You will not find a book or research on the history or geography of the Gulf region with its banks and the center of the Arabian Peninsula (Najd and its surroundings) published in recent decades, unless you find within the list of references the book “Gulf Guide” in its historical and geographical parts by Lorimer. So who is this Lorimer, whose books are indispensable for Gulf, Arab and foreign researchers and scholars as a reference and source of information? What is the secret of their broad reliance on them?
Many European travelers and explorers have written about the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula since the 16th century, after they toured its cities and deserts and monitored the customs, traditions and aspects of their peoples' lives, through valuable works whose declared objectives varied between geographical exploration, historical writing, journalistic scoops, and cultural / social exploration. In order to achieve these goals, they agreed to give up the luxury of their lives and what they were accustomed to in their homelands, so they rode the hardships and faced the horrors and troubles of travel and transportation, and accepted the roughness of living and risked their lives.
Regardless of their real motives, and what we have seen in their countries and the accusations against them, they rendered an invaluable service to researchers, historians, and scholars through what they left for us of books, studies, and blogs about space, time, people, stones, societies, and customs, which also varied in terms of size, details, style, and content.
Lorimer's books
However, none of these books, studies, and researches received the attention that Lorimer's writings received for many reasons, including the man's goals related to the nature of his job and his official capacity, which gave credibility to his work and efforts, as it is not expected of a person who works like him as a high-ranking employee of the British government. In India, who is charged with providing his authority with detailed information for the purposes of political, economic, social and official confidential topographical use, he may lie or pass false information that may cause him to be held accountable.
On the other hand, the man took into account in his writings that they be lengthy and touched on the details of the details, meaning that he did not leave any stray or incoming without touching on it and digging behind it, based on intelligence information and a field investigation process about time, place, news, people, businesses, professions, crafts, religions, sects, customs, customs, tribes and relationships. Society, means of transportation, communication, entertainment, tools of weight and measure, and means of earning a living. It was also based in many cases on the writings and authors of previous travelers such as Doughty and Belgrave and Burckhardt. It is sufficient for the researcher to take a look at the index of his two books mentioned to discover the validity of what we say. For example, when he wrote about Bahrain in his guide, numbering and describing its villages, cities, islands, tribes, castles, distances, nature, crops, and donkeys in a way that we do not find in any other book.
Representative in the Arab countries
John Gordon Lorimer, better known as J. c. Lorimer in Glasgow on the fourteenth of June 1870 to a conservative Scottish family consisting of his parents and 5 other children. In 1889 he graduated from the University of Edinburgh and worked for a year as a servant at Christ Church in Oxford, England, before taking over in 1891 the position of first assistant to the British political delegate in the Indian state of Punjab. Because of his diplomatic competence, political brilliance, and ardent activity, he was transferred to work in Simla Province at the foot of the Himalayas, where he handled the foreign affairs of the British Government of India at the time. When he assumed the position of High Delegate of the British Crown to the Arab regions under Ottoman rule, then he assumed the position of British Consul General in Baghdad in 1911. As for his death, it was in the Iranian city of Bushehr on the eastern bank of the Persian Gulf, where he was working as a political resident of Britain in the Gulf, following an accident bidder. The Times of India, published in Bombay, published the details of his death at the time, saying that Lorimer left himself in his dressing room on the morning of Sunday, February 8, 1914, to check the caliber of his automatic rifle, and a bullet from it penetrated his body and settled in his stomach by mistake. He was later found lying on the ground, a lifeless body at the age of 43. His funeral was held the following day at the Indo-European Telegraph Service Cemetery in Bushire, amid public displays of sympathy among British residents, foreigners and locals, as the 102nd Brigade Royal Guards and British Marines carried the coffin to the battleship Fox amid funeral hymns.
The news of Lorimer's unfortunate departure spread, and it echoed to Bahrain on February 12, 1914 via the steamship "Barala". The British political agent in Manama, Major Arthur Prescott Trevor, hurried to lower flags in mourning, and the country's merchants, dignitaries, and members of the Indian, Persian and Jewish communities flocked to offer condolences. The ruler of the country, Sheikh Isa bin Ali Al Khalifa, also participated in the condolence by sending his son, Sheikh Abdullah.
