The British Library has a rich collection of Persian manuscripts, including finely illustrated and decorated manuscripts of the Iranian national epic, the Shahnamah of Ferdowsi, but also including a copy of the Razmnamah, the Persian version of the Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata.

In this blog, I would like to highlight the similarities between two major heroic characters in the Shahnamah and the Mahabharata: Rustam and Arjuna. Common features and episodes involving these characters can be seen as an example of cultural exchanges between Iran and India which date back to ancient times, even though there is still no consensus among scholars about the extent of the influences of thought and culture of the two nations on each other. Due to the different cultural and geographical environments in which the epics were formed, like any other stories with common roots, the stories of Rustam and Arjuna also have differences. But these differences cannot prevent us from seeing the similarities between the two characters, indicating that the stories must have originated from a common source.

The Mahabharata, which is attributed to the sage Vyasa, was written over centuries and focuses on the war between two families of cousins, the Pandavas and the Kauravas, who compete for the throne of Hastinapur. The Pandava brothers were Yudhisthira, Arjuna, Bhima, Nakula and Sahadeva.

Like the Mahabharata, Iranian epic stories were also narrated orally over centuries by storytellers, although the Shahnamah was written by the poet, Ferdowsi. As a Muslim poet, Ferdowsi homogenized the stories and emphasized the belief in one god in the spirit of the stories. Nevertheless, the presence of a few powerful ancient gods – such as Zurvan, Mithra, and Anahita – in the deep layers of the stories is still discernible. Many scholars have compared characters of the Shahnamah with gods and goddesses, and Zal, the father of Rustam is one of them. There are obvious vestiges of the worshiping of other gods in the Shahnamah; for example Fereydun and Zal are Sun worshipers.

In the discussion below, I have compiled some of the most striking examples of similarities and parallels in the stories about Rustam and Arjuna, with illustrations from two Mughal Persian manuscripts in the British Library’s collection: a late 15th-century copy of the Shahnamah with early 17th-century paintings (Add 5600) and a copy of the Razmnamah of 1598 (Or 12076).

Like Arjuna in the Mahabharata, Rustam is one of the most important heroes in the Shahnamah and the central character of many stories. Arjuna was born to the god Indra, and Rustam is the son of Zal and Rudabah.

Zal and Rudabah. Shahnamah, Mughal, early 17th century. Artist:  Qasim.  British Library, Add 5600, f. 42v

Zal was born with white hair, which scared his father Sam enough to abandon his child, thinking he was a devil. In the Mahabharata Pandu, Arjuna’s father was also born extremely pale.

In an interesting article, Mihrdad Bahar has highlighted the similarities between Rustam and Indra, the god with whom Kunti, Arjuna's mother, conceived her child. Bahar notes that Indra and Rustam are both born by caesarean section, they are both large, both eat a lot and drink too much wine, and both have a club. In the Mahabharata, these traits are also given to Bhima and Arjuna, but as mentioned above, Arjuna was born of Indra.

Rustam and Arjuna both marry a woman outside their city or land. In the Shahnamah, Rustam marries Tahminah, the daughter of king of Samangan, and returns to Sistan after spending a short time with her. Tahminah gives birth to a baby boy and calls him Suhrab. Suhrab later tries to invade Iran and unknowingly fights with his own father, and is eventually killed by Rustam.

Rustam kills Suhrab in battle. Shahnamah, Mughal, early 17th century. Artist: Qasim. British Library, Add 5600, f. 99r

In the Mahabharata, Arjuna marries Chitrangda, Raja Manpour's daughter. Raja Manpour agrees to the marriage on the condition that if his daughter becomes pregnant, the child will stay with him, which Arjuna accepts. Like Tahminah, Chitrangada gives birth to a baby boy, called Babruvahana. In time, Babruvahana too fights with his own father, Arjuna, although unlike Rustam, Arjuna does indeed recognize his son.

In both stories, the surviving hero goes in search of a magic medicine to revive the wounded or killed hero. In the Shahnamah, this medicine is called Nushdaru and in the Mahabharata, Samjioni. Nushdaru is held by Kay Kavus, the king of Iran. Kay Kavus is afraid that Suhrab will join forces with Rustam after his recovery, and overthrow him from power. Therefore Kay Kavus refuses to give the medicine to Rustam, and Suhrab consequently dies. In the Mahabharata, however, when Babruvahana goes in search of Samjioni he manages to find it, and thus saves Arjuna from death.

Battle between Babhruvahana, son of Arjuna, and the snakes, for Samjioni. Razmnamah, Mughal, 1598. Artist: Sangha. British Library, Or 12076, f. 71r

Despite the differences, both stories have a similar plot, involving the murder of a family member. In both epics, the fathers cause the war with their sons. Suhrab and Babruvahana both plea with their fathers to stop the war, but in both cases the fathers refuse.

Babruvahana kneels at Arjuna’s feet in Manipur, but Arjuna treats his son with contempt.  Razmnamah, Mughal, 1598. Artist: Khem. British Library, Or 12076, f. 44r

Another parallel in stories about Rustam and Arjuna is that both heroes kill their stepbrothers, with Arjuna killing Karna and Rustam killing Shaghad.

Rustam, impaled in the pit of spears, shoots Shaghad through the tree trunk. Shahnamah, Mughal, early 17th century. Artist: Bhagvati.  British Library, Add 5600, f. 338v

In the Shahnamah, Shaghad is born from another mother from Rustam. Meanwhile, in the Mahabharata, Karna has a different father from Arjuna, for before Kunti marries Pandu, she conceives Karna with Surya. In both epics, both stepbrothers join the enemies of their brothers. In the Mahabharata, Karna joins Kaurava’s army, and in the Shahnamah, Shaghad allies with the king of Kabul.

In both stories, Rustam and Arjuna also go on adventurous and dangerous journeys to help the king. In the Shahnamah, these journeys of Rustam are called Haft Khan ('Seven trials'). Rustam, who was a teenager at the time, was commissioned by Zal to go to Mazandaran to rescue Kay Kavus, the king of Iran. Kay Kavus had been deceived by the devil and had gone to Mazandaran, where he had been captured by a white demon. Rustam was forced to take a shorter route to rescue him immediately, but thereby had to confront seven dangers lurking on his way.

Rustam kills the white demon (Div). Shahnamah, Mughal, early 17th century. Artist: Qasim.  British Library, Add 5600, f. 75v

In Arjuna’s story, the hero's journey takes a year. To help his brother, Yudhisthira, Arjuna has to undertake a quest called Ashwamedha Yagya. As part of this formal undertaking, he must take a sacrificial horse into the country for a year to fight the opposition, and at the end return the horse to his brother's capital for sacrifice. It was during this trip that Arjuna got into a fight with his son Babruvahana and was killed by him, before being revived with the remedy Samjioni.

The Persian manuscripts reproduced in this blog, together with several other illustrated copies of the Shahnamah, have been fully digitised and can be accessed on the Library’s Digitised Manuscripts portal, and the Digital access to Persian manuscripts page.

Further reading
Bahār, Mihrdād, Pizhūhishī dar asāṭīr-i Īrān, Tihrān: Āgāh, 1375 (1996).
Darmesteter, M.J. ‘Points de contact entre le Mahabharataa et le Shahnamah’, Journal asiatique, (1887) 15, pp.38-75.
Mukhtārī, Muḥammad, Usṭūrah-i Zāl, Tehrān, Nashr-e Qaṭrah, 1997.
Sims-Williams, Ursula, Razmnamah: the Persian Mahabharata, 2016.

Alireza Sedighi, British Library

I am grateful to my colleagues Pasquale Manzo, Pardad Chamsaz and Arani IIankuberan for their comments.

As the Qatar Digital Library (QDL) uploads its two millionth image this week, we’d like to celebrate the nearly 80,000 images of British Library Arabic scientific manuscripts that contribute to this achievement.

One of the most fascinating of these manuscripts and one of the oldest is a thousand-year-old fragment of a Christian Arabic miscellany in Or. 8857. Enhanced cataloguing facilitated by the British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership has provided a glimpse of the scientific interests and texts available to readers in the monasteries of the Near East around AD1000 and also of the diverse communities that produced these manuscripts in monastic scriptoria. Creating a digital surrogate of this fragment for the QDL has also allowed us to virtually reorder its folios and even remotely reunite it with another, larger fragment from the same manuscript held in another collection.

 

Acquisition and condition

On 30 May 1921, the British Museum acquired five folios of a Syriac manuscript along with thirty-three folios of a very ancient Arabic manuscript from F.W. Bickel, an antiquities dealer in Zürich specialising in Christian oriental manuscripts.

