Ottomans Expelled from Qatar, August 1915, Part III

Just a reminder: Postings will be sparse during my current two week vacation.

In Part I of this post, I explained the background of the fact that at the outbreak of World War I, the Ottomans still retained a small garrison at Doha, Qatar, and at the neighboring al-Bida‘ Fort. Part II described the dramatis personae on the British and Qatari sides, and the orders given to the key players, Major T.H. Keyes, British Political Agent in Bahrain, and Commander Viscount Kelburn of the HMS Pyramus. For the actual events at Doha, the best approach seems to be to quote extensively from Major Keyes' account of the affair sent to Percy Cox:

From Major T.H. Keyes, I.A. [Indian Army], Political Agent, BAHRAIN To the Hon'ble Lieut-Colonel Sir Percy Cox, K.C.I.E., C.S.I., Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, BASRAH

Bushire 23rd August 1915

I have the honour to report that H.M.'s Ships "Pyramus: and "Dalhousie" arrived at Bahrain on the 18th instant, when your 1633-B of the 16th instant was delivered to me by the Commander of the "Pyramus" [Commander the Viscount Kelburn].

2. As there were no Tangsiri [= Tangistani] boats in Bahrain, I left the same afternoon in "Pyramus", arriving off Doha early on the 19th. Large numbers of boats were leaving Doha that morning, as the second fishing was just commencing. While "Pyramus" was negotiating the difficult entrance to Doha bay, I went away in an armed cutter and examined all boats that were under sail, but found no Tangsiri boats among them.

3. "Pyramus" having anchored within 2,000 yards of Doha Fort while "Dalhousie anchored out of range of the Turkish guns, I sent my interpreter ashore to fetch Shaikh Abdullah [‘Abdullah bin Jasim Al Thani, Ruler of Qatar].

The terminology of British Imperial officers at the height of the Empire is telling. Qatar still had an Ottoman garrison and would not be a British protectorate until 1916, yet Keyes sent to "fetch" the ruler. I am reasonably sure that when a foreign warship pus into Doha today, no once sends to "fetch" Sheikh ‘Abdullah's great-great-grandson, Sheikh Tamim. Keyes continues:

The shaikh arrived on board in the early afternoon, and assured us there were no Tangsiri boats in his port, and that none had been there for some time,  but said that he believed that some Turkish deserters had joined the Tangsiris with several rifles and large quantities of ammunition. He vehemently denies having sent Rais Ali any ammunition [See Part Two] and said that he only sent him 8 cloaks in exchange for the ten hawks Rais Ali had sent him. From independent enquiries which I instituted in Doha and Al Bida I am inclined to believe his version of the affair.

Doha about 1904 (Lorimer's Gazeteer)

Doha Fort Today

As we saw in Part Two, Cox had added an additional task (afterthought or perhaps the main motive all along?) to looking for Tangistani dhows: offering the Ruler an incentive if he could get the Ottoman garrison out of Doha and turn over its guns. He was authorized to pay 2,500 rupees per gun or, since there turned out to be two guns, 5000 rupees. (As near as I can tell, in 1915 the rupee under the raj was pegged at 480 silver rupees to one gold sovereign, but I may have this wrong.)


Keyes' report continues:

4. We then proceeded to discuss the question of the Turkish fort.  Shaikh Abdulla [sic, Abdullah elsewhere in the report] informed me that there were two officers and forty men with two guns and one mountain gun at the Fort.  Entrenchments could be sen around the Fort, the emplacement of the mountain gun could be easily distinguished, and also two objects which we took to be the emplacements for the field guns. All of these in the entrenched line.

I requested Shaikh Abdullah to place the following alternative before the Turkish Commandant:

(a) That he should surrender, when the officers would be allowed o retain their swords and be treated in the manner indicated in your letter sent by Abdul Jabbar Effendi.

(b) That he should vacate the fort leaving the guns intact in which case I would hand the Fort [inconsistent capitalization in original] over to Sheikh Abdullah, on the latter;s agreeing to look after the Turks, I insisted on an answer by 7 a.m. the next morning and Shaikh Abdullah agreed to settle the matter during the night, though he was very anxious to have ten days for the negotiations.

I promised him 5,000/- [Rupees] if he arranged the surrender of the Fort without a hitch and gave him to understand that if he failed the Fort could be taken by H.M.'s ships. I may add that the Shaikh was under the impression that "Dalhousie" was a trandport.

As noted in Part II, HMS Dalhousie had been a transport in the Indian Marine Service, but four guns had been added to her.

On the morning of the 20th I landed with Commander Viscount Kelburn. On learning from Shaikh Abdullah that the Turks had fled in the night, we proceeded to the Fort which was first occupied by a landing party and searched, and then formally handed over to Shaikh Abdullah.

Besides the three guns in the trenches there were 14 rifles, about 8,000 rounds of ammunition, 500 projectiles, some casks of black powder, tents, great coats, and odds and ends of stores in the Fort. Three old muzzle loaders had also been used for revetments. The cordite charges for the guns and the breech blocks had been removed At Shaikh Abdullah's request I gave him the rifles and unfortunately promised all the rifle ammunition. Shortly after this a blue-jacked discovered 105 cases of mauser ammunition in a magazine about 100 yards way. I handed this over to the Shaikh subject to your approval.

"Dalhousie" sailed for Charbar that afternoon and "Pyramus" for Bahrain ...

