An Archival Journey through the Qatar Peninsula
Elusive and Precarious
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Beschreibung
This book retrieves from the archives people, places and perspectives normally overlooked to tell an original and expansive history of the Qatar Peninsula, paying close attention to landscape and the natural world. The arc of the book moves geographically through the landscape and chronologically through selected sources, drawing on digitised maps, manuscripts, hydrographic surveys, government records, traveller accounts, early photographs, archaeological and ethnographic reports. While these are standard sources recruited by Qatar to tell its own singular, streamlined history, this book is a subversive reading of those sources. It braids together elusive and precarious stories – difficult to find, at risk of being lost, and never before brought together into a single volume – to write a more complicated story of place. Through them, we can reimagine a place that, like many in the world, works hard to control a limited set of stories about itself. Readers who know something about Qatarwill be surprised by the book’s nuances and details. Readers who know little or nothing will be drawn in to discover that, even in the most out-of-the-way and inhospitable places, deserts are never empty.
Sue-Ann Harding is a Professor in Translation and Intercultural Studies at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research investigates translation in diverse contexts, particularly in sites of conflict and narrative contestation. She is the author of Beslan: Six Stories of the Siege (Manchester University Press, 2012), has travelled widely, and lived and worked in Doha for almost five years.
This book retrieves from the archives people, places and perspectives normally overlooked to tell an original and expansive history of the Qatar Peninsula, paying close attention to landscape and the natural world. The arc of the book moves geographically through the landscape and chronologically through selected sources, drawing on digitised maps, manuscripts, hydrographic surveys, government records, traveller accounts, early photographs, archaeological and ethnographic reports. While these are standard sources recruited by Qatar to tell its own singular, streamlined history, this book is a subversive reading of those sources. It braids together elusive and precarious stories – difficult to find, at risk of being lost, and never before brought together into a single volume – to write a more complicated story of place. Through them, we can reimagine a place that, like many in the world, works hard to control a limited set of stories about itself. Readers who know something about Qatarwill be surprised by the book’s nuances and details. Readers who know little or nothing will be drawn in to discover that, even in the most out-of-the-way and inhospitable places, deserts are never empty.
Provides a history of Qatar based on a close reading of archival material Pays particular attention to landscape and the natural world Interrogates how Qatar carefully controls the story of the country's history
Autor*in
Sue-Ann Harding
Themen in »An Archival Journey through the Qatar Peninsula«
Qatar Persian Gulf cultural heritage landscape modernisation