Acquisition note: ‘Bought of F. W. Bickel. 30 May, 1921.’ (British Library, Or. 8857, endleaf verso [ii-v]) https://www.qdl.qa/en/archive/81055/vdc_100088125470.0x00004e

When this purchase was recorded in the British Museum acquisition register, the fragmentary Arabic manuscript was given the shelfmark Or. 8857 along with a typically brief description: ‘Or. 8857. A fragment of a work on the calendar, followed by some prescriptions. 33ff. XIth. cent. 8^o Arabic’. Clearly the manuscript was old – 5^thAH/11^th AD century according to the acquisition register. But details about its contents were scanty, and nothing was said about its provenance.

Entry for Or. 8857 in the British Museum acquisition register ( List of Oriental Manuscripts 1909–1921. Or. 6948–9034, p. 275 [British Library, ORC GEN MSS 7])

When the thirty-three paper folios that comprise Or. 8857 entered the British Museum, they were evidently in disarray. Not only is there no evidence to suggest that the folios arrived with a binding, but worse – the sewing that held the quires had disintegrated and the loose bifolia had broken apart along their spine-folds to become individual folios. At some point, probably shortly after their acquisition, all thirty-three folios were mounted on paper guards and sewn into a new binding with little regard to their original order but perhaps preserving the order in which they had arrived at the British Museum.

The first folio, according to the manuscript’s present arrangement, is not what it seems. Its layout suggests either poetry or two columns of prose but, in fact, it is a list of the planets that rule each hour of the day, and it runs horizontally across the page despite the columns. What appears to be an eastern Arabic five (٥) in the upper left corner – perhaps explaining the western Arabic five in the lower right-hand corner – is actually a Coptic seventy (𐋰), which indicate that this is really not the first but the penultimate folio (British Library, Or. 8857, f. 1r) https://www.qdl.qa/en/archive/81055/vdc_100088125470.0x00000b

After this conservation work, the manuscript seems to have rested unnoticed until a more complete list of its contents was prepared for the Subject Guide to the Arabic Manuscripts in the British Library (pp. 353, 357, 385 and 389). But it was not catalogued in detail until it was selected for digitisation for the QDL.

 

Date and context of production

The manuscript is written in a squat and angular script that has been described as ‘Kufic’. This script is now considered one of a loosely defined group of scripts generically called Abbasid Bookhand because they were developed in the early Abbasid chancery and employed for copying books on both sacred and secular topics from roughly the 3^rd/9^th to 5^th/11^th century. They were then replaced by the maghribī script in the extreme west of the Islamic world and by the naskh script almost everywhere else.

Apart from the manuscript’s archaic script and paper, other features help to define the time and place it was copied. Chief amongst these are its quire signatures, numbers that tell the bookbinder the correct order in which to bind the quires that make up a manuscript. In this manuscript two sets of quire signatures are found on the first and last folio of each quire. These quire signatures are written using two separate systems of alphabetic numerical notation: Greek and Georgian. The use of these two numeral systems alongside an Arabic text written in Abbasid Bookhand and featuring the distinctive punctuation marks displayed in this manuscript all attest to the collaboration of multi-ethnic and multilingual artisans in the Syrian, Palestinian and Egyptian monastic scriptoria of the early Abbasid period. The particular combination of quire signatures found here, however, is most typical of the scriptorium of the Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai, especially during the late-4^th/10^th and early-5^th/11^th century.

Opening from the Book of Seasons (Kitāb al-azmina), which displays a variety of punctuation and space-filling marks as well as Greek quire signatures (circled in green, Η = 8 right and Θ = 9 left), Georgian quire signatures (circled in red, Ⴆ = 7 lower right and Ⴇ = 9 upper right) and Coptic folio number (circled in blue, 𐋯𐋩 = 69) (British Library, Or. 8857, ff. 10v and 17r)

Or. 8857, ff. 10v: https://www.qdl.qa/en/archive/81055/vdc_100088125470.0x00001e
Or. 8857, ff. 17r: https://www.qdl.qa/en/archive/81055/vdc_100088125470.0x00002b

 

Reordering the folios

The quire marks demonstrate that Or. 8857 is a fragment containing the remains of quires 5–9 of a larger original manuscript. But without putting the folios back in their original order, it would be impossible to know how much of each quire has survived. Luckily, each folio also has a number in its head margin. Although these folio numbers are likely to have been added somewhat after the quire signatures, they are early and they also attest to the multilingual context in which the manuscript was produced and consumed since they are written using the Coptic epact alphabetic numerals. The use of these numerals was not restricted to the Coptic community, and they are commonly referred to as ‘register letters’ (ḥurūf al-zimām) since they were favoured by merchants and administrators for use in their registers and account books.

Like the Arabic alphabetic numerals (ḥurūf al-jumal, commonly called abjad) – the numerical values of which happen to be explained on ff. 1v–2r of this manuscript – the Greek, Georgian and Coptic (zimām) alphabetic numeral systems all have a base of ten (unlike Roman numerals, which also have a sub-base of five) and they are additive (unlike Roman numerals, which also subtractive) rather than positional (like Arabic numerals). This means that to write the number 123 in alphabetic numerals, one does not write the letter representing 1 in the hundreds place, 2 in the tens place and 3 in the ones place as done with Arabic numerals. Rather, one writes the letters representing 100 (+) 20 (+) 3.

Greek majuscule alphabetic numerals 1–900

Georgian majuscule (Asomtavruli) alphabetic numerals 1–900

Coptic epact or zimām numerals 1–900

Reading the Coptic (zimām) foliation along with the quire signatures, it becomes clear that Or. 8857 is a fragment of five quaternions (quires 5–9) comprising folios 37–71 of a larger manuscript of unknown extent. Quires 5, 6 and 8 are still complete with eight folios each, while quire 7 is missing the two folios of its inner bifolium, and only the first three folios from quire 9 are preserved.

Visualisation of the original quire arrangement of the folios in Or. 8857. Historic Coptic (zimām) foliation at left and modern British Museum foliation in brackets at right. Note that the Georgian signatures for quires 7 and 8 are erroneously reversed. (Visualisation produced with Viscodex)

 

Diverse monastic reading material

Once we know the original order of the folios, we can see that Or. 8857 contains a variety of texts on subjects more or less obviously suited to the monks of Monastery of St Catherine.

1) Fragment of a Christian prayer (f. 37r–37v [British Museum f. 18r–18v]);

2) Prayer Taken from the Book of the Prophet David (Duʿā mustakhraj min Kitāb Dāwūd al-nabī, ff. 37v–41r [BM ff. 18v–22r]);

3) Prayer Composed by One of the Righteous Christian Believers (Duʿā allafahu baʿḍ al-muʾminīn al-muḥiqqīn min al-Naṣārá, ff. 41r–47v [BM ff. 22r–28v]);

4) Three recipes for incense (ff. 47v–49v [BM ff. 28v–30v]);

5) The Book of Seasons (Kitāb al-azminah, ff. 49v–70v, ff. 56–57 missing [BM ff. 30v–33v, 11r–16v, 3r–10v, 17r–17v, 1r and 1v]);

6) Fragment of an astrological text (ff. 70v-71v [BM ff. 1v-2v]).

The prayers that occupy the first eleven folios are clearly appropriate in a monastic context although certain features may seem jarring to the modern eye. One prayer ends with the invocation ‘O Lord of the Worlds!’ ( yā Rabb al-ʿĀlamīn, f. 18v), for example, and another is preceded by the basmala ( bi-sm Allāh al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm, f. 22r), both phrases which occur in the Qurʿān and appear distinctly Islamic today. But during this early period, and for centuries after Or. 8857 was copied, these phrases were used in common by the Arabic-speaking adherents of all the Abrahamic faiths. On the other hand, although incense does not necessarily imply church ritual, the Trinitarian formula ‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’ (bi-sm al-Ab wa-al-Ibn wa-rūḥ al-qudus, f. 28v) at the beginning of the incense recipes attests to their Christian context.

The last two texts in the fragment, however, seem less typical of a monastic library. The Book of Seasons is a sort of almanac containing information about the calendar, the heavens, weather phenomena, human illness and health and agricultural matters as they pertain to the twelve months of the year. This genre of literature, in which titles like the Book of Seasons or the Book of Asterisms ( Kitāb al-anwāʾ) are common, provided important guides for living in harmony with the natural rhythms of the year – especially useful for monastic communities surviving in often harsh and semi-isolated conditions. Indeed, one of the earliest authors of this genre was Abū Zakarīyā Yūḥannā ibn Māsawayh (d. 243/857), a Nestorian Christian hospital director at Baghdad, personal physician to the Abbasid caliphs and teacher of the Nestorian physician and translator Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq (d. 260/873).

Information on the names of the months in Syriac, Greek and Persian from the beginning of the Book of Seasons, preceded by the basmala (British Library, Or. 8857, f. 30v) https://www.qdl.qa/en/archive/81055/vdc_100088125470.0x000046

The fragment ends with an anonymous introductory text on astrology, which includes an unusual method for determining a person’s ascendant not by observing their natal horoscope chart, but through numerological analysis of their name and that of their mother. While this text may seem the least appropriate in a monastery, there was considerable legal and theological disagreement about which of the various astrological practices were licit or illicit, and knowledge of the planets' influences on the environment and the human body was generally considered an important part of maintaining good health and wellbeing.