The remainder of the report deals with the question of the location of the Tangistani dhows. In subsequent correspondence, Cox asked for clarification as to whether the full 5,000 Rupees had been paid and whether it was possible to get the Sheikh to hand over the 105 boxes of Mauser ammunition. Keyes noted he had paid 3,000 Rupees and promised to send the other 2,000 from Bahrain, which was done along with a request for the 105 boxes, which seem to have been delivered.

Thus the Ottoman presence in Qatar came to an end.The following year Sheikh ‘Abdullah signed a Protectorate agreement with the British, handing over responsibility for foreign affairs and defense. The Protectorate lasted until independence in 1971.

Sheikh ‘Abdullah bin Jasim

As for Sheikh ‘Abdullah, he ruled until 1940, when he abdicated in favor of his son. When the son died unexpectedly in 1948 he resumed the throne for a year and then abdicated again in 1949 in favor of another son. He witnessed the discovery of oil and lived until 1959.

Sir Terence Humphrey Keyes

As for Major Keyes, Terence Humphrey Keyes went on to serve in the  Western intervention in the Russian Civil War, serving in southern Russia. receiving British, Romanian, and (White) Russian decorations. Returning to Indian service in Baluchistan, served in Nepal and in various Indian administrative posts until retirement in 1932 with the honorary rank of Brigadier General He was knighted (Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire) in the New Year's Honours List of 1933. He died in 1939

Commander Viscount Kelburn

As for Viscount Kelburn, Commander of HMS Pyramus, as previously noted, he was the eldest son of the 7th Earl of Glasgow. Just a few months after the affair at Doha, in December 1915, he succeeded his father to become the 8th Earl. He too served in the intervention in the Russian Civil War, as a Naval officer at Vladivostok, and this made him a lifelong anti-Communist. In the 1920s and 1930s he became an open British Fascist supporting the British Union of Fascists. He died in 1963.

Ottomans Expelled from Qatar, August 1915, Part II

 Just a reminder: Postings will be sparse during my current two week vacation.

In Part I of this post, I explained the background of the fact that at the outbreak of World War I, the Ottomans still retained a small garrison at Doha, Qatar, and at the neighboring al-Bida‘ Fort. If you have not yet read Part I, it provides the necessary context for this second part.

The Men and the Ships

In conjunction with the British intervention at Bushire (Bushehr) and the punitive expedition against Dilwar in 1915 (Part I and Part II of the Dilwar posts), the British decided to clear any Tangistani dhows trading with Bahrain or Qatar from the Arab side of the Gulf and, at the same time, resolve the question of the Ottomans in Qatar. In the Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1913, discussed in Part I, Turkey had agreed to remove them, but the Convention had not been ratified when the war broke out.

Sir Percy Cox

The India Office Records show that the British political agents in Basra (Sir Percy Cox, Agent for the entire Gulf) and his agents in Bahrain (Major T.H. Keyes), Bushire (A.P. Trevor), and Kuwait (W.G. Gray) had been receiving reports of major desertions from the Ottoman garrison in Qatar, including reports that some had crossed to the Iranian side and were providing arms and assistance to the Tangistani rebels.

Let me note that I am basing this account almost entirely on the India Office Records in the British Library, but helpfully available online at the Qatar Digital Library. Most of the documents cited here appear in the "File No. E.7: Qatar & Anglo-Turkish Convention of 1913." The documents appear in roughly chronological order and are all in the same file, so I have not given separate links for each document, as I would if this were a scholarly article rather than a blogpost.

By July 30 the Political Agent in Bahrain, the closest British post to Qatar, Keyes, reported to Cox that "there are now only 34 soldiers in the Fort and ten in the villages, and that that [sic] all but about ten men and three officers are preparing to desert. The Commandant has told them they may go."

Terence Humphrey Keyes (1877-1939) in 1915 was a 38-year old officer in the British Indian Army, son of a General and younger brother of a later Admiral. In 1914 he was made Political Agent in Bahrain and had been newly promoted Major when these events occurred.

Terence Humphrey Keyes in later years

At least from my vacation perch I have not found a portrait of young Major Keyes in 1915, so I must ask you to retro-imagine a younger version of his later self. At left is the elderly Brigadier General Sir Terence Humphrey Keyes later in his career.

On August 16, the Political Agent in Bushire, Major A.P. Trevor, notified Keyes that the Senior Naval Officer for the Gulf (Captain Drury St. Aubyn Wake) was dispatching HMS Pyramus to Bahrain to hunt for Tangistani dhows there and in neighboring regions. He added:

I expect a number of Tangistani dhows may be at Doha and I have also heard that Shaikh Abdullah [‘Abdullah bin Jasim Al Thani, Ruler of Qatar] has sent a present (a most useful one) of 50,000 cartridges to Rais Ali [Ra'is ‘Ali Delvari, leader of the Dilwar opposition to the British occupation of Bushire] just before the affair at Dilwar began. I think it would be worth while to follow this up. I think it would be worth while [repetition in original] for "Pyramus" to go over there (perhaps the Commander would take you over) and take away the Tangistani dhows which might be taken somewhere to be destroyed unless you think it advisable to destroy them there.

In a telegram to Sir Percy Cox in Basra, Trevor in Bushire added the detail that the Ruler had sent the cartridges to Ra'is ‘Ali "in return for a present of hawks last year." (As will be seen later, the Ruler insisted that he only sent cloaks to Ra'is ‘Ali in return for the hawks. Hawking and falconry have long been the sport of Gulf sheikhs, of course.)