Encyclopedia of the Arabian Gulf
In the year 1903, the Government of British India commissioned its employee Lorimer to prepare a comprehensive and detailed encyclopedia about the Arabian Gulf region, and its extensions in the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq, with the aim of providing an easy guide that British state employees, diplomats and men in the region could refer to to obtain information that would help them in strengthening their influence and the influence of their state In the face of other European colonial powers, which were then in competition with Britain over the region. His assignment included supervising a team of Indian civil servants to prepare the required encyclopedia, so Lorimer divided the team into two parts: one specialized in collecting historical information, and another specialized in collecting geographical and statistical information. Work was completed on the geographical and statistical section in 1908, while work on the historical section was not completed until 1915, that is, after Lorimer's departure, almost a year, when his colleague Berrod completed the remainder (introduction and indexing only). After that, the two sections were printed as an encyclopedia of two books under the name “Gulf Geographical Guide” and “Historical Gulf Guide” in the Indian city of Calcutta in 1915 in a very limited way. Then the encyclopedia was placed under the classification of “secret – for official work” for the British government’s use only, and no one knew about it until 1955, and it continued to be classified as a secret encyclopedia until 1970, when it was lifted from secrecy, so it was reprinted and published, translated into Arabic, twice after that: Once in Qatar and the other in the Sultanate of Oman. Perhaps the greatest evidence of Britain's keenness to conceal the matter of the encyclopedia is that in its obituary statement for Lorimer, it touched on all of the man's writings except for this most important author. For example, the statement referred to two books that Lorimer had previously published: “The Customary Law of the Principal Tribes of Peshawar” issued in 1899, and “Vocabulary and Grammar of the Pashto and Waziri Language” issued in 1902.
I read Emirati writer Jamal bin Huwaireb, on his Center for Studies website, his objection to the title of the book after it was translated into Arabic, and questions about the goals of the ruler of Qatar in translating and distributing it for free, as he said, that Lorimer's huge work bore the title Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia And its correct translation is “Dictionary of the Gulf, Oman, and the Center of the Island.” Then he asked, “I do not know why Qatar took care of this very secret book at the time it was opened, and I have no information on how it got into her hands, because no one at that time had anything to do with the British archives except Professor Morsi Abdullah.” , who for more than two decades held the Documentation Center in Abu Dhabi; He may have been the one who advised the former ruler of Qatar, Sheikh Ahmed bin Ali Al Thani, to translate and print it in both parts. It was published in 14 volumes in the name of Sheikh Ahmed, then his name was removed later after the coup against him, and he was replaced by the name of Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani.
Translated summaries were also issued for selections from the encyclopedia on specific topics, such as: the book “Kuwait in the Gulf Guide” by Khaled Saud Al-Zayd in 1982, and “The Book of the History of Saudi Countries in the Gulf Guide” by Muhammad bin Suleiman Al-Khudairi in 2001 and the book “A Dictionary of the Gulf Tribes in Lorimer’s Memoirs.” » by Saud al-Zaytoun al-Khalidi in 2002, and the book “Arabistan in British Documents 1600-1900 from the Gulf Guide to Wimmer” by Majid Shubar Musa al-Sharifi in 2012, and the book “The United Arab Emirates in the Gulf Guide” by a group of researchers in 2014, and the book “The Arabian Gulf Palm in Lorimer’s Guide” by Ali Afifi Ali Ghazi in 2015, the book “The State of Qatar in the Gulf Guide” by a group of translators in 2019, the book “Banouka’ab in the Gulf Historical and Geographical Guide” by Muhammad Fahd Al-Faras in 2021, and the book “Karbala in the Gulf Guide” by Murtada Ali Al-Awsi The year 2016, and the book “The Baloch and Their Country in the Gulf Guide” by Ahmed Yaqoub Al-Mazmi. In addition, research, studies, and articles derived from Lorimer’s huge work were published, such as the article by Muhammad bin Nasser Al-Jamaan in the Saudi newspaper Al-Jazeera (5/8/2017) about the Najd town of Al-Hariq in the Gulf Directory, and a documentary text for the village of Al-Zoluf (one of the places settled by the Al-Mana’a tribe ) in the Gulf Geographical Guide, and a lengthy article written by a person whose name is denoted by “Bushaqra” titled “Description of the Hawla in the Gulf Guide Book”, as Lorimer is considered the most famous of those who set a definition for the hawla, which reads: “Al-Hawla is singular Hawla, and they are a class of Sunni Arabs who They reside in Bahrain, Al-Hasa, Qatar, the coast of Oman, and the island of Sari, and they resided for years and perhaps for many generations on the Iranian coast from the Gulf, then they returned as individuals and groups to the Arab coast. once again".
