul Muqtadir did not accept the attribution of the Dīvān-i Makhfī to Zebunnisa.

The British Library Or. 311, an eighteenth-century Mughal copy, is the oldest manuscript of the Dīvān-i Makhfī. The text of this manuscript forms the basis of the most recent edition of the poems.[4]

Dīvān-i Makhfī, 18th century (British Library Or. 311, ff. 19v–20)
Public domain

This manuscript includes these autobiographical verses from a ghazal:

garche man Layla-asasam dil chu Majnun dar nava-st
sar ba-sahra mizadam likan haya zanjir-i pa-st …
dukhtar-i shahim likan ru ba-faqr avarda’im
zeb o zinat sukhtim o nam-i ma Zebunnisa-st

Although I am Layla-like, my heart is plaintive Majnun-like,
I traverse the desert, but my feet are in chains of modesty.
I am a king’s daughter, but I am beset with poverty,
I discarded all ornaments—my name is Ornament of Women!

These verses do seem to be in Zebunnisa’s authentic voice.

The first printed edition of the Dīvān-i Makhfī appeared as a lithograph in 1268/1852 in Kanpur:


Dīvān-i Makhfī. Kanpur, 1268/1852 (British Library VT138(g))
Public domain

The book was popular and was reprinted frequently in Kanpur, Lucknow and Lahore, most famously by the Naval Kishor Press in 1293/1876, in whose edition the author of the book is described as Makhfi Rashti, the Iranian émigré poet, an attribution that disappeared in subsequent editions.

Two small volumes of English translations of Zebunnisa’s poems appeared, astonishingly, in the same year, 1913. One of them was in the series, “Wisdom of the East”, translated by Magan Lal and Jessie Duncan Westbrook.


The Diwan of  Zeb-un-Nissa, translated by Magan Lal and Jessie Duncan Westbrook. New York, 1913
Photograph from the author’s library

In the introduction, Westbrook provides some enigmatic information about the Dīvān-i Makhfī’s transmission history that is not corroborated by  other sources: “In 1724, thirty-five years after her death, what could be found of her scattered writings were collected … [The book] contained four hundred and twenty-one ghazals and several rubais. In 1730 other ghazals were added.” A contemporary reviewer wrote in appreciation of the translations: “The book is particularly valuable at the moment when a great movement is drawing the women of the nations into closer touch and fuller understanding.”[5]  Another reviewer emphasized the mystical quality of the poems: “Miss Westbrook supplies an interesting biographical sketch and some useful remarks on the poetry. She is mistaken, however, in saying that the poems have a special Indian flavor of their own, derived from ‘the Akbar tradition of the unification of religions.’  The doctrine that, notwithstanding the difference of rites and objects of worship, all religions are essentially one occurs repeatedly in Sūfī literature of a much earlier period.”[6]  Given the ambiguity with regard to the object of devotion inherent in the premodern Persian ghazal, it is not surprising that the poems were read in a predetermined mystical way.

The second book, The Tears of Zebunnisa, was published in the same year and had translations by Paul Whalley, a retired Indian civil servant who also translated some quatrains of Omar Khayyam.


The Tears of Zebunnisa, translated by Paul Whalley. London, 1913 (British Library 757.aa.9)
Public domain

In a poetic invocation, Whalley addresses the Mughal princess, who “belonged to the mystical school of which the most eminent exponents were Fariduddin Attar and Jalaluddin Rumi”:

INVOCATION
Rise from the far dim East and the mouldered pomp of the Moguls,
Daughter of Aurangzeb, priestess and martyr of Love!
Dawn as a lone bright star in the infinite gloom of the heavens,
Throbbing with love and shedding around thee the music of night.
Sweet as the voice of the bulbul that whispers its woes to the twilight
Come to us out of the ages the echoes of songs thou hast sung.