 

Fragments reunited

A much larger fragment of the same manuscript of which Or. 8857 is also a fragment is now held at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan under the shelfmark X 201 sup. According to a note by Mons. Enrico Rodolfo Galbiati (Doctor of the Ambrosiana 1953–84, Prefect of the Ambrosiana 1984–89) written in the margin of the Ambrosiana’s copy of Löfgren and Traini’s Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana (vol. 1, p. 33), X 201 sup. was amongst a lot purchased in 1910 from an unknown dealer in Munich by Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti, then Prefect of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana (1907-14), but soon to lead the Catholic Church as Pope Pius XI (1922–39).

X 201 sup. has also been digitised and is now available on the Ambrosiana’s Biblioteca Digitale, where I stumbled upon it, immediately recognising its similarity to Or. 8857. Like Or. 8857, the Milan manuscript is a miscellany combining Christian material with texts on herbal remedies, medicine, astrology and related topics. Likewise, the same Abbasid Bookhand and number of lines per page are found in both manuscripts. But it is the Greek and Georgian quire signatures alongside Coptic foliation found in both manuscripts that prove they are two pieces of the same puzzle.

According to the Coptic foliation and bilingual quire signatures, Or. 8857 contains ff. 37–71 (ff. 56 and 57 are missing) of the original manuscript, and its last quire signature is 9 on f. 17r (f. 69r of the Coptic foliation). The Milan manuscript contains 227 folios (beginning at ff. 97 and ending at f. 337 of the Coptic foliation, with some gaps), and its first quire signature is 13 on f. 101r (f. 5r of the modern Ambrosiana foliation).

We know that the quires in Or. 8857 were quaternions, which have eight folios each, so we would expect the Milan manuscript to be composed of quaternions too – although it should be pointed out that irregular quires are not unusual in manuscripts. Between the beginning of quire 9 (the last in Or. 8857) and the beginning of quire 13 (the first to begin in the Milan manuscript) there were four quires, which if they were all regular quaternions, should equal thirty-two folios (4 quires x 8 folios in each quire = 32 folios). When we count from the beginning of quire 9 on f. 69 of the Coptic foliation and to the end of quire 12 on f. 100 there are, indeed, exactly thirty-two folios, confirming that the two manuscripts are fragments from the same original manuscript.

Even though 77 folios have been lost from the original manuscript (ff. 1–36, 56–57 and 72–96 of the Coptic foliation, plus another 14 within the body of X 201 sup.), a very substantial 260 folios have now been identified, and this will no doubt form the basis for future studies into Abbasid scientific traditions amongst Christian monastic communities.

Thanks to international digitisation projects, the magic of IIIF, and the Mirador viewer there are fewer barriers than ever before to studies of this kind. In fact, anyone with a computer and access to the internet can virtually reunite the two fragments of this manuscript by following the steps below.

1) Navigate to X 201 sup. on the Ambrosiana’s Biblioteca Digitale, and click on the words ‘Visualizza la copia digitale’. The images will open in the Mirador viewer via your web browser. Open the dropdown menu at the top left corner of the viewer window and choose a location in the viewer window at which to display Or. 8857.

2) You will now see that a blank canvas has opened at your chosen location.

3) In another browser window, navigate to any page on the QDL displaying images of Or. 8857 and expand the tab marked ‘Use and Share this Record’.

4) Under the heading ‘IIIF details’, locate the IIIF logo next to the IIIF manifest for Or. 8857, drag the logo to the Mirador window in your web browser and drop it anywhere on the blank canvas (see step 2).

5) Alternatively, you can copy the IIIF manifest (https://www.qdl.qa/en/iiif/81055/vdc_100073295641.0x000001/manifest) located next to the IIIF logo on the screen in step 4 and click on the blank canvas in the Mirador viewer (see step 2). This will open the screen below, where you can paste the IIIF manifest into the field marked ‘Add new object from URL’ and click ‘Load’.

6) You can now use the dropdown menus to choose how you would like to view each of the manuscripts and even repeat the steps above to add more canvases and view other IIIF compliant objects at the same time.

Bink Hallum, Arabic Scientific Manuscripts Curator, British Library Qatar Foundation Partnership

Thanks to Dr Adrien de Fouchier, OP (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana) and Dr Stefano Serventi (Biblioteca Ambrosiana) for their generous help and advice with my research for this blog.

Bibliography:

Chrisomalis, Stephen, Numerical Notation: A Comparative History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 135–37, table 5.1 (Greek and Georgian); 139, table 5.3 (Greek); 150, table 5.5 (Coptic/ zimām, the numerals for 600 [𐋸] and 700 [𐋹] are erroneously reversed) and 178, table 5.20 (Georgian)

Ifrah, Georges, The Universal History of Numbers from Prehistory to the Invention of the Computer , trans. by D. Bellos, E.F. Harding, S. Wood and I. Monk (New York–Chichester–Weinheim–Brisbane–Singapore–Toronto: John Wiley & Sons, 2000), pp. 220 (Greek), 225 (Georgian), and 545 (Coptic/zimām),

Kawatoko, Mutsuo, ‘On the Use of Coptic Numerals in Egypt in the 16th Century’, Orient 28 (1992) 71, fig. 3 (helpfully, gives variant forms for most numerals)

List of Oriental Manuscripts 1909–1921. Or. 6948–9034 (British Library, ORC GEN MSS 7)

Löfgren, Oscar and Renato Traini,Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, 3 vols, Fontes Ambrosiani LI, LXVI and Nuova Serie II (Vicenza: Neri Pozza Editore, 1975–95) vol. 1, item 33, pp. 33–35

Pataridze, Tamara, ‘Les Signatures des cahiers unilingues et bilingues dans les manuscrits Sinaïtiques (Georgiens, Arabes et Syriaques)’, Manuscripta Orientalia 18.1 (2012) 15–35

Subject Guide to the Arabic Manuscripts in the British Library, compiled by Peter Stocks, ed. by Colin Baker (London: British Library, 2001)

Varisco, Daniel, ‘The Origin of the Anwāʾ in Arab Tradition’, Studia Islamica 74 (1991) 5–28

This week the Qatar Digital Library (QDL) reached a milestone: the upload of its two millionth image. The image comes from IOR/F/4/2050/93539 'Vol 7 Persian Gulf Affairs of-'. It joins a wealth of material already available, with descriptions in both Arabic and English, digitised as part of a partnership between the British Library and Qatar Foundation. The QDL, part of the Qatar National Library, contains audio-visual material, India Office records, maps, private papers, Arabic scientific manuscripts, photographs and drawings, all free to access and download.

Selected files from IOR/F/4 Boards Papers (1796-1858) are being digitised during Phase Three of the Partnership. Each file covers a specific topic and contains copies of letters sent from the British governments of Bombay, Madras, and Bengal in India to the Court of Directors of the East India Company in London. These copies went to the Board of Control, which oversaw the business operations of the East India Company.


A letter from Captain Samuel Hennell about ‘Isa bin Tarif settling at al-Bid’, (British Library: IOR/F/4/2050/93539, f 751r)


Most common are letters from the British Resident in the Persian Gulf but the files also contain correspondence received from local rulers, merchants and other British military and administrative personnel. They provide evidence of the British perspective on events in the Gulf, as well as the Company’s decision-making and internal discussions.

The highlighted file contains a letter from Captain Samuel Hennell, British Resident in the Persian Gulf, to the Government of Bombay [Mumbai] dated 7 December 1843. It reports the arrival of Shaikh ‘Isa bin Tarif Al Bin ‘Ali al-‘Utbi (referred to in the letter as ‘Esa bin Tarif’) at al-Bid’ (‘Biddah’ in the text) on the Qatar Peninsula, a settlement that now forms part of the capital Doha. This was a significant move: Shaikh ‘Isa had been a dominant presence in the Gulf for some years, and the British had been keeping an eye on him because of his independence, ability, and alliances with powerful figures around the region. His move to al-Bid’ brought his years of protracted wandering to an end.

View from the anchorage of al-Bid’, from a plan of the harbour of al-Bid’ by J M Guy and G B Brucks, drawn by M Houghton (British Library: IOR/X/3694)

Shaikh ‘Isa was chief of the Al Bin ‘Ali tribe formerly based at al-Huwailah, a town on the coast of Qatar. His strength had grown steadily until 1835 when it threatened the Shaikh of Bahrain, ‘Abdullah bin Ahmad Al Khalifah, who nominally ruled the peninsula. Shaikh ‘Isa enjoyed the support of his own tribe and that of the neighbouring Wahhabi forces. They combined to present a formidable challenge to Shaikh ‘Abdullah.