On the 18th of August, Cox telegraphed approval of the plan including the sending of Keyes, but expressed uncertainty hat Pyramus could enter Doha under the guns of the Turkish fort. Cox added a new twist, though:

Object of Keyes' visit would be seizure of hostile dhows. If shaikh fears to cooperate he can look on and plead force majeure. Incidentally Keyes should ascertain exact state of affairs regarding Turkish detachment and guns. If shaikh agrees to hand the guns over intact and clear out remainder of Turks, Keyes can offer him two thousand five hundred rupees per gun complete same as our price here or a bit more if necessary.

So, "Incidentally,"(!)  Cox has added to the search for Tangistani dhows an inducement for the Ruler to expel he Turks and hand over the guns of the Fort. One wonders if this had been a goal all along, especially since no hostile dhows were found in either Bahrain or Doha. (This is my own speculation not supported by the documentation.)

HMS Pyramus in 1914

HMS Pyramus, the main ship designated for the mission, was a Protected Cruiser 3rd Class, launched in 1897, an older ship by the standards of the time, and nearing the end of her useful life in the age of Dreadnoughts. She spent most of her life in colonial service, and when the war broke out in 1914 she was in the Pacific and took part with a New Zealand force that occupied German Samoa at the outbreak of the war. In fact, though a Royal Navy ship, she had more New Zealanders serving in her during the war than the Royal New Zealand Navy's  first ship of its own, HMNZS Philomel,  which would also serve in the Middle East during the war. She had served at Basra and in the landing at Bushire and Dilwar.

Commander Viscount Kelburn

Commanding the Pyramus on its mission to Qatar was an aristocrat, Patrick James Boyle, the Viscount Kelburn. Kelburn was the eldest son of the 7th Earl of Glasgow (and four months later in December  would become the 8th Earl on his father's death). (Kelburn, as the Earl of Glasgow, would have a certain notoriety in the 1920s and 1930s as a supporter of the Union of British Fascists.)

HMS Dalhousie

The Pyramus was accompanied by another vessel on the Doha mission, HMS Dalhousie. Before the war she had been a troopship in the Indian Marine Service, but had been brought into Royal Navy Service for the Mesopotamian campaign (replacing HMIMS with HMS) and also adding four six-inch guns. Her exact designation is unclear but she may have been classed as an armed merchant cruiser.

Sheikh ‘Abdullah bin Jasim

Those are the men and the ships on the British side. One other key player needs an introduction, the previously mentioned Sheikh ‘Abdullah bin Jasim (or Qasim, pronounced Jasim in the Gulf and often spelled with a jim in modern Qatari sources) bin Muhammad Al Thani, Ruler of Qatar (lived 1880-1959, ruler 1913 or 1914-1940 and again 1948-1949, when he abdicated in favor of his son). As in the case of Major Keyes above, the only available public domain photo I can find on vacation shows Sheikh ‘Abdullah bin Jasim, not as the man of 35 he would have been in 1915, but as a man of advanced age. He is the great-great-grandfather of the current Ruler, Sheikh Tamim; the great-grandfather of his father, Sheikh Hamad, who abdicated in 2013, and the grandfather of his father, Sheikh Khalifa, deposed in 1995. All three of the latter are still living at this writing.

This post will conclude with the action in Doha in Part III, on Monday with any luck.

More Gunboat Diplomacy: Ottomans Expelled from Qatar, August 19-20, 1915: Part I

 Just a reminder: Postings will be sparse during my current two week vacation.

Early last week we dealt with the British intervention at Bushire (Bushehr) and the punitive expedition against Dilwar in 1915 (Part I and Part II). Yesterday and today mark a century since the British used an aftermath of that campaign to do a little Imperial mopping up of a leftover of Anglo-Ottoman rivalry in the Gulf: ousting a residual Ottoman garrison from Doha, Qatar.

The Background

This requires a bit of historical scene-setting. (This is the Reader's Digest Condensed Version; there are many potential future blogposts here.) During the 19th Century, Britain, concerned with protecting its control of the sealanes with India, had been forming allegiances with the local rulers on both the Arab and Iranian sides of the Gulf, turning the Gulf into a virtual British lake, though without actual colonizing. The rapid decline of central authority in Qajar Iran posed little threat to this pattern, but the Ottoman Empire still saw these territories as Ottoman. In 1871, the Ottoman Empire, not quite yet the "Sick Man of Europe," began reasserting (or in some cases arguably asserting for the first time in years) Ottoman authority in the Arabian Peninsula. This included an expedition in Yemen and Ottoman efforts to establish sovereignty in what are today Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar. (The ruling Al Khalifa of Bahrain had established a protectorate agreement with Britain as early as 1820, and the "Trucial" Emirates of the future UAE made their deals with Britain between 1820 and 1853. Oman was never under Ottoman control other than a brief interlude in the 1500s.)

In or soon after 1871, along with the expedition to Yemen, the Ottomans sent envoys to the various emirates of Arabia and to Kuwait and Qatar and persuaded the local rulers to hoist the Ottoman flag and to acknowledge a least a vague Ottoman suzerainty. This was the case in Qatar.