Like other translators of his time Whalley also preferred a romantic pseudo-mystical reading of Persian poetry. In addition to forty-nine translated poems, he also included five “imitations” and seven “examples of Persian metres”, showing his deep engagement with Persian poetry. His translation of the entire Dīvān-i Makhfī, whose unpublished manuscript is a typescript held by the British Library (IO Islamic 4587), was an immense project that included his fascination with the metres of Persian poetry. Below is his rendering of Zebunnisa’s autobiographical poem discussed above:

Typescript copy of Paul Whalley's translation (British Library IO Islamic 4587, f. 94)
Public domain

Whalley’s translations were literal and furnished with extensive notes. He also prepared a detailed concordance of metaphors and allusions to people and places in the Dīvān-i Makhfī. He considered Zebunnisa to be an important poet of the Persian tradition because of  “her sex and rank and social environment” as well as “the intrinsic beauty” of her poems.

Even if Zebunnisa did not compose all the poems in the Dīvān-i Makhfī, her persona as a poet has been crucial to bolstering the existence of a female textual tradition that is ephemeral at best until the twentieth century. In an interesting parallel with her poetry, the site of her final resting place has also been a matter of uncertainty. Although in the mid-nineteenth century Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan recorded in his Ās̱ār al-sanādīd that a railway line was built over her grave near the Kabuli Gate in Old Delhi, there is also a small memorial tomb in Lahore, tucked away in a bustling commercial part of the city near Chauburji, that has been connected to her name. It seems as if Zebunnisa is fated to remain a mystery in more ways than one.

Zebunnisa's supposed tomb in Lahore.
Photograph by the author

Sunil Sharma, Professor of Persianate and Comparative Literature, Boston University

Notes

[1] Muzaffar Alam, The Mughals and the Sufis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021), 301-3.
[2] See my article, “Forbidden Love, Persianate Style: Re-reading Tales of Iranian Poets and Mughal Patrons,” Iranian Studies 42 (2009): 765-79.
[3] Ahmad Gulchin-Ma‘ani, Kārvān-i Hind (Mashhad: Astan-i Quds-i Razavi, 1369/1990), 1263-64.
[4] Divan-i Zebunnisa, ed. Mahindokht Seddiqiyan and Sayyed Abu Taleb Mir ‘Abedini (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1381/2002).
[5] The Indian Magazine and Review (January 1915), 62.
[6] The Athenaeum (August 9, 1913), 131.

In early March 1917, British forces led by Lieutenant-General Fredrick Stanley Maude captured the Vilayet (province) of Baghdad, which had been under Ottoman control since the sixteenth century. On March 19, Maude made his famous Proclamation of Baghdad in which he addressed the Iraqi people in the name of the British King and assured them that the British troops roaming their towns and cities were there not “as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators”.

Points 1 & 2 of Maude’s Proclamation (British Library IOR/L/PS/18/B253, f 122r).
Public domain

Maude spoke as if the Empire he represented had acted on behalf of Iraqis themselves, casting the Ottoman Empire in the role of a villain. “Your lands have been subject to the tyranny of strangers,” he proclaimed, “your wealth has been stripped from you by unjust men and squandered in distant places.”

Point 3 of Maude’s Proclamation (British Library IOR/L/PS/18/B253, f 122r).
Public domain

He went on to portray Ottoman rule of Iraq as a reign of “oppression and division,” in contrast to a narrative of friendship between Great Britain and the people of Baghdad.

Points 5 & 6 of Maude’s Proclamation (British Library IOR/L/PS/18/B253, f 122r)
Public domain

Flattering the people of Baghdad, Maude called on the need for the “Arab race” to “rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth.”

Points 8 & 9 of Maude’s Proclamation (British Library IOR/L/PS/18/B253, f 122v).
Public domain

The British Government praised Maude’s Proclamation seeing it as unlike any previous wartime speech. The Proclamation was regarded as another chapter to The Thousand and One Nights (initially translated to English as The Arabian Nights). 