Riffa Fort, Bahrain, in 1870 (British Library: Visual Arts, Photo 355/1/40)

Eventually both sides agreed to the mediation of the Imam of Muscat, Sayyid Saʻid bin Sultan Al Bu Saʻid. He proposed that the Al Bin ‘Ali leave al-Huwailah for Bahrain, where their safety would be guaranteed. However, before this agreement was put into effect a dependent of Shaikh ‘Isa was killed. When Shaikh ‘Abdullah refused to pay reparations, Shaikh ‘Isa and his followers moved to Abu Dhabi.

It was at this point that the British became interested in Shaikh ‘Isa’s movements and activities. Their chief concern was to limit naval warfare in the Gulf, thereby protecting maritime trade routes. Hostilities between the Ali Bin ‘Ali and the Shaikh of Bahrain continued to threaten merchant shipping. When Shaikh ‘Isa requested permission to lead an expedition against Bahrain, the British refused. Shaikh ‘Abdullah’s request that he be allowed to force Shaikh ‘Isa and his followers to return to his control was similarly rejected.

While in Abu Dhabi Shaikh ‘Isa cultivated an alliance with the Imam of Muscat, Britain’s foremost ally in the region. In 1837 the British noted that ‘Isa had played a key role in the Imam’s capture of Mombasa. Also during this time, despite the British prohibition on attacking Shaikh ‘Abdullah, Shaikh ‘Isa conspired (unsuccessfully) to overthrow him with the cooperation of the Governor of Egypt, Khurshid Pasha.

In 1839 Shaikh ‘Isa left Abu Dhabi, partly due to the scarcity of resources for his tribe. He initially planned to move to Wakra on the Qatar Peninsula. Both the British and Shaikh ‘Abdullah were happy with this arrangement but the British were unwilling to guarantee that Bahrain would not attack Wakra. Consequently Shaikh ‘Isa moved instead to the island of Kish (Qais, referred to as ‘Kenn’ in British records) on the opposite northern coast of the Gulf.

Sketch of Kish Island by Captain Thomas Remon (British Library: IOR/R/15/1/732, p 45A)

The British had previously drawn a ‘restrictive line’ along the length of the Gulf. This created a ‘neutral zone’ to the north, in which no armed vessels would be tolerated, thereby protecting commercial shipping in that area. Kish is located north of this line; the Qatar Peninsula is to the south. Meanwhile, the British were increasingly concerned by the power vacuum developing in the Qatar Peninsula. They were unconvinced that the most powerful man on the Peninsula, Salmin bin Nasir al-Suwaidi from the Sudan tribe, was strong enough to keep the peace or deter individuals from aggression against ships in the Gulf.

Shaikh ‘Isa was not content to remain at Kish indefinitely. He saw an opportunity of returning to the Qatar Peninsula by helping Shaikh Muhammed bin Khalifah Al Khalifah overthrow his great-uncle ‘Abdullah in Bahrain. The takeover was successful. In a letter dated 18 July 1843, the British Resident referred to Shaikh Muhammed and Shaikh ‘Isa as the ‘de-facto Rulers of Bahrein’.

Shaikh Muhammed and Shaikh ‘Isa are referred to as ‘de-facto Rulers of Bahrein’ (British Library: IOR/F/4/2050/93533, f 254)

The British were unconvinced that the alliance between the two rulers would last. They knew that Shaikh ‘Isa was also cultivating an alliance with the ruler of Abu Dhabi. His move to al-Bid’ in December thus led the British to welcome a new era of stability for the region. The move brought him south of the ‘restrictive line’, which meant that any aggression between him and Bahrain would not affect shipping in the Gulf.

Survey of the southern side of the Gulf, including the Qatar Peninsula, (British Library: IOR/X/3630/20/5)

He did not have long to enjoy his return. As before, his success on the Peninsula was the envy of Bahrain and Shaikh Muhammed wanted to bring him firmly under his control. In November 1847 a battle near Fuwairit (local accounts say Umm al-Suwayyah, near Al-Khor) ended in Shaikh ‘Isa’s death. ‘Isa showed firmly that Bahrain’s control over Qatar was unsustainable, and laid the foundation for the recognition of Qatar as an independent country. After Shaikh ‘Isa’s death, the power vacuum in the Peninsula was filled by the Al Thani family who had been the dominant family in Fuwairit.

Anne Courtney, Gulf History Cataloguer, BL/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading

Primary Sources
IOR/F/4/2050/93533, ‘Vol 1 Affairs of the Persian Gulf’
IOR/F/4/2050/93539, ‘Vol 7 Persian Gulf Affairs of -’
Both these items mainly concern disputes between the shaikhs of the Gulf and their movements, as well as details of other minor items which the Resident in the Persian Gulf was involved in.
IOR/R/15/1/732, ‘Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government’, 1856

Secondary Sources
Morton, M. Q., Masters of the Pearl: A History of Qatar (London: Reaktion Books, 2020)
Rahman, H., The Emergence of Qatar: the turbulent years, 1627-1916 (London: K. Paul, 2005)
Said Zahlan, R., The Creation of Qatar. (London: Routledge, 1979)
Tuson, P., Records of Qatar: primary documents 1820-1960 (Slough: Archive Editions, 1991)

The current British Library exhibition, Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women's Rights (until 1 August 2021), documenting feminist activism in the UK in historical context, is accompanied by a wide-ranging programme of talks and articles exploring the complex history of women’s rights across the world. A recent blog post focussed on Inspiring women writers of Laos; this blog highlights another inspiring female writer from Southeast Asia, S. Rukiah (1927-1996).

The proclamation of Indonesian independence in 1945 towards the end of World War Two heralded another five years of armed conflict within the country: between Indonesian nationalists and the returning Dutch colonial power, but also between left- and right-leaning factions of Indonesia’s nascent military force. The period also ushered in a host of new literary voices. One Indonesian writer who came of age during this time, and whose writings were shaped by the pressures and anguishes of the Revolution, was S. Rukiah, whose 1950 novel Kejatuhan dan Hati (‘The Fall and the Heart’), is probably the most important early Indonesian novel by a female writer.

S. Rukiah, in ca. 1954, from H.B.Jassin, Seri esei dan kritik kesusasteraan Indonesian moderen (Jakarta: Gunung Agung, 1962, vol. 1, p. 208). Wikimedia Commons.

Rukiah’s early work is set in the foothills of West Java against a backdrop of guerilla activity during the Indonesian Revolution, but her writing transcends place and time by focussing on the dilemmas of an intelligent modern Indonesian woman and the societal conventions which bind her. Explored in Rukiah’s poems and short stories, and developed most fully in her novel, the constraints of the female predicament are contrasted with the freedom enjoyed by male characters, who have the luxury of pursuing their own destiny, often choosing to wed themselves to a cause. But this all-or-nothing revolutionary fervour does not appeal to Rukiah’s female characters – such as Susi in Kejatuhan dan Hati – who yearn for the seemingly impossible: to love passionately and work fulfillingly, but also to enjoy a happy and peaceful family life.

S. Rukiah’s 1950 novel Kejatuhan dan Hati was first translated into English by John H. McGlynn as ‘An Affair of the Heart’ and published in Reflections on rebellion: stories from the Indonesian upheavals of 1948 and 1965 (Ohio University Press, 1983; British Library, YA.1986.b.248). Shown above is McGlynn’s translation republished as The Fall and the Heart (Jakarta: Lontar, 2010). British Library, YD.2011.a.7962.

S. (Siti) Rukiah was born on 27 April 1927 in Purwakarta, a small town northwest of Bandung in West Java. During the Japanese occupation she trained as a teacher, and while teaching at a local girls’ school in 1946 she published her first poems. She also began writing for the magazine Godam Jelata, ‘The Proletariat Hammer’, one of the founders of which was her future husband Sidik Kertapati. Around May 1948, Rukiah became Purwakarta correspondent of the influential literary journal Pujangga Baru (‘The New Poet’), and over the next few years she published 22 poems, six short stories and her novel Kejatuhan dan Hati, which first appeared as a special issue of Pujangga Baru (Nov.-Dec. 1950) before being re-issued by Pustaka Rakyat.

S. Rukiah, Kedjatuhan dan Hati (Djakarta: Pustaka Rakjat, 1950). British Library, 14650.f.148.

Rukiah’s first collection of poems and short stories, Tandus (‘Barren’) – mostly work which had previously appeared in journals in 1948 and 1949 – was published in 1952 by the government publisher Balai Pustaka, and the following year it won the inaugural National Cultural Council award for poetry. The esteem accorded to Rukiah’s work can be judged by her fellow awardees: Pramoedya Ananta Toer for short stories, Mochtar Lubis in the novel section and Utuy Tatang Sontani for drama, later regarded as three of the top Indonesian writers of all time.

 
S. Rukiah, Tandus, 'Barren', a collection of poems and short stories, published in Jakarta by Balai Pustaka.  Left: the rare 1st edition of 1952, British Library, 14650.f.46; Right: the 2nd edition of 1958. British Library (shelfmark pending).