Gulf Directory
The Gulf Directory consists of about 6,000 pages distributed in 6 volumes (two volumes titled Geographical Guide, and 4 volumes titled Historical Guide). The historical guide, in turn, is divided into 3 parts: the first is entitled “The Arab Section”, and covers the general history of the Arabian Gulf since 1507, before dealing with the history of each region or country separately, such as the history of Oman and the Trucial Coast, Bahrain, Qatar, Al-Ahsa, Kuwait, Najd and Iraq. The second part is titled “The Persian Section”, and it covers the history of the Persian coasts, including Arabistan, Makran, and Gwadar in Baluchistan, with appendices on specialized topics such as: the pearl trade, the slave trade, sanitary and epidemiological conditions, forms and methods of cultivation, weapons available in society and their sources, and the relations of the countries of the region with the powers Foreign affairs, and the texts of treaties concluded between the rulers of the region and Britain, in addition to a special appendix on the visit of the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, to the Gulf in 1903. The third part consists of 21 tables related to the lineages of the ruling families in the Arabian Gulf, Oman, and central Arabia.
Some criticize Lorimer's geographical guide, that its information has outdated the time as a result of the many changes that have passed through the region, and this is true if we look at the subject in terms of physical development, but the place as a purely geographical location remains unchanged, not to mention that its data in the past allow us to conduct Comparison of its previous and current limits. In addition, the geographical guide remains useful because it contains tremendous information about the ruling families, tribes, religious and ethnic groups, their lineages, intermarriage, influence and relations, and estimates about their personnel, weapons, customs, numbers of homes, boats, horses and camels. In addition, there is detailed information about the roads and paths linking cities and villages and what is located around them such as mountains, wilderness, pastures, springs, wells, fields, monuments, etc., and about the climate, the amount of rain, agricultural and fish crops, the tools used in them, the types of animals, birds and reptiles, types of circulating currency, means of telegraphic and postal communications, and means of transportation Land, sea, freight traffic, names of government departments, their modus operandi and their budgets, especially the police departments, the judiciary and the tax authority. The geographical guide is also important because it is equipped with 56 rare photographs of the Gulf taken by British colonial officers, the German explorer “Hermann Burckhardt” and “Raja Din Dayal & Sons” (official photographers to the Viceroy of India), in addition to a map of the pearl banks on the Arabian coast of the Gulf , and another political map of the region prepared by the cartographer Lieutenant Fraser Frederick Hunter, who stated that the process of making the map was difficult and full of challenges, and that he and Lorimer spent the winter of 1905 and 1906 in the Summer Foreign Office at Simla working 14 hours a day in order to complete the map with extreme accuracy while wearing greatcoats And woolen gloves.
Some criticize Lorimer's historical evidence that it is based on information and interpretations that are consistent with the purely official British point of view without discussing it or presenting other points of view, ignoring the fact that the man was not tasked with reviewing the conflicting historical points of view, rather he did not write his book for the sake of public knowledge. But to serve the goals of his country, and for this reason the work is not considered a historical book, nor is its author a historian, but rather an administrative employee with knowledge of cataloging and analyzing reports. One of the British historians was right when he said about Lorimer’s mission: not to write the history of the Gulf or the history of the British role in it, but rather to set a general framework for summing up the huge events in the region and building a structure in which those concerned can dive into in search and excavation.
In 1971, the literary supplement of The Times of London described the historical section as “enormous in its content,” and described the geographical section as “without a contemporary alternative.” The American historian J.E. Such as political histories, economics, slavery, telegrams, and tribal dictionaries,” adding, “What Lorimer has collected is unparalleled.”
Written by: Dr. Abdullah Al-Madani