Government praise of Maude’s Proclamation (British Library IOR/L/PS/10/666, f 148r).
Public domain

Over the three years following Maude’s Proclamation, the British broke their promises and inflamed sectarian divisions among the Iraqis. Iraqis rose up against the British occupiers in what has since been commemorated as Thawrat al-‘Ishrin (the Revolution of 1920). Iraqis refused British occupation of their land, their harassment of Iraqis’ lives, and their attempts to dictate how Iraqis would be governed.

The Iraqi refusal of the British occupation is commemorated in an Iraqi folk song Chal Chal ‘Alayya al-Rumman which stands out as a coded song of resistance. Not much is known about its writer or composer, but it is believed that the song goes back to the early 1920s, and could also have appeared during the Revolution itself. The song is popular for its metaphorical lyrics, which alludes to Iraq’s political realities.

Its first stanza says:

 چل چل عليَّ الرُّمان، نومي فزع لي
Chal chal ‘alayya al-rumman, numi fiza‘li

هذا الحلو ما ريده، ودُّوني لاهلي
Hadha el-hilu ma ridah, wadduni lahli

The literal meaning is:

Pomegranate has loomed above me for too long, lime came to my aid
I do not want this sweet/fine one; take me to my people

The pomegranate in the stanza refers to the Ottomans who are associated with the colour red, either as a metonym of the colour of the fez usually worn by Ottoman officials and effendis, or as a metaphor of the fruit itself which had long been associated with Ottoman court decoration, and Sultan’s outfits.

The poet’s use of the lime as a metonym for the British is often interpreted as a reference to their light skin colour, though it may be related to the more famous pejorative ‘lime-juicer’ or ‘limey,’ used to describe British naval personnel (whose rations included citrus to help stave off scurvy). The line says that after long being occupied by the Ottomans, the British came to my aid. I want neither of these—the pomegranate or the citrus—I want to rule myself.

The second stanza says:

يا يُمَّه لا تنطرين بطلي النطارة
Ya yumma la tnutreen, batli l-intara

ما جوز أنا من هواي ماكو كل شارة
Ma juz ana min huwai, maku kul shara

The literal meaning is:

Oh mother, stop waiting for me
I am not going to give up on my beloved, there is no way I would do that

The ‘beloved’ in the stanza is Iraq; meaning that those who revolted against the British would never give up on their demand to free their homeland.

One of the earliest recordings of the song was made by Iraqi Maqam singer Yusuf Umar. A digital version of the recording is available on Soundcloud.

The song continues to be a reminder of Iraqis’ resistance to the occupation of their land. That this notion continues to resonate is evidenced by the fact that various artists from Iraq and across the Arab World continues to record and perform it. Some examples include:

• the Iraqi singer and composer Ilham al-Madfai’s recording
• the Egyptian singer and composer Hamza Namira, who made slight changes to the lyrics in his version
• And, the Syrian-Palestinian singer Abo Gabi’s rendition

Ula Zeir, Content Specialist/ Arabic Language and Gulf History

Further reading:

British Library, India Office Records, ‘Baghdad’, IOR/L/PS/18/B253 ('Baghdad' | Qatar Digital Library (qdl.qa)

British Library, India Office Records, File 978/1917 Pt 1 'Mesopotamia: administration; occupation of Baghdad; the proclamation; Sir P Cox's position', IOR/L/PS/10/666 (File 978/1917 Pt 1 'Mesopotamia: administration; occupation of Baghdad; the proclamation; Sir P Cox's position' | Qatar Digital Library (qdl.qa)

Dhafir Qasim Al Nawfa, ‘Jaljal ‘Alayya al-Rumman Numi Fiza‘li’, Azzaman newspaper, 21 Jan 2017.

Ula Zeir, ‘Baghdad in British Occupation: the Story of Overprinted Stamps’ British Library,' in Untold lives blog.

Colophon to an anonymous compendium of medicine (Or 9007, f. 134r).