In 1952 Rukiah married Sidik Kertapati, and they had six children. By 1951 Rukiah had begun editing the children’s magazine Cendrawasih (‘Bird of Paradise’), and over the next decade, under her married name of S. Rukiah Kertapati, she published actively in the fields of children’s literature and retellings of Indonesian folk stories. In 1959, at the first National Congress of Lekra, a cultural association sympathetic to the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI), Rukiah was elected as a member of its Central Committee, and she represented Lekra at a writers’ Congress in East Germany in 1961.

S. Rukiah Kertapati, Djaka Tingkir, a retelling of a Javanese folk tale. Djakarta: Balai Pustaka, 1962. British Library, 14650.f.75.

The febrile political atmosphere in Indonesia by the early 1960s came to a head on 30 September 1965, with the murder of top military leaders in an apparent coup attempt. The aftermath saw a ferocious purge of Communist Party members and suspected PKI sympathizers, leaving up to a million dead and hundreds of thousands imprisoned. At the time Sidik Kertapati – then a PKI member of parliament – was visiting China; like many leftists then abroad, he was unable to return to Indonesia and spent the next four decades in exile. Rukiah herself was imprisoned, with no provisions made for the care of her six young children. Her books were banned and her writings were expunged from future editions of the authoritative anthology of Indonesian literature, Gema Tanah Air ‘Echoes of the Homeland’. She was eventually released in 1969 on condition that she did not write or publish again, and returned to her hometown of Purwakarta, where she lived quietly, aware that she was under constant suveillance as she struggled to support her family.

In 1985, at the suggestion of my supervisor Dr Ulrich Kratz, I made the work of S. Rukiah the subject of my MA dissertation in Indonesian and Malay studies at SOAS, and my first visit to the British Library was to look at the rare editions of Rukiah’s works pictured here. With the help of a close friend, S. Budiardjo – an Indonesian exile living in London – I was able to write to Rukiah in Purwakarta, and was overjoyed to receive a letter back from her. Addressing me as Ananda (‘Child’; I addressed her reverently as Bunda, ‘Mother’), she wrote, ‘I was so glad and touched to receive your letter, and to hear that you know and are studying my works that were published decades ago, for even I myself had forgotten them, it was so long ago.’

In another letter written in December 1985, Rukiah gave a harrowing account of her fate after 1965: “While in prison, I was not allowed to see my beloved children. And so all the time I was detained, I had no idea of the fate of my children: were they living destitute under bridges, or had they even starved to death? (For in those terrible times, nobody was allowed to take in or look after my children. If anyone had dared to do so, they themselves would have faced prison.) So you can just imagine how I agonized and suffered in prison. In the end, my desperate longing for my children and my fears for them forced me to write to the Government begging for release, under any conditions.

And so a suffocating deal was struck: “On 24 April 1969, I was freed fom prison and reunited with my children, on condition that I could never write again. I was clearly regarded as far too outspoken and critical. In the event that I might try to get something published, all publishers were informed that it was forbidden to publish my writings. The Government knew, of course, that this was the harshest possible punishment for any writer. But I agreed to everything, because of my love for my children, who were still so young, and who couldn’t possibly fend for themselves without a mother or a father.”

Extract from a letter from S. Rukiah to Annabel Gallop, December 1985.

In October 1986, I came to Jakarta and Rukiah’s son, Windu Pratama, met me and took me to visit his mother in Purwakarta. I was overwhelmed to finally meet this courageous woman whose gentle smile and serene demeanour belied the horrors she had faced in years past.

S. Rukiah in Purwakarta, 1986. Photograph by A.T. Gallop.

In her writings Rukiah had plumbed the depths of the dilemmas of heart and mind. In her life too, Rukiah, had been forced to choose between the very essence of her being – her writing – and her beloved family. Her surviving works are all the more precious for the enforced silencing of her original and inspiring voice.

Further reading:
Annabel Teh Gallop, The work of S. Rukiah. [M.A. thesis]. London: SOAS, 1985.
Yerry Wirawan, Independent woman in postcolonial Indonesia: rereading the work of Rukiah. Southeast Asian Studies, 2018, 7(1): 86-101.

Annabel Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

With very many thanks to John H. McGlynn of the Lontar Foundation for his advice and help.

After sporadic closures throughout 2020 and the recent national lock-down, we are pleased to announce the eagerly anticipated re-opening on 18th May of the stimulating and beautifully designed British Library exhibition, Hebrew Manuscripts: Journeys of the Written Word.


Embellished initial word panel with dragons and fabulous animals. Sefer ha-Terumah (Book of the Heave Offering). Germany, 1307 (Add MS 18424, f. 31r detail)

The 44 artifacts brought together for this exhibition convey powerful messages:

• the magnitude of written culture as the bond connecting Jewish communities from all corners of the world
• the centrality of Hebrew language and script linking Diaspora Jews, and documenting their experiences
• the living proof of the centuries-long culture, history, and traditions of the Jewish people
• high points and signs of conflict, as well as the exchanges of ideas and knowledge in the relationships between Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors in the communities they lived in

Spanning a millennium, most of the showcased objects come from the British Library’s outstanding, multi-faceted Hebrew manuscript collection. In the glass cases arranged in the centre of the gallery well-known iconic specimens rest alongside unknown pieces on display for the very first time.
Viewers are taken on a voyage of discovery through four sections clearly demarcated by thematic text panels. The Bible and beyond section presents core Jewish religious texts from around the world.

Micrographic masorah. Duke of Sussex’s German Pentateuch. Lake Constance, Germany, 1300-1324 (Add MS 15282, f.28r)


The beautifully wrought, 700-years old Duke of Sussex’s German Pentateuch is open at the story of Abraham sacrificing a ram instead of his son Isaac, captured here in a stunning micrographic design. Micrography is the weaving of minute lettering into abstract, geometric, and figurative patterns. It is a scribal practice unique to Jewish art that began in the 9th century CE in Egypt and the Holy Land and has continued to this day.

Also on view in this section is a 13th century incomplete copy of the Babylonian Talmud. The Talmud (literally ‘learning’) is the ultimate guide to religious law in Judaism. It is the largest corpus of Jewish knowledge, teachings and traditions accumulated over many centuries. The Babylonian Talmud, as its name implies, was compiled by scholars in Babylonia (present day Iraq). Although committed to writing around the year 500 CE, it continued to be edited for close to two centuries afterwards. During the Middle Ages and early modern period, the Talmud was the target of unrelenting condemnation and censorship by Christian authorities. Its allegedly offensive and blasphemous contents, led to frequent public burnings and the destruction of numerous copies. The copy on display has fortunately survived intact.

Babylonian Talmud, fragments. Germany (?), 13th century copy (Add MS 25717, f.72v)


The Living together part of the exhibition offers glimpses of the interaction between Jews and non-Jews through historical accounts, legal documents, and literature. Among the splendid artifacts on display are Perek Shirah and Sefer ha-zikuk. Perek Shirah (Chapter of Song) is an ancient hymn of praise in which every created thing – from the animate to the celestial – thanks God for its existence. The praises are mostly biblical verses, often taken from the Book of Psalms. The right page illustration which shows 13 different animals, opens the chapter on the four-legged beasts.

Perek Shirah (Chapter of Song). Vienna, Austria (?). Copy, ca.1740 (Or 12983, ff. 12v-13r)

The pictorial style in this charming 18th century manuscript copy of Perek Shirah was evidently influenced by contemporary European art. The 5 miniatures and the Hebrew and Yiddish text in the manuscript are the work of Aaron Wolf Schreiber Herlingen of Gewitsch, a prominent Moravian scribe-illustrator who was active from 1719 to 1752, primarily in Vienna. Some 50 manuscripts created by him are known to have survived.

Sefer ha-zikuk (Book of Expurgation) is a manual of censorial principles and index of some 450 Hebrew works that allegedly contained morally detrimental, anti-Christian words and passages. Expurgators or revisers of Hebrew books, as they were sometimes called, deleted content they suspected referred to Christians in a negative way. On show is a 17th century manuscript copy of the original Sefer ha-zikuk Dominico Irosolimitano compiled in 1596 in Mantua.


Sefer ha-zikuk (Book of Expurgation). Modena, Italy, 17th century copy (Or 6639, ff. 41v-42r)

An established expurgator of Hebrew books in the service of the Catholic Church in Italy, Dominico Irosolimitano was a converted rabbi formerly known as Samuel Vivas (b. Holy Land 1550; d. Italy 1620). He was active in many Italian cities including Mantua, Milan and Rome, and was responsible for censoring some 20,000 Hebrew books and manuscripts during a career that extended over 40 years.