Now Qatar's history is a complex one. The Al Khalifa we associate today with Bahrain had an ancestral base at Zubara on the west coast of Qatar, but as the Al Khalifa became increasingly identified with Bahrain, other forces emerged elsewhere in the Qatar peninsula, notably the Al Thani around al-Bida‘ (BIdda or Bedaa in Western sources) and its adjacent port of Doha on the eastern side. (Al-Bida‘ is now a neighborhood of Doha.) Both the British and the Ottomans sought to cultivate the Al Thani rulers, who however raised the Ottoman flag and allowed the dispatch of 100 or so Ottoman soldiers to Qatar.

Since Bahrain was under British protection and the Al Khalifa still had a foothold at Zubara in Qatar, this added to Anglo-Ottoman rivalry in the Gulf. In 1893 an Ottoman effort to enforce tax collection by force was resisted by the Ruler and, in the end, the Ottomans were beaten and had to settle for a token presence at Al-Bida‘ and a very loose nominal suzerainty.

In 1913 Great Britain and the Ottomans negotiated a rather comprehensive agreement delineating their respective spheres in the Gulf and elsewhere. This Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1913 recognized British influence in both Kuwait and Qatar and was signed July 29, 1913,

However, competing Russian, French, German and other claims made ratification difficult. Eleven months minus one day later, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated at Sarajevo, and a few months later Britain and the Ottoman Empire were at war. Though the Ottomans had agreed to evacuate Qatar, the agreement was never ratified, and the residual Ottoman garrison remained at Al-Bida‘ Fort.

In passing, I should mention that as an unratified agreement, the Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1913 has had a remarkable impact in both international law and politics in subsequent years. Both Kuwait's claim to independence and Iraq's claim to rule Kuwait relate to the status of the 1913 accord,  and the longstanding dispute between Bahrain and Qatar over the Hawar Islands, fought in the International Court of Justice between 1991 and 2001 and decided in the latter year, also saw both sides resorting to citing the unratified agreement.

August 1915

The campaign against the Tangistanis provided an opportunity for the British to do something about the residual Ottoman garrison in  to do something about the residual Ottoman garrison in Qatar. The British believe that some of the garrison at Doha had slipped across to the Iranian side and were aiding the Tangistanis. They also reported a rumor that the Ruler of Qatar had provided ammunition to the Tangistani leader Ra'is ‘Ali in exchange for a gift of hawks (for falconry). And they were determined to search for any Tangistani dhows in Qatari waters. That set the stage for the naval operation to be described in Part II.

43 Years After the Retreat from "East of Suez," Britain Will Have a Base in the Gulf Again

J.B. Kelly, thou shouldst be living at this hour! (If you don't get the reference, see my 2009 obit, "J.B Kelly, 84: The last Imperial Briton.")

Back in 1968, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Defence Secretary Denis Healey announced that for budgetary and strategic reasons, Britain would be withdrawing from its remaining bases and colonial relationships in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, many of which dated back to the days when Britain's control of India required chains of defense positions along the routes of empire. Aden had already been given up with the independence of South Yemen in 1967, and the Suez Canal itself, of course, in 1956 (though from 1967 the Canal itself was closed to traffic until after the 1973 war). The policy meant pulling British bases out of Malaysia, Singapore, the Maldives, and the Gulf states, and granting independence to those Gulf states that had remained protectorates. This was known as the policy of retreating from "East of Suez," (the phrase was Kipling's), and led to the formal independence of Bahrain, Qatar, and the formation of the UAE in 1970-71.

In addition, the British withdrew forces from Malaysia, Singapore, and the Maldives, leaving no formal bases between Cyprus and Hong Kong.

British advisers and seconded officers remained influential in some of the newly-independent states (some until quite recently), and British special forces (along with the RAF and Jordanian and Iranian troops) assisted Oman in putting down the Dhofar rebellion down to 1975, but the era of permanent British bases "East of Suez" ended in 1971.

Well, they're baaack, or soon will be.

During the various Iraq wars, Britain has kept up a naval presence in the Gulf when needed and currently operates four minesweepers out of Bahrain, but Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has announced an agreement to set up a base in Bahrain that, in The Guardian's words, "will also be a base for much larger ships including destroyers and aircraft carriers." 

The more Tory Telgrraph  offers its interpretation here.

Hammond reportedly noted that Britain and France are seeking to play a bigger role in Gulf Defense now due to the US "pivot' towards East Asia. (France has an air base at Dhafra in the UAE.) Ironically, the large US role in the Gulf was originally developed to fill the vacuum created by the British fallback of 1971.

Some critics have characterized the announcement as a "reward" from Bahrain for Britain's silence about Bahraini human rights issues post-Arab Spring. Bahrain is, of course also the headquarters off the US Fifth Fleet. Patrick Cockburn offers an example of this criticism in his "Building a British naval base in Bahrain is a 'symbolic choice' – for no clear reason" in The Independent:

The British decision to spend £15m establishing a naval base at Mina Salman Port in Bahrain is being presented as a "symbolic" deal to increase stability in the region, guard against unnamed threats and strengthen Britain's partnership with the states of the Gulf.

The agreement will identify Britain as an old colonial power strongly supporting the Sunni monarchy in Bahrain that mercilessly crushed demands for democracy and civil rights from the island's Shia majority during the Arab Spring in 2011. Even by the standards of the time, repression was excessive. Shia mosques and holy places were bulldozed. Doctors at the main hospital in Bahrain that treated injured protesters were tortured by being forced to stand without sleep for days on end. Other prisoners were told that unless they sang the praises of the king their interrogators would urinate into their mouths.

