New collection of vintage photos brings old Arabia to life

Vintage photos always exert a unique fascination but a new collection from the National Centre for Documentation and Research is in a league of its own, 376 pages that bring to life historic Arabia and its people.

then a photo by traveler Hermann Burchardt of tribes pausing for coffee break in the desert between Hufuf and Qatar dating 1904 Courtesy National Center for Documentation and Research.

In 1839, the French daguerreotypist Frederic Goupil-Fesquet and painter Horace Vernet were granted an audience by the viceroy of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, and took a photo.

Ali is said to have furrowed his large white eyebrows and coughed before declaring: "It's the work of the very devil!"

This devil, the camera, continued to capture and preserve history in a way that no other tool has matched, seeming to reach into the very souls of its subjects and freeze them in time.

The laughter and smiles of a group of tribesmen drinking coffee is still infectious, despite having been taken more than 100 years ago in 1904 when the traveller Hermann Burchardt saw them pause for a break in the desert between Hufuf, in Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

A carpet souq in Kuwait in 1950; a caravan of camels and Bedouin families in Asab in 1960 with a mother on a camel with her child in her lap partially hidden in a "bsht" cloak; a sheikh from Hamdan tribe dancing with khanajeer in 1952 - these are just some of the photos in the latest book released by the National Centre for Documentation and Research.

Using vintage photos from the middle of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th, taken from both private and public collections, Memories of the Arabian Peninsula is a rare photographic journey through the past and the people who once lived here.

Put together by Pascal Gueyle, and first presented at this year's Abu Dhabi Book Fair, the Dh250 volume in three languages Arabic, English and French)is a thick coffee-table book of 376 pages filled not just with photos, but the stories behind them.

Divided by countries - the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Oman and Qatar - the black and white photos recapture a way of life that has long disappeared.

"The book is an important reference for the history and heritage of the Arabian peninsula and its people, who have a lot of common traditions and backgrounds," says Dr Abdullah Al Reyes, the centre's director general.

"It is truly an exceptional book with beautiful photographs."

From the UAE there are photos of different tribes, such as the members of the Duru tribe in Al Ain in 1954, provided by the Abu Dhabi Company for Off Shore Oil Operations. Historic sites such as Qasr Al Hosn during its different stages, and glimpses of everyday life such as the car stuck in the sands while crossing a sabkha to Abu Dhabi in 1936.

Photos of sailors, the dhows that transported everything from fish to cars, and souqs across the UAE also feature. A famous photo of a guard looking through an opening in the main gate of Qasr Al Hosn in 1960 is also in the collection.

"Whether focusing on historic moments or everyday actions, this anthology of one hundred years of photography on the Arabian Peninsula reveals a world that has vanished today along with its traditions," writes Gueyle.

The book avoids photographs from European archives and museums, mainly British, which have been published before.

In Bahrain, photos show date harvesting in the 1930s, when the island was an important date producer before the palms were cut down for wood. Royal photos include Sheikh Abdulla bin Issa posing with friends, an Ottoman officer in 1900, and another image from 1963, with Sheikh Issa bin Salman Al Khalifa welcoming the Abu Dhabi Ruler Sheikh Shakhbout bin Sultan at the airport in Manama.

From pearl traders in 1912 to craftsmen and traders in the 1960s, including women sitting on the floor selling merchandise, the photos from Bahrain provide a wealth of detail of the country and its time. A beautiful portrait of old men discussing daily matters in one of Muharraq's coffee shops in the 1960s illustrates how deals were often made.

From the Saudi Arabia collection, its religious history and its holy cities were widely photographed. An 1890 photo shows the Grand Mosque and the Kaaba of Mecca surrounded by traditional stone and mud homes. Another shows Eid Al Adha at the white tent city of Mena in Mecca in 1880.

The tombs of the Prophet Mohammed's family, including that of his mother Sayeda Amina, are also captured in a photo from 1877.

From inside the holiest and oldest mosques to the streets around them, the photos capture different aspects of the holy sites and the lives of Muslims who lived there or visited.

Here is the founder of Saudi Arabia, King Abdul Aziz Al Saud, with his people and guests including Sir Winston Churchill, in February 1945. Women in traditional clothing, such as a bride from Mecca with gold coins across her dress, dated 1885, are intricate with detail.

Kuwait photos capture the trades of the day and street scenes that include cars causing havoc.

Yemen, Oman and Qatar are portrayed in landscapes and city life, snap shots of a time when Yemeni women would carry dried cow dung for fuel, when Omanai forts were occupied and the only hotel in Doha in the late 1950s was the Bismilla.

Also included is an impressive and detailed foreword by Mounira Khemir, the author, historian and photography expert. Photography in Islamic lands from Forbidden Image to Passion for Portraiture, takes readers on a remarkable historical journey of photography in the Arab world.

During the Ottoman era, Sultan Abdulhamid II, who reigned from 1876 to 1909 and was an enthusiastic photographer himself, took photos throughout his empire, and gave and received gifts of photograph albums.

Mrs Khemir quotes from the 1931 memoirs of the Sultan's private secretary, Tahsin Pasha, that perfectly capture the importance of photos: "Sultan Abdulhamid II always said that every picture is an idea, and a picture may inspire a political and emotional meaning than even a 100-page article could not render. I profit greatly from photographs by favouring them over written recollections."