Kāzimah remembered: historical traditions of an early Islamic settlement by Kuwait Bay

The medieval Islamic port of 'Aydhab played a major role in the hajj and in trade with Yemen, India and the Far East. A recent satellite image reveals the layout of the town in some detail, but there seems to be no trace of a viable harbour. Yet there was a fine secure harbour at Halaib, 20 km to the south. We tentatively suggest that the main port of 'Aydhab was separate from the town. This hypothesis can only be verified by fieldwork and our objective in this paper is draw attention to the problem rather than to resolve it.

1900

Bishop French, and, with his friend and comrade the Rev. James Cantine, now stands in the shining line of succession at the close of a decade of patient and brave service at that lonely outpost on the shores of the Persian Gulf, Others have followed in their footsteps, until the Arabian Mission, the adopted child of the Reformed Church in America, is at present a compact and resolute group of men and women at the gates of Arabia, waiting on God's will, and intent first of all upon fulfilling in the spirit of obedience to the Master the duty assigned them. These ten years of quiet, unflinching service have been full of prayer, observation, study, and wistful survey of the great task, while at the same time every opportunity has been im- proved to gain a foothold, to plant a standard, to overcome a prejudice, to sow a seed, and to win a soul. The fruits of this intelligent and conscientious effort to grasp the situation and plan the campaign are given to us in this valuable study of "Arabia, the Cradle of Islam." It is a missionary contribu- tion to our knowledge of the world. The author is entirely familiar with the literature of his subject. English, German, French, and Dutch authorities are at his command. The less accessible Arabic authors are easily within his reach, and he brings from those mysterious gardens of spices into his clear, straightforward narrative, the local coloring and fragrance, as well as the indisputable witness of original medieval sources. The ethnological, geographical, archeological, commercial, and 1 • INTRODUCTORY NOTE political information of the descriptive chapters brings to our hands a valuable and readable summary of facts, in a form which is highly useful, and will be sure to quicken an intelligent interest in one of the great religious and international problems of our times. His study of Islam is from the missionary standpoint, but this does not necessarily mean that it is unfair, or unhistorica), or lacking in scholarly acumen. Purely scientific and aca- demic study of an ethnic religion is one method of approaching it.

The development of the Trucial Coast: From the fall of the Abbasid Caliphate to the Arrival of the British-D.T. Potts (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, NYU) Between 6 February 1806, when Shaykh Amir Sultan bin Saqr bin Kashid al-Qasimi and Capt. David Seton of the Honourable East India Company concluded a treaty of peace, and 18 July 1971, when the provisional constitution creating the United Arab Emirates was signed by the shaykhs of the all the Emirates except Ras al-Khaimah, the history and development of what C.U. Aitchison referred to in 1865 as the Maritime Tribes of the Province of Seer was subject to considerable legal and military influence from Great Britain, more particularly the East India Company and the Government of India. This resulted in a wealth of documentation, in English, which makes the past two centuries of the UAE's early history far more accessible to many people than the preceding 500 or 600 years. And yet although there are no chronicles or synthetic historical accounts from the region itself that give us even a skeletal outline of this history, there is much that can be gleaned from sources that deal with our areas's neighbours. Moreover, rather than lamenting the fact that we have no local chronicles to draw on, the fact that we do find evidence pertaining to Julfar, Dibba, Khor Fakkan, and Kalba in Omani, Portuguese, Dutch and Persian sources, clearly shows that our region was part of a wider world and must be seen in that context in order to be properly understood. These patterns of association are in no way surprising when one considers how short the sailing distances are between Manama and Bushehr, Basra and Bushehr, Bandar-e Lenga and Ras al-Khaimah, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain, and so forth. For purposes of communication and commerce it would always have been much easier to cris-cross the 2 Gulf than to interact with people in the Arabian interior. After the coming of Islam these patterns persisted, and increasingly foreign powers, like the Karmathians in northeastern Arabia; the Abbasids in Iraq; and the Saffarids and Buyids in Iran, jockeyed for power and control over commerce in the Gulf, inevitably drawing in the coastal region of what is today the UAE. The point is, we cannot understand the historical background to the modern UAE without understanding the region's relationships to its neighbours and the longer-term patterns that arose and persisted as a result of those relationships. Until the mid-18 th century, the most important ports along the coasts of what is today the UAE-from Abu Dhabi to Ras Musandam, and Dibba to Kalba-were often subject to foreign powers which, with few exceptions, rarely controlled the interior. These powers can be classified as Arabian; Persian; Portuguese; and Omani. By Arabian, I am referring to the Carmathians, the Banu Jabr and the Wahhabis. Under Persians I count the Buyids, the kings or khans of both Kish and Hormuz, the Safavids and the Afsharids, who enjoyed a brief period of control under Nader Shah, the so-called 'Napoleon of Asia.' The Portuguese took over the Hormuzi dependencies when they conquered the region in 1507, holding them with varying degrees of success until the early 17 th century. And finally the Omanis had a long history of involvement in the area until the mid-18 th century. Thus, all of this complex and tumultuous history awaits anyone adventurous enough to venture beyond the British-dominated 19 th century and reveals the peoples of coastal southeastern Arabia to have been far more powerful and significant than narratives of piracy and imposed treaties might suggest. What strikes one most about our region's history is what I have sometimes termed its centripetal nature. By this, I mean that we cannot really understand what was going on in the area unless we see the east and