And for historical trivia buffs: Back in 1968 when Defense Secretary Denis Healey announced the British retrenchment, he did not originally say "East of Suez," but "East of Aden," though Britain had lowered the Union Jack in Aden the year before. "East of Suez," however, became both the official and unofficial shorthand for the policy, inspired by the lines from Rudyard Kipling's "Mandalay":

Ship me somewhere East of Suez, where the best is like the worst
Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst.

Haaretz Report on Regular Flights between Israel and "Gulf State"

Haaretz has an intriguing investigative report: "Haaretz investigation: Secret flight operating between Israel and Gulf state."

Without identifying the unnamed "Gulf State," Haaretz says in part:

The airplane parked in a side lot at Ben-Gurion International Airport for the past several months does not attract any particular attention. But the plane, which bears a foreign flag on one side, is one of the more interesting of the hundreds of aircraft that take off and land at the airport every week.

A Haaretz analysis of publicly available online flight data indicates that this civilian plane follows what appears to be a permanent flight path between Ben-Gurion Airport and an airport in a Gulf state.

Israel’s relations with the Gulf states are extremely sensitive, however, and the flights are indirect because Israel does not have official diplomatic relations with the country in question.

The flight data indicate that after taking off from Ben-Gurion, the plane spends a few days in the Gulf state in question and then returns to Israel. There have been several flights between Israel and the Gulf state recently.

It remains unclear who or what is using the route, and whether that entity is Israeli. What is clear is that the Israel-Gulf route is being kept extremely low-profile.

File under "Hmmm . . .'

Gause Updates on ISIS and "New Cold War"

Earlier this summer, Greg Gause (who recently moved from the University of Vermont to Texas A&M) published a paper through Brookings Doha which I linked to at the time,  called "Beyond Sectarianism: The New Middle East Cold War,"

Last week, to take into account the growing threat of ISIS, he provided an update: "ISIS and the new Middle East Cold War."

Memorializing Queen Victoria in the Gulf

An interesting historical aside has been posted by the British Library: correspondence with British Resident Agents around the Gulf at the time of the death of Queen Victoria in 1901: "The Death of Queen Victoria: the Politics of Mourning and Memorialisation in the British Persian Gulf."

Saab on Saudi and UAE Defense Industrialization

Bilal Saab of the Atlantic Council's Brent Scowcroft Center released a report today called "The Gulf Rising: Defense Industrialization in Saudi Arabia and the UAE." (Link is to the announcement; the full report (PDF) is here.)

While so far I've mostly read the Executive Summary, it looks like an important study of defense industrialization in the Gulf.

UAE Moving Ahead on Compulsory Military Service Plans

I don't think I've mentioned it on the blog before, but one indicator of continuing security concerns in the Gulf is the UAE's Plan to introduce compulsory national military service for young Emirati males (as well as voluntary service for women).

The plan, introduced earlier this year and since approved by the Cabinet, is expected to be in place by the end of the year, While government officials are talking up the benefits for Emirati youth, it's also pretty  clearly an indicator of the UAE's ongoing concerns about Iran and other security threats in the region, and is apparently being fast-tracked..

The GCC Fracture Lines Deepen

I've been busy most of today but I do feel the latest escalation in the feud between Qatar and its neighbors, in which Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain have withdrawn their ambassadors from Doha over alleged Qatari "interference" in their internal affairs, underscores the growing splits within the GCC over a range of issues involving Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian situation, and more. The KSA/UAE/Bahrain bloc also want a greater political union, which Qatar (and for somewhat different reasons, Oman) oppose, while Kuwait is somewhere in the middle.

This is part of the far deeper polarization we are seeing throughout the region, of course.

Sultan Al Qassemi on Atheism in the Gulf States

Commentator/Analyst Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi seems to enjoy provoking controversy; remember the debate over his claim that Gulf cities are replacing the old Arab centers of Cairo and Beirut and Damascus? That produced a lot of heated disputation last October.

Well, I suspect he has tossed another fox into the henhouse with this piece at Al-Monitor (which is also where the cities piece appeared): "Gulf atheism in the age of social media."

It's an interesting piece, and dares to raise a subject that is even more taboo than sex or political change.

The Debate Over Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi's Article on Gulf Cities

A week ago, the Dubai-based Emirati journalist and commentator Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi published an article at Al-Monitor called "Gulf Cities Emerge As New Centers of Arab World."  The article has provoked considerable debate online and elsewhere. I think he knew he was throwing a fox into the henhouse from the beginning. He opened the article with these paragraphs:

An old Arab saying goes, “Cairo writes, Beirut publishes and Baghdad reads.” These three capitals, along with Damascus, were long the hubs of culture and education in the Arab world. Arabs from across the region flocked to these cities to study and work. Sculptures such as the 1958 Monument of Freedom in Baghdad by the great Iraqi artist Jawad Salim and "Egypt's Renaissance," unveiled in 1928 in Giza by the pioneering artist Mahmoud Mokhtar, embodied the ambitions of these Arab cities.