The British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership (the ‘Qatar Project’) is a collaborative digitisation and cataloguing project, the primary output of which is the Qatar Digital Library (https://www.qdl.qa/en). This fully bilingual (Arabic/English) online resource makes available a wealth of historical documentation relating to the Gulf region, as well as Arabic manuscripts on scientific topics and short articles relating to the contents and contexts of these archives and manuscripts.

Phase Three of the Qatar Project began in January 2019 with the addition of a new member of the manuscript team. We could little have imagined how much our working practices would be upended by the impact of the Covid pandemic, which struck a little over a year later.

Page from Anwār Khulāṣat al-ḥisāb by ʻIṣmat Allāh ibn Aʻẓam al-Sahāranfūrī (IO Islamic 1582, f. 13r).

Covid impacts

At the best of times, the progression of a single manuscript, from the moment it is retrieved from the basement shelves, through all the stages of conservation assessment, cataloguing, digitisation, image quality control, editorial checks, translation of the catalogue record, and the final integration of images, catalogue text, and metadata ultimately culminating in upload to the site, can take up to a year. The impact of Covid increased these timescales even further.

Diagram of four of the seven ‘degrees’ (بحور), a type of modal structure, from Kitāb al-inʿām bi-maʿrifat al-anghām by Shams al-Dīn al-Ṣaydāwī (Or 13019, f. 12r).

Working remotely necessitated various modifications to our workflow, primarily in swapping the order in which cataloguing and imaging take place, so that cataloguing teams could remotely access images captured by the digitisation team. In the confusion of spring 2020, these altered ways of working took a while to get in place, and while they facilitated continued cataloguing, they also depended on imaging colleagues being physically on site. Requirements for social distancing within the enclosed environment of the imaging studio also drastically reduced the amount of work the imaging team could achieve. Furthermore, no new manuscripts were able to enter the workflow without undergoing conservation assessment- another job that cannot be done from home! We are very thankful to the imaging and conservation teams, as well as all other colleagues who opted to come on site when permitted, for facilitating progress of the many subsequent stages within the Qatar Project’s workflow. 

Diagram accompanying Chapter Nine: Construction of ‘the Spiral' (al-ḥalzūn), from Mukhtaṣar fī ṣanʿat baʿḍ al-ālāt al-raṣadīyah wa-al-ʿamal bihā by al-Birjandī (IO Islamic 4419, f. ‎43v).

We were able to gradually return to the offices in autumn 2020. Manuscript curators were eagerly anticipating the joys of getting out their light sheets and tape measures and inhaling the smell of aged paper.

Part of contents list from al-Mukhtār min kutub al-ikhtiyārāt al-falakīyah by Yaḥyá ibn Jarīr al-Takrītī (Or 5709, f. 6r). 

Despite all these challenges, the Qatar Project as a whole was able to celebrate the upload of the two millionth image to the Qatar Digital Library towards the end of Phase Three, which wrapped up in June 2022.

Summary of locations the author journeyed to during his mission in Spain, from Natījat al-ijtihād fī al-muhādanah wa-al-jihād by Aḥmad ibn al-Mahdī al-Ghazzāl (Add MS 9596, f. 1v).

Phase 3 Arabic scientific manuscripts

In the third phase of the Qatar Project the manuscript team continued to catalogue and digitise classic texts, including many volumes dating to the 13^th-15^th centuries CE. These included copies of Rasāʼil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʼ (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity), Jāmiʻ li-quwá [or, li-mufradāt] al-adwīyah wa-al-aghdhīyah, a handbook of medical materials by the Andalusian botanist Ibn al-Bayṭār (d. 1248), Chief Herbalist to the Ayyubid sultan al-Malik al-Kāmil (reg. 1218-38), and Ḥayāt al-ḥayawān, an extensive zoological encyclopaedia by Muḥammad ibn Mūsá al-Damīrī (d. 1405).