The Power of letters and words section reveals how Jewish kabbalah seeks to better understand the world and the Divine, and shows the centrality of the Hebrew alphabet in kabbalistic theory and practice.
One of the most prominent Jewish kabbalists in medieval Spain was Abraham Abulafia (b.1240- d. after 1290). He founded Prophetic Kabbalah, a unique mystical method to reach a state of union with God. Among his many works Haye ha-‘olam ha-ba (Life in the World to come), known also as Sefer ha-‘igulim (Book of circles) is particularly significant.
The circles in this 15th century manuscript copy of the work, contain Abulafia’s instructions for mystical meditation, reminiscent of practices in Buddhism and Hinduism. The techniques include: combining letters, reciting and visualising the Divine names, breathing exercises and poses. The reader is meant to enter each circle through an ‘entrance’ clearly indicated by a decorative pin-like marker at the top. Latin translations of Abulafia’s writings influenced many Renaissance Christian kabbalists, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola being one of them.

Haye ha-‘olam ha-ba and other kabbalistic works. Italy, 15th century copy (Or 4596, ff. 88v-89r)

The exhibited small parchment amulet was created sometime in the 18th or 19th century. Its creases clearly prove that such amulets were folded and kept in the owner’s clothing, purse or in an amulet holder, and were carried around.


Hebrew amulet. 18th-19th century (Or 16206)

Amulets are believed to have magical powers, bring good luck and ward off evil, sickness, and other misfortunes. They have been used for centuries and are mentioned in the Talmud (the Talmudic term is kame’a). The most common types were for childbirth. In earlier times, high levels of childbirth and infant mortality led people to seek protection from the mysterious forces that seemingly had power over these events.

Hebrew amulets include symbolic designs, kabbalistic inscriptions, angels’ names, and permutations on the Names of God, as this specimen written for Esther bat Miriam shows. It was intended to guard her from all possible misfortunes at all times of day.

The final part of the exhibition – Science and scholarship - explores how Jewish thinkers have spread knowledge and have contributed new ideas to scholarship.

Living in communities scattered across the globe, many Jewish scholars were multilingual. At the crossroads of different cultures, they translated works between Arabic, Latin and Hebrew. Their most important contribution was transmitting Arabic and Greek ideas from these works to Christian Europe and their own co-religionists.

Avicenna, The Canon of Medicine (Hebrew translation of Books III and V). Spain or Italy, 1479 (Harley MS 5680, f. 209r)

In 1279, the Italian Jew, Nathan ha-Me’ati, translated the 11th-century Canon of Medicine by Ibn Sina (known as Avicenna) from the original Arabic into Hebrew. The Canon was the most influential work of medieval medicine and the translation created new Hebrew medical vocabulary. This page from a 15th-century copy shows the end of Book V, which lists 650 recipes for medicines.

Another medieval Jewish scholar whose translations helped disseminate scientific ideas and knowledge was Jacob Anatoli (c. 1194-1256) who hailed from Provence, southern France.
In 13th century Naples, under the patronage of the enlightened Emperor Frederick II, Jacob Anatoli translated al-Farghani’s Compendium into Hebrew using both the original Arabic text and a Latin translation. The Compendium was an Arabic summary of Ptolemy’s Almagest, and it played a key role in spreading Greek astronomical knowledge in medieval Europe. Titled Sefer Alfargani be-hokhmat ha-tekhunah (Compendium of Astronomy and Elements of Heavenly Movements), the manuscript on view is a 16th-17th century copy of Anatoli’s Hebrew translation.

Al-Farghani, Sefer Alfargani be-hokhmat ha-tekhunah (Compendium of Astronomy and Elements of Heavenly Movements). North Africa (?), 16th-17th century (Add MS 27107, ff. 147v-148r)

Hebrew Manuscripts: Journeys of the Written Word is open until Sunday 6 June 2021.

Follow this link for a 3D virtual tour of the exhibition.

Other platforms with Hebrew manuscript content:

• The Polonsky Foundation Catalogue of Digitised Hebrew Manuscripts
• Discovering Sacred Texts

We are extremely grateful to the Dr Michael and Anna Brynberg Charitable Foundation for generously supporting this exhibition. With thanks to the Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation, the Shoresh Charitable Trust, and The David Pearlman Charitable Foundation.

Ilana Tahan
Lead Curator Hebrew and Christian Orient Collections

Following the publication, in December 2020, of my blog ‘A cessation of plunder and piracy… for ever’, we received some interesting feedback from Dr James Onley, Director of Historical Research at the Qatar National Library, who are the British Library’s partners in producing the Qatar Digital Library. The blog discussed a particular treaty, which it referred to as the General Maritime Treaty, but Dr Onley suggested that this was not the historical name, and was instead of more recent provenance. This came as something of a surprise, as ‘General Maritime Treaty’ is also the name used in QDL catalogue descriptions. So I decided to investigate it further.

The treaty was produced in 1820 and was given the title, ‘General Treaty with the Arab Tribes of the Persian Gulf’. However, it is common for treaties to become known by a shorter, more memorable title. If this was the case for the treaty of 1820, then what was the short title that was used? A delve into the QDL shows that this is not a simple question to answer.

Letter from Major General William Grant Keir, to Captain William Bruce, Resident at Bushire, IOR/R/15/1/21, ff. 4-12.

The image above shows part of a letter, dated 16 January 1820, from William Grant Keir, who signed the treaty on behalf of Britain. He wrote: ‘I have now the honour to transmit the accompanying copy of a General Treaty into which I have entered with certain Arab tribes’. He then added that ‘All matters of a temporary or individual nature have been included in Preliminary Treaties… with the several chiefs, that the General Treaty might be reserved exclusively for arrangements of a permanent nature or such as are common to the whole of the contracting tribes’.

Keir therefore called his treaty a ‘general treaty’ (the name is not consistently capitalised in the records) in order to distinguish it from the preliminary treaties he had concluded with individual rulers. In correspondence from the time it was sometimes referred to by this name, but also simply as ‘the treaty’.

By the 1830s, officials in the Gulf were also calling it the General Treaty of Peace, as the following extract shows:

‘Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government’, IOR/R/15/1/732, p. 314. This part is from a historical sketch covering the years 1819-1831 by Samuel Hennell, who was Assistant Resident in the Persian Gulf at this time.

This title increasingly became the accepted one. It was used in volume one of Charles Rathbone Low’s History of the Indian Navy, published in 1844. And this is what it was called by John Gordon Lorimer in his Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia, produced in two parts in 1908 and 1915.

However, around the same time, another long-form title for the treaty began to appear. Specifically, the second edition of Charles Umpherston Aitchison’s A Collection of Treaties, Engagements, and Sanads Relating to India and Neighbouring Countries, produced in 1876, contained a copy of the 1820 treaty, but referred to it in the contents page as: ‘General Treaty with the Arab Chiefs for the cessation of plunder and piracy by land and sea’. This title would appear in subsequent editions of Aitchison’s Collection of Treaties, and would be replicated in other contexts as well.

From the contents of ‘A collection of treaties, engagements and sanads relating to India and neighbouring countries [...] Vol XI containing the treaties, & c., relating to Aden and the south western coast of Arabia, the Arab principalities in the Persian Gulf, Muscat (Oman), Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier Province’, compiled by C. U. Aitchison, IOR/L/PS/20/G3/12, f. 5v. This is from the fifth edition, published in 1933.

Over the course of the twentieth century there was no consistent way of referring to the treaty, and individual writers would sometimes use more than one name. In 1970 Donald Hawley, a former British Political Agent in the Gulf, published a history, The Trucial States, in which he referred to the agreement variously as the General Treaty, the General Treaty of Peace, the 1820 treaty, the General Treaty for the Cessation of Plunder and Piracy, and the General Treaty of Peace for the Cessation of Plunder and Piracy. In fact, the only title Hawley didn’t use was the original one!

And what about General Maritime Treaty, the title used in my earlier blog post? Apart from one appearance in a historical memorandum produced in 1934, this title doesn’t seem to feature in the records or other material currently on the QDL. Furthermore, it seems to have come into wider use only after the turn of this century. It possibly has its origins in a Wikipedia article about the treaty which, according to the article’s history, was created in 2009.

It may be true, as this blog indicates, that there has never been a single, accepted way of referring to this treaty. However, the near absence of ‘General Maritime Treaty’ in the historical records means that we have taken the decision to remove it from our catalogue descriptions. Instead, as there is no consistently used short-form title, we have replaced it with the treaty’s original title, ‘General Treaty with the Arab Tribes of the Persian Gulf’. This is also what you’ll see now if you look at my earlier blog post.

But does this have any wider significance, beyond a cataloguer’s concern for getting a name right? Admittedly, it was unlikely to cause major confusion among users of the QDL. Nevertheless, I think this exercise has highlighted something important about the treaty, and about British imperialism in the Gulf more generally.

The treaty was created following a major British military intervention, and it reshaped the political map of the region in a way that is still evident today. Yet, from the start, the British were keen to downplay the extent and significance of their involvement. For example, just prior to the launch of the military campaign in 1819, the Government of India stated, ‘we are anxious to avoid all interference in the concerns of the Arab states beyond what may be necessary for effecting the suppression of piracy’ (IOR/F/4/650/17854, f. 386v - soon to be added to the QDL). Before and after this campaign, British officials insisted that their intervention was a limited one, aimed simply at restoring order and not at establishing British control in the region.