However, over the past few years, as these traditional Arab capitals became more embroiled in civil strife, a new set of cities started to emerge in the Gulf, establishing themselves as the new centers of the Arab world. Abu Dhabi, its sister emirates of Dubai and Sharjah and the Qatari capital, Doha, have developed as the nerve center of the contemporary Arab world’s culture, commerce, design, architecture, art and academia, attracting hundreds of thousands of Arab immigrants, including academics, businessmen, journalists, athletes, artists, entrepreneurs and medical professionals. While these Gulf cities may be unable to compete with their Arab peers in terms of political dynamism, in almost every other sense they have far outstripped their sister cities in North Africa and the Levant.

Needless to say, to Arab intellectuals steeped in the histories of Cairo and Beirut, Damascus and Baghdad, the idea that nouveaux cities like Dubai and Doha are supplanting them is anathema.  One of the first broadsides came from The Angry Arab himself, As'ad AbuKhalil, who true to his usual form minced no words:

What contribution to Arab culture have those cities made, unless you are talking about sleaze, worship of the European, denigration of the Asians, promotion of singers purely based on breast sizes and lip thickness, prostitution mentality (literally and figuratively), gender segregation and repression, the culture of measuring humans by the size of their bank accounts, etc.  Culture, what culture? Cairo and Beirut were known for hosting a culture that allowed (often despite desires of the ruling governments) various political and cultural trends to co-exist and to clash, and for the expression of divergent political viewpoints.  Cairo and Beirut were cities that allowed artists and writers to seek refuge and to express themselves artistically and creatively, and there is none of that in the Gulf.  Yes, academics and journalists are flocking to the Gulf but what have they produced there? What ideas? They go there and they work as assistants and propagandists in the entourage for this prince or that prince.  If anything, the impact of that Gulf oil and gas culture has been quite corrosive on the entire Arab world and its culture.  In that sense alone, yes, Gulf cities do play a role.

Oh, go ahead, tell us what you really think.

In Al-Monitor, the same venue that hosted Qassemi's original article, Abbas al-Lawati responded with a more nuanced assessment, "Gulf States Have Long Way to Go Before Leading Arab World," noting the expatriate nature of so much of Gulf culture:

What makes these Gulf cities so distinct is that each of them, unlike their northern Arab counterparts, arose after the advent of the nation-state, which by nature restricts immigration and imposes a relatively narrow definition of who does or does not belong. The emergence of the Gulf nation-states in the early 1970s effectively slammed the brakes on centuries of migration that led to a level of diversity in these cities that is still there under the surface. National identity was homogenized to make these new nations viable, and nationality — the right to belong —- was restricted to the small group of people whose ancestors had ventured toward these harsh lands from across the region. Any migrants from that point onward were considered guests who would eventually have to go home . . .

In the academic arena, in order to gain fast access to the global stage, these cities have in recent years begun large-scale importing of big-name Western academic institutions that may boast glitzy and high-tech campuses, but cannot guarantee the academic freedom of their Western counterparts. Even more worrying is the transformation these institutions are bringing to the linguistic landscape of these cities through educational reform. Almost every one of these new universities uses English as the language of instruction, and schools, from the primary stage to high school, are in turn expected to adjust their curricula to prepare students for an English-language tertiary education. These cities may be on their way to becoming the Arab world's education hubs, but there's little about them that remains Arab . . .

Today, in each of the cities that were cited as the new Arab centers, foreigners vastly outnumber citizens. Like the traditional Arab capitals, they have become hubs for migrants. The difference is that migrants in the Gulf have residency cards with expiration dates. It is therefore unrealistic to expect Gulf cities to grow to the level they wish if the majority of the population is transient and continuously reminded that it will one day have to leave. Someone who does not feel a sense of belonging will not invest his or her full potential in such a city.

M. Lynx Qualey at the Arabic Literature (in English) blog has a post "Are Gulf Cities the New Capitals of Arab Literature?" The Cairo-based Qualey, while recognizing the influence of the Abu Dhabi Book Fair and Gulf publishing ventures, isn't completely buying it either:

Gulf cities are formidable, certainly. But will they be forces of major scientific and artistic innovation? And, moreover, why would Gulf authors develop their literature in Arabic when so many of the institutions of higher learning teach in English?

Qassemi himself has noted these, and a couple of other, reactions to his original article on his own blog.

It's worth reading all sides in this debate; the contrasts between the old capitals and the new, the old culture and the new, are going to be features of the Middle East over the coming generation.

Will Sheikh Tamim Differ from His Father?

After a couple of weeks of rumors, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani of Qatar has met with members of the Royal Family and confirmed rumors that he will hand over power to his 33-year-old son and Heir Apparent, Sheikh Tamim.

The transfer of power in Qatar today is likely to draw a great deal more attention than when Sheikh Hamad took power in 1995, despite the fact that Hamad overthrew his father at that time. Qatar's international clout has vastly increased under Hamad's policy of making Qatar a regional power; its role in Lebanon, in Sudan, and more recently in the Syrian conflict and supporting the Morsi government in Egypt (not to mention the role of Al Jazeera), mean that any change at the helm will be closely watched.

Sheikh Tamim has been Heir Apparent since 2003 He is Sheikh Hamad's fourth son; the others were passed over for succession. He is the second son by Sheikh Hamad's second and best-known wife, Sheikha Moza. Before Hamad took power in 1995 the Al Thani family had a long history of internal feuding and maneuvering; at least visibly, Hamad seems to have kept that under control, and his meeting with the Royal Family this morning was presumably intended to smooth the way for Tamim.

Many reports suggest that Tamim is even more conservative and potentially supportive of Islamist groups than his father.