Representation of the Kaʻbah and directions of prayer towards it, from a copy of Kharīdat al-ʻajāʼib wa-farīdat al-gharāʼib by Sirāj al-Dīn Abū Ḥafṣ ʻUmar Ibn al-Wardī (IO Islamic 1734, f. 59r).

We also continued to make available manuscripts exemplifying the robust and lasting commentary tradition on the exact and medical sciences in Arabic, such as mathematical teaching handbooks designed to clarify abstract theory for the benefit of students, and a copy of al-Jurjānī’s Sharḥ al-tadhkirat al-naṣīrīyah fī ʻilm al-hayʼah, a commentary on Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī's treatise on Ptolemy's Almagest.

Map of Iraq, showing the courses of the Tigris and Euphrates and their outlets at the Gulf, from Kitāb al-masālik wa-al-mamālik, by Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad al-Iṣṭakhrī (Or 5305, f. 23r).

Many treatises included in Phase Three illustrate the richness of enquiry into more technical subjects, such as geography and travelogues, psychology, military science, agriculture, cookery, and music. One notable early manuscript is a fragment of a miscellany produced around 1000 in a Christian monastic context, of which a larger portion is held by the Bibiloteca Ambrosiana in Milan.  

Beginning of a section entitled ‘Knowing the exaltation and fall of the Planets’, from a fragment of an astrological text (Or 8857, f. 2v).

Besides cataloguing, the team produced blog posts and articles that provide further context to some of the manuscripts digitised in Phase Three (and before), and address their textual content, scribal and ownership histories, and later provenance stories. Links to these articles can be found in relevant sections of the attached downloadable list which summarises the output of Phase Three. (Download QDL Phase 3 Listing of Arabic Scientific Manuscripts)

Illustration of a bow and arrow, from al-Wāḍiḥ fī al-ramy wa-al-nushshāb by ʻAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Aḥmad al-Ṭabarī (Or 3134, f. 32r).

Ranging in scale from voluminous tomes and illustrated or illuminated presentation copies, through to intimate, palm-sized notebooks probably never intended for circulation; from manuals of practical instruction to works of theoretical systematisation; and written between ca 1000 CE and the late 19th century, this group of 87 volumes illustrates some of the immense diversity and longevity of scientific scholarship in the Arabic language. The impact of Covid on the world during this period demonstrated ever more clearly the value of digitisation projects accompanied by enhanced cataloguing and translation, which support and encourage global research into the Arabic manuscript field, as so many others.

Page from the contents list of Kitāb al-ishārāt fī ʻilm al-ʻibārāt by Khalīl ibn Shāhīn al-Ẓāhirī (Add MS 9690, f. 6r).

Jenny Norton-Wright, Arabic Scientific Manuscripts Curator

Asian and African Studies blog post summaries of manuscripts digitised by the British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership during the first two phases

First 40 (Phase 1)

Second 40 (Phase 1)

Next 125 (Phase 2)

Download QDL Phase 3 Listing of Arabic Scientific Manuscripts

Illuminated opening of Kitāb al-ṭabīkh by Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Karīm al-Baghdādī (Or 5099, f. 2v).

Diagram of the planetary spheres, from a copy of Rasāʼil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʼ (Or 8254, f. 196r).

Ilana Tahan receiving her Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to scholarship in 2009. All rights reserved

It saddens us deeply to inform you that Ilana Tahan passed away peacefully on Saturday 6 July 2024.

Ilana Tahan joined the British Library as the Curator of Hebrew Collections in 1989. She soon began to collaborate with colleagues across the UK on organizing and systematizing Hebrew librarianship and curation. In 2004, the British Library published her book Memorial volumes to Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust: a bibliography of British Library holdings. Ilana was part of the curatorial team behind the Library's flagship exhibition Sacred in 2007, working alongside Colin Baker, Kathleen Doyle, Vrej Nersessian, and Scot McKendrick. In 2008, she published her guide to the British Library's Hebrew collection, Hebrew Manuscripts: The Power of Word and Image. In 2009, she was awarded the Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her scholarship and work in making the collection more accessible. 