2013

Journal of Arabian Studies, 2011

Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 2021

The Kharā'ib al-Dasht settlement, located on the northeastern coast of the island of Failaka in Kuwait, has been excavated systematically since 2013 by the Kuwaiti-Polish Archaeological Mission. The investigated area yielded remains dated to the Late Islamic period, from the late seventeenth to the nineteenth century. In the northernmost part of the site, a fish processing area was uncovered, while the remains of residential structures (houses 1 and 2), as well as a mosque, were discovered in the eastern part of the site. Concentrations of fireplaces, hearths and ovens were discovered inside the houses and courtyards of what seems to be the centre of the settlement as well as from the periphery of the site. Fishing was evidenced not only by the presence of fish bones but also by recovered fishing technologies, including the remains of stone fish traps that were discovered in the coastal waters near to the site. The excavations yielded 12,182 bones of marine fishes. Twenty eight ...

Archaeology of Failaka and Kuwaiti coast, 2019

The Institute of Archaeology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences together with the National Council for the Culture, Art and Letter of the State of Kuwait (NCCAL) organised an international conference on the latest archaeological research results of international missions in Kuwait. The conference inspired an idea to prepare a new publication – a monograph that could complex present results of excavations supported by the NCCAL to both the scientific community and the wider public. Missions from Georgia, Great Britain, Italy, Kuwait, Poland and Slovakia contributed with their chapters. These will allow us to reconstruct human life in this area at various stages of societal development. Editors of the publication have undertaken the task of collecting scientific studies and the Institute of Archaeology, Slovak Academy of Sciences has provided a background for publishing the monograph. The book presents the latest results of analyses of the Bronze Age site Al-Khidr, a cult object in Bahra, Al-Sabiyah and selected findings of archaeological investigations in the north-east coast of Failaka Island. Several chapters evaluate life at the prominent site of Al-Qusur between the 7th and 9th century. Interesting findings are provided by the study at the Al-Quarainiyah site and recent research in Kuwait Bay. Readers will become familiar not only with the results of the study of settlement patterns on Failaka Island but also with details of pottery production, fishing and trade in the Gulf region. The book discusses also traces of seasonal late Islamic settlement discovered at several sites on Failaka Island. As editors we feel honoured and believe that the monograph will contribute to the mosaic of knowledge about the ancient history of Kuwait and Gulf

Pottery from al-Zubārah, Qatar: reference collection and ware typology, 2019

Between 2009 and 2014, archaeological excavations at al-Zubārah, Qatar, uncovered a large late Islamic pottery assemblage, of which 68,000 sherds were fully recorded and studied. The analysis of the al-Zubārah ceramic assemblage offered an insight into the social, cultural, and economic structure of this eighteenth-to nineteenth-century pearl-trading centre, and enabled a reconstruction of the widespread trading and cultural links of the once prosperous town. Six phases of occupation were recorded from the stratigraphic sequence, covering a historical span of a maximum 140 years.