Another question will be the role of the powerful Prime Minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim, a royal cousin who is also Foreign Minister and CEO of the Qatar Investment Authority, the country's sovereign wealth fund (the British press has called him "the man who bought London").

The internal dynamic of Gulf royal families is often discussed but generally is opaque to those outside the ruling families. Expect a lot of speculation, but wait and see what happens. Sheikh Hamad (the ruler, not the PM) addresses the country tomorrow.

RUSI Briefing Paper Suggests UK May Return to "East of Suez"

I was just entering the Middle East studies field back in 1971 when Britain wrapped up its once dominant presence "East of Suez" the Kipling-inspired phrase used to refer to the British position in the Gulf. Announced several years earlier, as a result of British Prime Minister Harold Wilson's rolling back of Britain's power projection, Britain dissolved its various protectorates, leading to formal indepenndence in Bahrain, Qatar, and Oman, and the creation of the United Arab Emirates. (Kuwait had become independent the decade before.)

Today, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the venerable (founded by the Duke of Wellington) British think tank on defense affairs, released a Briefing Paper called "A Return to the East of Suez."

There's a press release here, and you can download the whole report in PDF here.  A video announcing the report, written by Gareth Stansfield and Saul Kelly and introduced by Michael Clarke, appears below.

The report is being seen by some in the British press almost as if it were a formal announcement of government policy, and in fact it may be intended to prepare the ground for such a step. It  may also be an attempt to reassure friendly Gulf states (especially the UAE) that they will not be left high and dry as the US retrenches after withdrawing from Iraq and preparing to withdraw from Afghanistan.

From Michael Clarke's Foreword:

At a time of economic retrenchment and growing uncertainty within Europe, it may seem strange that the UK sees its future military security increasingly‘east of Suez’. Such an emotive phrase suggests imperial ambitions at a time when UK armed forces are smaller than they have been for 200 years. But there are compelling reasons for the UK to take its Gulf relationships much more seriously.

The military intends to build up a strong shadow presence around the Gulf; not an evident imperial-style footprint, but a smart presence with facilities, defence agreements, rotation of training, transit and jumping-off points for forces that aim to be more adaptable and agile as they face the post-Afghanistan years from 2014. The Minhad airbase at Dubai in the United

Arab Emirates (UAE) has emerged as the key to this smart presence and more will be heard about it, alongside the Typhoon deal with the UAE, in the near future.

This may not yet be declared government policy; indeed, the government may prefer not to plunge into a public debate about it. But the UK appears to be approaching a decision point where a significant strategic reorientation of its defence and security towards the Gulf is both plausible and logical. This was not an evident assumption of the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review and it remains to be seen whether the government will choose to enshrine a reinvigorated Gulf policy as a strategic shift in its defence and security focus. But there are compelling reasons for the government to consider it during 2013, in the light of the outcome of the UAE state visit to the UK at the end of this month.

The release video:

A Note on Gulf "Arabics"

Regular readers know I'm interested in Arabic dialects and the questions raised by widespread diglossia, so I thought I'd toss this your way: Saqer Almarri on "Language Diversity in the Gulf: The Arabics" (sic). I'm not really qualified to comment on the specific dialects, but it seems germane to the discussion.

Dubai Now, Building a Bigger Taj Mahal; and Dubai Then (1907)

You've probably already heard this elsewhere, but what do you do when you already have the world's tallest building and the Persian Gulf's first indoor ski slope? Well, Dubai's next project is to build a replica of the Taj Mahal as a hotel and wedding destination. It will be called Taj Arabia. But wait for it — this is Dubai, after all — it will be four times the size of the one in Agra. It will also cost $1.2 billion or thereabouts. Shows you what Shah Jahan could have done if he'd had money.

Why? I don't really know. Maybe because they didn't have one yet?

Just for the hell of it I thought I'd remind everyone that a century ago Dubai was a very different sort of place. I've talked about Lorimer's Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf before, and here's "Dibai Town" as he calls it, in Volume IIA, pp. 454-456 as it was around 1907:

The Life, and 222-Year Extended Afterlife, of the Maria Theresa Dollar

Maria Theresa as She Was

The Empress Maria-Theresa of Austria-Hungary (Kaiserin Maria-Theresia in German) was the only Empress in the Austrian Hapsburg dynasty as Holy Roman Empress and Archduchess of Austria; her 40 year reign (1740-1780) and 16 children guaranteed her a role in European royal genealogies and various 18th century wars.  But at least outside of the former Austria-Hungary, that is not how she is best known today. The standard silver coin of her reign, the Austrian thaler was considered a standard and stable unit of currency,and was coined throughout her reign. (The choice of "dollar" as the name of the currency of the new United States was certainly influenced by the reputation of the thaler.) Then she died in 1780. But her coinage did not.

As the Middle East Knows Her

As late as 2002, the Austrian mint struck a special production of coins with her image and the date 1780. They weren't counterfeit, and other mints across Europe had struck similar coins with the image of a long-dead Empress and the date 1780 during the 222 intervening years since her death, quite legally if the silver content was correct. Britain was the last to cease regular minting in the early 1960s. In Africa and the Middle East the Maria Theresa "Dollar" (riyal nimsawi or "Austrian riyal" in Gulf Arabic) was the standard "trade coinage" acceptable in the souqs of the whole region, the trusted silver coin. The long-dead Empress and her familiar buxom profile, the Hapsburg double eagle on the back, and the date of 1780 were more reliable than the coinage of local rulers, Ottoman Sultans, or colonial powers. The UK minted them since its Gulf dependencies long preferred them to Sterling. The British counterfeiting laws made counterfeiting Maria Theresa Thalers just as illegal as counterfeiting British sovereigns.