Ilana became the Lead Curator for Hebrew and Christian Orient Collections in 2012, overseeing the Library's holdings of Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Hebrew, Jewish-language, and Syriac manuscripts and printed books. In this role, she was exceptionally active in reaching out to communities and scholars. She published many articles and chapters on the Hebrew collections and undertook dozens of public workshops and presentations to bring the manuscripts closer to audiences. Her work on the Samaritan manuscripts in particular prompted the Samaritan Community to award her the Samaritan Medal. 

Ilana with colleagues Dr. Colin Baker, then Head of Middle East and Central Asia, and Dr. Michael Erdman, then Turkish and Turkic Curator, at a show and tell for doctoral students in 2018. All rights reserved

Most recently, Ilana curated the very successful exhibition Hebrew Manuscripts – Journey of the Written Word. She worked tirelessly on this project, collaborating with several colleagues at the Library and keeping a close dialogue with academics and religious figures in the Jewish community. Due to the pandemic, the exhibition was open in St Pancras only for a very short period of time, but Ilana was able to find alternative ways to promote the items in the exhibition. She contributed to the development of a virtual tour of the display, which now stands out as a wonderful legacy of her work on the project, and promoted the exhibition online through high profile events, public lectures and private views. In October 2023, the exhibition traveled to the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, enabling visitors to experience some of the best known Hebrew manuscripts in the British Library’s collection. 

The exhibition coincided with the end of one of our major documentation, conservation and digitization projects – the Hebrew Manuscripts Digitisation Project. The first phase of the project, supported by the Polonsky Foundation and many other supporters, including the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe, was carried out between 2013 and 2016, with a second phase completed in 2020 - and supported by the National Library of Israel - which Ilana led to a successful completion. Thanks to this remarkable project the whole collection of Hebrew manuscripts at the British Library is now available to researchers and the wider public.

Throughout her career Ilana was fully committed to her work at the Library and passionate about promoting and making accessible the Hebrew collections to specialists and wider audiences. To this end, she published and lectured extensively, and took a very active role on social media channels. She regularly posted blogs on the Asian and African Studies blog, and offered an engaging series of threads on the AAS and Hebrew Manuscripts Twitter/X accounts. 

Ilana explaining the intricate decoration and composition of a Hebrew manuscript at a 2019 Show and Tell. All rights reserved

Ilana was a much respected and esteemed colleague, and on several occasions she received recognition and appreciation for her expertise and her many achievements. She will be remembered for her expert knowledge, dedication and sustained commitment in the field, but also for being such a kind and generous person.

Ilana leaves behind her husband, son, daughter, and two grandchildren. Our thoughts are with them and with all those whom Ilana touched and inspired over her long and impactful career. Together, we celebrate Ilana’s profound and lasting legacy on Hebrew and Jewish Studies scholarship in the United Kingdom and around the world. 

The Asian and African Collections Department

Dr. Luisa Elena Mengoni, 

Head, Asian and African Collections

Dr. Michael Erdman

Head, Middle East and Central Asia

In 2022, I was awarded Art Fund’s New Collecting Award to support a two-year research-based collecting project.

Aiming to support curators and their professional development, the New Collecting Awards provide individuals with funding to research and buy works that will grow their museums’ collections in new directions or deepen existing holdings. The programme responds to the need for ongoing collections development in museums, underpinned by curatorial experience, vision and ambition.