It is perhaps, then, no coincidence that the treaty created in 1820 was given an innocuous title, one that belied the force that lay behind it and the unbalanced relations it established with the rulers who signed it. It was, in fact, a watershed moment, marking the beginning of British imperial dominance of the Gulf. As this hegemony was strengthened over subsequent decades, it is telling that Britain’s preferred title for the agreement that formed its basis was the General Treaty of Peace.

The confusion, now and in the past, over the name of the 1820 treaty owes something to the indistinctiveness of its title. This, in turn, is a reminder of how Britain sought to frame its involvement in the Gulf, and of the need to look beyond this appearance to gain a more complete view of this history.

 

David Woodbridge, Gulf History Cataloguer, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

In 2013, through the generous support of William and Judith Bollinger, the British Library embarked upon a five-year project, in collaboration with the National Library Board of Singapore, to digitise materials in the British Library of interest to Singapore. The project initially focussed on Malay manuscripts, early maps of Singapore, and archival papers of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, who had founded a British trading settlement in Singapore in 1819. The project later also encompassed Bugis manuscripts, reflecting the cultural heritage of a distinctive community within the broader Malay population in Singapore, and the small collection of Qur’an manuscripts from Southeast Asia in the British Library. The digitised materials are being made accessible through the websites of both the British Library's Digitised Manuscripts and the National Library of Singapore's BookSG.

Malay manuscripts
The complete collection of Malay manuscripts in the British Library, comprising about 120 volumes and about 150 letters and documents in Malay, has now been fully digitised. The manuscripts date from the 17th to the late 19th centuries, and originate from all over Southeast Asia where Malay was the common language of trade, diplomacy and religious education. Highlights include the oldest known copy of the earliest Malay historical chronicle, Hikayat Raja Pasai (Or 14350), copied in Semarang in north Java in 1797, and two copies of the history of the great sultanate of Melaka, Sulalat al-Salatin or Sejarah Melayu, one copied in Singapore around the 1830s (Or 16214) and one in Melaka in 1873 (Or 14734). The collection is rich in literary works, both in prose and in poetic (syair) form, and also has a few finely illuminated manuscripts, including an exquisite copy of a ‘mirror for princes’ containing advice on good governance, the Taj al-Salatin or ‘Crown of Kings’ (Or 13295), commissioned in Penang in 1824 by Ralph Rice for his 'bibliomanist' brother, Rev. Rice of Brighton. While technically admirable, of greater cultural significance is a nicely decorated copy of the story of the Prophet Joseph, Hikayat Nabi Yusuf (MSS Malay D.4), copied in Perlis in 1802, as this is the only illuminated Malay manuscript known to identify the artist by name: Cik Mat Tok Muda, or, in more formal terms, Datuk Muda Encik Muhammad.  The Malay manuscripts can be accessed here and through BookSG.

Hikayat Nabi Yusuf, the Malay story of the Prophet Joseph, copied in Perlis, 1802. British Library, MSS Malay D.4, ff. 3v-4r.

Many of the Malay letters in the British Library were written to Thomas Stamford Raffles, who spent nearly two decades in Southeast Asia in the service of the East India Company, initially in Penang and then as Lieutenant-Governor of Java (1811-1816) and of Bengkulu in Sumatra (1818-1824). The majority of the letters date from around 1811 when Raffles was based in Melaka making preparations for a British invasion of Java, as the Napoleonic wars in Europe spilled over into the Indian Ocean arena and Southeast Asia. Other letters were sent to Raffles at later dates, including a collection of formal farewell letters on his departure from Java in 1816.

Illuminated farewell letter in Malay from Sultan Cakra Adiningrat of Madura to T.S. Raffles on his departure from Java in 1816. British Library, MSS Eur E378/7.

Early maps of Singapore
Tom Harper, Lead Curator, Antiquarian Maps, describes this part of the project:
"Approximately 250 early maps and charts featuring Singapore have been digitised. Ranging in date from the late 15th to early 20th centuries, these were sourced from across the British Library’s collections including the India Office Map Collection and the Topographical Collection of George III. Of particular significance are the maps of Singapore Island and town drawn by the governor of Singapore William Farquhar a mere five years after the foundation of the British settlement in 1819. Other included maps illustrate the strong continuity and tradition of maritime charting of the Singapore strait from the chart drawn by the Frenchman Jean Rotz and presented to Henry VIII in 1542 (Royal MS 20 E IX), to British Admiralty charts of the straits surveyed and published three centuries later.  Finally, the hand-drawn atlas of 1700 by William Hack, formally owned by George III (Maps 7.TAB.125), containing 85 charts of the coasts between South Africa and Japan and prominently featuring the Singapore Strait and surrounding area, was digitised in its entirety for the first time." The map collection can be accessed here.

A chart of the coast of Asia, from Cochin China on the east, to Ormus on the west, with Sumatra, Java, and part of Borneo; drawn in 1578, by Joan Martines of Messina.  British Library, Harley MS 3450, f. 7r

Papers of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles
Antonia Moon, Lead Curator, India Office Records (Post-1858), writes:
"27 volumes were digitised from the India Office Private Papers. These included 14 volumes of Raffles’s own correspondence, journals, notes and observations, which most interestingly reflect his administration of Java, his interest in the history and culture of the people, and his early explorations of Singapore. Also digitised was correspondence with Lord Minto, Governor General of Bengal, which contains Raffles’s narratives of the natural history and antiquities of South East Asia. Five items were digitised from the Raffles Family Papers, including the list of Raffles’s personal possessions lost on board the ship ‘Fame’. Copyright clearance was achieved on most of the material including, importantly, that created by Raffles."  The Raffles Papers can be accessed by searching for 'Mss Eur' on BookSG.

Statement of personal property of Sir Stamford Raffles lost on board the Fame, 1824. British Library, Mss Eur D742/4, f. 6.

Bugis manuscripts
Singapore is home to a substantial Malay community of Bugis/Makassar descent, who maintain a strong interest in the language, culture and traditions of their ancestral homeland in Sulawesi, Indonesia. The 32 Bugis and 2 Makasar manuscripts which have been digitised, listed here, were taken in 1814 during the British attack on the kingdom of Bone in south Sulawesi, and entered the possession of John Crawfurd, a senior East India Company official. The collection includes an important series of royal diaries kept by senior court officials, including some belonging to the former king of Bone himself, Sultan Ahmad al-Salih Syamsuddin (1775-1812).

Bugis diary of the Maqdanreng (most senior court official) of Bone, showing the entry for March 1729, with a detailed account of activities on 15th March written in a square spiral. British Library, Or 8154, f. 77r.

Southeast Asian Qur’an manuscripts
The Bollinger-Singapore project enabled the completion of the digitisation of the British Library’s small collection of eight Qur’an manuscripts from Southeast Asia, making publicly accessible a selection of Qur’ans representing three distinct regional traditions of the Malay world, from Aceh, Java and Patani on the East Coast of the Malay pensinsula.

Qur’an from Java, 18th-early 19th century, collected by John Crawfurd. British Library, Add 12312, ff. 1v-2r.

The Bollinger-Singapore Digitisation Project was initiated when William and Judith Bollinger moved from London to Singapore in 2012, and extended their already generous patronage of the British Library to a project which they envisaged would enhance collaboration between the British Library and the national library of their new home.

Liz Jolly, Chief Librarian of the British Library, describes the impact of the project: “We are so grateful for this visionary support from William and Judith Bollinger, which has allowed the British Library to make freely and fully accessible a highly significant part of its collections relating to Singapore and the Malay world, benefitting not only the scholarly community but also reaching new audiences, especially in Southeast Asia."

Tan Huism, Director of the National Library of Singapore, expresses appreciation of the project and outlines some of the beneficial outcomes: “It takes a special person, in this a case a special couple, to support digitisation work. While digitisation is largely unseen work done by libraries, it is crucial work in enabling access and the sharing of collections with people all over the world when put online. The National Library of Singapore is grateful to Bill and Judy for their generous support in this project which has not only enabled the Singapore public to engage with these wonderful treasures held by The British Library digitally but the digitisation had also facilitated the loans of some of these materials for exhibitions in Singapore.”

This digitisation project was one of the first to make widely accessible such a range of primary source material for the study not only of the history of the Malay world, but also for its literature, art, calligraphy, book culture and writing traditions.

Further interest:

A video of Judy Bollinger speaking in 2018 at the National Library of Singapore.

Tales of the Malay world, an exhibition of Malay manuscripts at the National Library of Singapore in 2018.

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

On 20 November 1933, John Gilbert Laithwaite, a civil servant at the India Office, received a letter from Trenchard Craven William Fowle, the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, in response to Laithwaite’s request for clarification on the spelling of a landmark in Dhofar known as ‘Ras Dharbat Ali’. In his letter, Fowle defers the matter to the Political Agent in Muscat, Major Claude Bremner, and encloses a note from him that is interesting for its moderate digressions.