This 2003 article in Saudi Aramco World gives a good summary of the coin's career in the Gulf. An excerpt:

And wherever it was used, the coin was subjected to careful scrutiny. "Locals would count the number of pearls on Maria Theresa's oval brooch, or check the feathers on the imperial eagle. (These were the features that the names abu nuqta and abu reesh refer to.) Recipients would reject coins out of hand if they did not precisely match the original 1780 strike," explains Semple.

"Semple" is Clara Semple, whose book,  A Silver Legend: The Story of the Maria Theresa Thaler sounds fascinating,  though from its current Amazon listing appears to be unavailable, at least at my budget. A good review of the book in The Guardian, however, does open with a good story:

At Talh market in northern Yemen, I once watched an old man pay for a fresh clip of Kalashnikov ammunition with some weighty silver coins. Neither Yemeni or Saudi riyals, these reassuringly hefty discs were date-stamped 1780 and bore the image of a large busty woman on one side, an impressively feathery eagle on the other. They were silver dollars of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the woman was Maria Theresa, empress from 1740 to 1780.

Despite generous offers from the market-trader to sell me various machine guns, bazookas and even a tank ("only two days to deliver!"), I bought the money from him instead, paying a small premium to avoid some obvious forgeries. Little did I know that in some senses all the coins were forgeries, and a bright copy made in the sands of Talh the day before was at least as interesting as my supposed originals. Those, as Clara Semple points out in her intriguing book, could easily have been minted in Birmingham in the 1950s, or Brussels, London, Paris, Bombay, Rome or Vienna at some time in the previous two centuries - almost all had that 1780 date. As for rarity, around 400 million are known to have been issued in that period.

The review concludes:

These days the use as a trade currency is all but gone. Gold has replaced silver as the jewellery metal of choice and the American dollar as the currency. The generous bosom of Maria Theresa is only found in tourist bazaars and antique jewellery. To my intense pleasure, however, the last photograph in this delightful book is of that Yemeni market at al-Talh, a trader surrounded - just as I remember - with rifles, pistols and piles of Maria Theresa dollars. For a splendid moment I was back there, reliving my fantasy of becoming the first, and last, man to buy a T-64 Soviet tank with an 18th-century treasure trove.

 I'm not sure if he'd have been the first, and given the current situation in Yemen (the review is from 2006), I'm not sure no one has bought a T-64 with Maria Theresas by now. Silver is still silver.

There are earlier instances of currency strikes that continued long beyond the death of the monarch. One that may have endured even longer than Maria Theresa are the coins of Alexander the Great, though they were not copied with either the fidelity or the reliability of the content of their specie as the Maria Theresa. Bad copies of Alexander's  coins were still being circulated in Nabataea and Arabia (and even in Italy), areas he never even conquered, centuries after his death.

Now We Know Why

Via Souq.com on Facebook, for any of you who are spending the summer in the Gulf, this may explain it:

A Major Contribution to Gulf History: Digitizing the India Office Records

The Guardian reports on a major project that will contribute greatly to researchers pursuing the history of the Gulf: funded by Qatar, the British Library is digitizing some half million pages of India Office records, a treasure trove for reconstructing the Gulf from the mid-18th century onward. They also are digitizing some 25,000 Arabic manuscripts as part of the same project.

I envy the next generation of historians the growing wealth of digital source material. For centuries historians have had to go where the archives were, but we may finally be about to transcend that.

It's interesting that, in the article, an archivist (if quoted correctly by the newspaper) actually compares this immense undertaking to the accomplishment of J.G. Lorimer in compiling his great 5000=page Gazeteer of the Gulf, which I've discussed on this blog before. That may understate the goals of this huge project, but it does indicate an appreciation of the immensity of the contribution of John Gordon Lorimer to the history of the Gulf.

Arabic Really Must Still Be Dying: Even the New York Times Says So

It's been a while since we've had a "death of Arabic imminent" article, which I always enjoy dissecting; purists have been complaining about the threat to the language since the lexicographer Ibn Manzur back in the 13th century, when Persian was threatening it. These days the culprits are usually English or French, or the spoken dialects. You can find many of my earlier comments on these types of articles (a surprising number of which are published in the Middle East in either English or French, apparently without a sense of irony).

But it must be true. Now even The New York Times says so.

Actually, the key point that is apparent in the article but not in the headline is that this is talking about the Gulf, where English has long been the primary language of higher education, and where Modern Standard Arabic is often neglected after the primary grades. It's not surprising that graduates of some of the (US) universities in Doha have to offer courses to train Qataris and other Arabs to speak media Arabic well enough to appear on Al Jazeera. If (Modern Standard) Arabic really is under threat anywhere in the Arab world, it's the Gulf (and maybe still Algeria, where French still holds elite dominance).  The University of Qatar is switching its language of instruction to Arabic, and the Saudis and others are placing new restrictions on English.

So I won't be as snide about the "death of Arabic" theme as I usually am: in the Gulf, the story is not so exaggerated.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/world/middleeast/11iht-educlede11.html