My project, ‘Collecting Arab Visual Cultures (1960 to Today),’ has aimed to enhance the British Library’s collections of modern and contemporary visual culture from the Arab world. Taking a research-based collecting approach and through network-building in the Middle East and North Africa, the project has acquired book-objects in diverse formats, such as artists’ books, photobooks, zines, comics and graphic novels, children’s books and print ephemera. Produced by established as well as new and emerging artists and creatives in the region and diaspora communities, this material conveys urgent local and universal issues. These new acquisitions contribute to diversifying and globalising UK museum and library collections. As part of the project, I have received the generous expert guidance and mentorship of Dr Zeina Maasri, Senior Lecturer in History of Art at the University of Bristol.

Since 2022, over 200 new items for the British Library’s collections for the British Library’s collections. This blog post isn’t intended to give an exhaustive list of acquisitions (since they will all be discoverable in due course in the British Library’s catalogue), rather it aims to provides a window into some of these new acquisitions.

Artists’ Books

Artists around the world use the form of the book as a mode of artistic expression, often collaborating with writers, poets and other artists. As part of the project, we have added to the collection a number of artists’ books and other artist-led publications by creative practitioners from the Arab world, often produced in small print runs or limited editions. For example, Abdallah Benanteur (1931-2017) was one of Algeria’s leading painters and printmakers who produced over 1300 artist’s books over the course of his career. Previously, the British Library did not hold any of his artist’s books in its collection. However, through the project we have acquired three.

Abdallah Benanteur and Henri Kréa, Désespoir des causes, exigences pratiques: poème (Paris : L'Astrolabe, 1964), ORB.30/9463, ©Abdallah Benanteur and Henri Kréa; Abdallah Benanteur and Monique Boucher, Abdallah Benanteur: gravures (Paris : Galerie Herbinet, 1964), ORB.30/9464, ©Abdallah Benanteur and Monique Boucher (presented by the Art Fund)

Zines

Zines are often small-circulation, self-published works, including original and appropriate texts and images, often produced using DIY methods by individuals or collectives. The British Library has been actively collecting zines from the United Kingdom, yet our collection of zines from the Arab world has been relatively undeveloped. This project has allowed the Library to grow its collection of zines from the Arab world, helping it to better-reflect the publishing landscape of the region.

Haven for Artists, ManbouZine = Manbūẓīn (Beirut : Haven for Artists, 2022-23), ©Haven for Artists (presented by the Art Fund)

Photobooks and Photozines

Photobooks and photozines are books and zines in which photographic images make a significant contribution to the overall content of publication. Often documenting and bearing witness to historic events, communities, subcultures or narrating the author’s lived experience, they have been published in the Arab world and diaspora communities since the 1960s and are a growing form of publication today.

For example, I don't recognize me in the shadows (2020) by the Yemeni documentary photographer and storyteller Thana Faroq explores her own journey leaving war-torn Yemen and seeking asylum in the Netherlands. In the photozine Marrākush fawqa skīt būrd [Marrakech on a skateboard] (2022), the Moroccan photographer Yassine Sallame documents the skateboarding scene in Morocco. While in Cacti = Ṣubār (2023), which sits somewhere between a photobook, photozine and artist’s book in its form, Rasha Al Jundi and Michael Jabareen create a visual protest against the silencing of Palestinian voices in Germany.

(Left) Yassine Sallame, Marrākush fawqa skīt būrd (Paris: Á la Maison, 2022), ORB.30/9525, ©Yassine Sallame (presented by the Art Fund); (Middle) Rasha Al Jundi and Michael Jabareen, Cacti  = Ṣubār (Ramallah, Berlin : 2023), ©Rasha Al Jundi and Michael Jabareen (presented by the Art Fund); (Right) Thana Faroq, I don't recognize me in the shadows ([Eindhoven] : Lecturis, 2020), ©Thana Farooq (presented by the Art Fund).

Comics and graphic novels

The British Library’s Arabic section has been actively collecting comics and graphic novels from the Arab world since 2015 and this was the subject of an exhibition, Comics and Cartoon Art From The Arab World, which was held in 2017 as part of the Shubbak Festival. The New Collecting Award project has allowed the Library to further develop this area of the collection through acquiring recently published comics and graphic novels, as well as filling gaps in the collection of previously published materials.