Extract of a letter from Major Claude Bremner, Political Agent at Muscat, to Trenchard Craven William Fowle, Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, dated 18 October 1933 (IOR/L/PS/12/2962, f 61r)

Bremner’s note gives some background detail to the spelling, discussing the pronunciation and grammar of the Arabic name as well as different methods of transliteration. He continues by examining in detail the translation of the name, too, which he renders as ‘The Cape of the Blow of Ali’. Significantly, Bremner continues, going further than this and delving into the meaning behind the name. By doing so he allows us, by way of a rocky hill on the south Arabian coast, a view of the world that is strikingly unusual within the India Office Records:

In the early days of Islam the Imam ‘Ali, with a devoted band, was wandering in the vicinity of Ras Dharbat Ali, where he encountered a local chieftain whom he wished to proselytize. This individual refused to embrace Islam whereupon the Imam ‘Ali fell upon the chief and his tribe and, chasing the former up to the top of the headland, he hewed him in two with a blow of his sword. This mighty blow cleaved not only the victim but the hill also. From thence onward the headland was known as the “Cape of the Blow of Ali”

Imam ʻAli and his followers leading the army of Islam against Khavar and his army of sorcerers, from the Khavaran namah by Ibn Husam (d.ca.1470). North India, 17th century (IO Islamic 3443, f. 136r)

Laithwaite’s interest in Ras Dharbat Ali and its spelling did not derive from any linguistic curiosity on his part, at least not solely, but was tied up with matters of administrative and political boundaries. In 1930, the Air Ministry had been keen to establish a secure air route along the South Arabian coast from Aden as part of the flight to India, and this had given rise to questions of territorial sovereignty and administrative jurisdiction. Travelling eastwards, where did the Sultan of Qishn and Socotra’s authority end and that of the Sultan of Muscat begin? How did that match up with the boundary between the spheres of responsibility of the Aden Residency (which answered to the Colonial Office) on the one side, and the Persian Gulf Residency (under the India Office) on the other?

The matter spawned a great deal of consideration and correspondence between the Colonial Office, India Office, Air Ministry, Admiralty, and the Government of India, as well as the political offices in the region. Reference is frequently made to maps of the area and surveys carried out in recent decades. Even in July 1933, after the boundary between the jurisdiction of the two residencies had been officially changed and set at Ras Dharbat Ali, investigation into the exact line of the boundary continued into 1935 and beyond.

Extract of a map showing a proposed RAF air route between the UK and India, via Southern Arabia (IOR/L/PS/12/2054, f 134r)

While the question of sovereignty was too often trivialised by British officials as the inconvenience of ‘personal squabbles’ among ‘chiefs’, the two rulers whose sovereignty was in question in this case were not ignored. From the beginning their claims concerning where their authority lay were sought. Bertram Thomas, explorer and political officer, had warned that ‘dotted lines on maps [are of] little interest to Arab rulers’, arguing that it was the ports that mattered more to them, and divisions beyond these ports fluctuated with relations between tribal groups and centred around watering holes.

While sweeping and somewhat dismissive, Thomas’ theory held some truth. Both the Sultan of Muscat and that of Qishn and Socotra were reported to be ‘rather vague’ about the exact line of the boundary but were much more assured about the allegiances of the inhabitants of the area. The response of Ahmad ibn `Abd Allah Afrar al-Mahri, Sultan of Qishn and Socotra, to the Aden Resident’s probing on the subject are revealing, not only of this confidence but also of the sometimes limited understanding the British had about such matters. When asked about the Mehri people, historically loyal to the Sultan, who inhabited places to the east of the proposed boundary and outside of his territory, the Sultan observed wryly: ‘I understand that many English people live in the south of France, but that the British Government nevertheless does not claim that territory.’

A tracing of a map of the western boundary of Dhofar, Oman, originally drawn by Bertram Thomas, circa 1930 (IOR/L/PS/12/3838, f 68r)

The Sultan’s concern was less to do with drawing a line through the landscape in order to define relationships between people and land, and more about the fluid, ever-changing network of such relationships that run through a landscape, defying such static notions as hard physical boundaries. As such, the hill at Ras Dharbat Ali was of no great significance to the Sultan in terms of administration or sovereignty, though when pushed by the British both he and the Sultan of Muscat were happy to accept it as the boundary between their territories.

Bremner’s note on the history behind the name of the hill offers an alternative significance, one of religion with a moral message embedded within. It also places the hill, and the land that surrounds it, within the larger story of Islam, making it part of the whole. Bremner goes on to write that ‘there are many spots in the countryside connected with [Imam ‘Ali’s] fabled presence at them.’ The hills ‘Qabb ‘Ali’ and ‘Musallah ‘Ali’ are both mentioned, translated by Bremner as ‘The Stick of ‘Ali’ and ‘The Praying Place of ‘Ali’, respectively. It becomes possible to imagine a map very different to those produced by the British.

Imam ʻAli attacking the dragon of the Kuh Billaur, from the Khavaran namah by Ibn Husam (d.ca.1470). North India, 17th century (IO Islamic 3443, f. 180r)

The British themselves were not done with defining terms within the landscape. The question of the exact line of the boundary was raised again in 1947, this time in light of oil exploration. Petroleum Concessions Limited (PCL), a subsidiary of the multinational Iraq Petroleum Company, were keen to explore southern Arabia in search of oil. Travel in remote areas required guarantees of a degree of security, and so the question of whose authority held sway where was an important one. The extractive nature of what the oil companies wanted to do also meant that mapping with precision was essential: who needs paying for the natural resources extracted?

A 1947 geological report on the Dhofar region by Cyril Sankey Fox, a consultant mining geologist employed by the Sultan of Muscat and Oman, Said bin Taimur, epitomises this perspective. When discussing the findings of the report in a letter to Rupert Hay, then the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, he effuses about the potential of Dhofar, which he found ‘astonishingly attractive’, advising that ‘enterprising people’ were needed. Such people, he regrettably adds, ‘the Arabs are not’. This sort of racism was not a universal part of this way of understanding the land, but it was not uncommon, and it fitted nicely within the dominant colonial perspective that viewed the ‘West’ as technologically, intellectually, and, often, morally more advanced and thus superior.

The report on the geology and mineral resources of Dhofar, by Cyril Fox, published in March 1947 (IOR/L/PS/12/1422, f 6r)

Fox goes on to state his belief that, apart from oil, cement, chemicals, and sugar ‘are obviously possible industries’, and that the cultivation of ‘olives, etc.’ could also be worthwhile. He advises that ‘a detailed map is necessary’, noting that none are available on a scale larger than even four miles to an inch, which, he adds, ‘is a little on the small side for geological details’. The land is seen for its economic potential, and a specific way of representing the land is required to facilitate the extraction of that potential. The hill at Ras Dharbat Ali becomes a point at which the terms of that extraction can be defined.

By reading the archive from one place such as Ras Dharbat Ali, we are able to see and better understand the different interpretations, meanings, and stories that are connected to that place, and the land around it. The India Office Record reveals one particular way of viewing the world, one guided and reinforced by maps and the process of map-making, and concerned with matters of imperial strategy and administration or with economic exploitation. This view demands a certain kind of precision and a representation of the world that works to impose a set of relations on the land it represents, rather than working with those that are already implicated within it.

Every now and then, however, alternative ways of thinking about the land are glimpsed at, such as in the reported responses of the Sultans to the question of boundary definition. Rarer still do we find narratives like those of Bremner’s translation work, in which Ras Dharbat Ali speaks of a religious history, a moral matter, and ties itself and the people around it into the community of Islam. These narratives, dismissed by the British and swamped by the dominant colonial discourse, become quiet, significant notes of resistance.

Primary Sources

IOR/L/PS/12/2962, Coll 20/10 'Muscat: S. W. Boundary of (Muscat-Aden): Spheres of Responsibility of the Air Authorities in Iraq and Aden'
IOR/R/15/6/439, 'File 14/5 Mineral deposits in Dhufar'
IOR/L/PS/12/1422, Pol Ext 8303/49 'Geology and mineral resources of Dhofar: request for reports of A L von Krafft and R P Oldham 1900-01'
IOR/L/PS/12/3838, Coll 30/110(4) 'Trucial Coast Oil Concession: Muscat Oil Concession. Hinterland Exploration & Survey.'
IOR/L/PS/12/2054, Coll 5/87S ‘United States: Request for Military Air Transit Rights in India and Burma.’

Further Reading

Barbara Bender, ‘Subverting the Western Gaze: mapping alternative worlds’. In The Archaeology and Anthropology of Landscape: Shaping Your Landscape by Robert Layton and Peter Ucko (eds), London, 1999. 
Matthew Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843, London, 1990.

John Hayhurst, Content Specialist, BL/Qatar Foundation Partnership