A hand-sketched map from 1823, showing the first-ever recorded rendering of Qatar’s coastline; a British official’s notes from 1782 about rival tribes in Zubarah and Bahrain that make the first mention of Qatar; and a letter from the son of then-Emir Sheikh Jassim bin Muhammad Al Thani confirming his father’s death in 1913.
These are some of the gems from Qatar’s past that have been unearthed following the world’s largest digitization of historical records on the Gulf Arab states and Iran, which have just gone online for the first time at the Qatar Digital Library.
Included in the archives are maps, manuscripts, sound recordings, photographs and archival material, all free for public and academic use.
The initiative is part of a 10-year collaboration between Qatar Foundation, Qatar National Library and the British Library in London, which began in 2012 and ultimately will see half-a-million documents digitized and made available online.
It will take three years and $14 million to digitize the catalogue of documents, a cost being borne by QF.
The online archives include 475,000 pages from the UK’s India Office records, which previously were only accessible to those intrepid enough to navigate 14km of shelves on the subject at the British Library in London.
The material also includes 25,000 medieval Arabic scientific manuscripts, from the British Library’s own collection.
In contrast to some of the earlier records that start from the mid-18th century, the archives also feature contemporary material, including sound recordings of musicians performing traditional Qatari songs.
Original article by Lesley Walker
Continue reading at Doha News:
With launch of online Gulf archives, Qatar’s history now an open book
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