(Left) Mazen Kerbaj, Une partie de scrable (Beirut: La Cd-thèque, 2003), ORB.30/9529, ©Mazen Kerbaj (presented by the Art Fund); (Right) Comic strip by Mloukhiyyé Al Fil in Samandal's Cutes: Collected Queer and Trans Comics (Berlin : Distanz, 2023), ©Mloukhiyyé Al Fil (presented by the Art Fund)

Children’s books

The British Library has not traditionally collected children’s books in Arabic. However, an exception to this has been made for the purpose of this project because children’s books are often sites of exciting and innovative collaboration between writers and artists, particularly since the 1960s in the Arab world. For example, the publishing house Dār al-Fatá al-ʻArabī, founded in Beirut in 1974 through the Palestine Liberation Organization, brought together prominent writers, artists and designers to produce children’s books combining striking visuals with radical politics. Today, the award-winning independent Lebanese publisher, Dar Onboz, founded in Beirut in 2006 by Nadine Touma and Sivine Ariss, works with artists, writers and designers to produce children’s books which can often been seen as art objects in their own right.

(Left) Joan Baz, Count to 10 with: I went looking for Palestine but I found (Beirut: Dar Onboz, 2014), ©Joan Baz (presented by the Art Fund); (Right) Ḥasan Sharīf, al-Fallāḥ wa-al-tanīn, illustrated by Nazir Nabaa (Beirut: Dār al-Fatá al-ʻArabī, 1977), ©Ḥasan Sharīf (presented by the Art Fund).

Print ephemera

Beyond the book, other more ephemeral print-objects, such as posters and pamphlets have been acquired through the project. These have been collected both for their informational and documentary value as well as for their visual and artistic value. For example, a poster produced by the Plastic Arts Section of the Palestine Liberation Organization documents the Art for Palestine exhibition held at the Beirut Arab University between 21 March and 5 April 1978 and includes visuals by the Moroccan artist Mohammed Melehi. A pamphlet documents a 1985 exhibition in Kuwait by the Jordanian sculptor, artist and activist Mona Saudi who was the former head of the PLO’s Plastic Arts Section. While a curious set of ‘cinderella stamps’—labels that resembles postage stamps not issued for postal purposes—issued by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine documents the organisation’s visual politics in early 1970s.

(Left) Mona Saudi (Kuwait: National Council for Culture, Arts & Letters, 1985), ©National Council for Culture, Arts & Letters of the State of Kuwait (presented by the Art Fund); (Middle) Plastic Arts Section, Art for Palestine (Beirut: PLO, 1978), ©Palestine Liberation Organization (presented by the Art Fund); (Right) PFLP, Sheet of ‘cinderella stamps’ (1970?), ©Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (presented by the Art Fund)

Daniel Lowe, Arabic Curator

The Collecting Arab Visual Cultures Project was supported by the Art Fund.

Further reading

Lena Bopp, ‘Dar Onboz' cases full of exquisite Arabic picture books’, Qantara.de, https://qantara.de/en/article/beirut-publisher-nadine-touma-dar-onboz-cases-full-exquisite-arabic-picture-books [accessed 13/05/2024]

Hassan Khan, Mohieddin Ellabbad and Nawal Traboulsi, ‘Revolution for Kids: Dar El Fata El Arabi, recollected’, Bidoun, https://www.bidoun.org/articles/revolution-for-kids [accessed 13/05/2024]

Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti (eds.), Past disquiet: artists, international solidarity and museums in exile (Warsaw: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2018)

Zeina Maasri, Cosmopolitan radicalism: the visual politics of Beirut's global sixties (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020)

Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis (eds.), How to maneuver: shapeshifting texts and other publishing tactics (Abu Dhabi : Warehouse421, 2021)

Venetia Porter, Artists making books: poetry to politics (London: British Museum, 2023)