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The programme (revised January 2010)
can be downloaded as a pdf file here.
Contact Dr James Onley at j.onley@exeter.ac.uk with any questions about the programme
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11 November 2009, Wednesday
WINDTOWERS OF DUBAI, a lecture and book launch by Dr Anne Coles of University of Oxford on the book
she co-authored with Peter Jackson about the traditional windtowers of Dubai. Signed copies of
her book, Windtower (published by Stacey International), will be available for purchase at a discounted rate.
6:00pm in the Middle East Association, 33 Bury Street, St James, London SW1. Nearest tube station: Green Park.
Please RSVP to James Onley (j.onley@exeter.ac.uk) if you plan to attend.
Abstract: For much of the early twentieth century, clusters of windtowers defined the creekside skyline
of the trading port of Dubai. These dramatic architectural features were both strikingly beautiful and
also practical. They captured the breeze, funnelling it into the rooms below, providing comfortable conditions
in the humid heat of Gulf summers. They were not only a popular feature of the courtyard houses of notable trading
families up and down the Gulf Coast, but seasonally ordinary people, too, erected windtowers above their homes.
Today, windtowers have become an important symbol of the cultural heritage of Dubai. This lecture, while featuring
the design and architecture of these windtower dwellings, includes substantial social research to provide an unusual
insight into the ways of life of the inhabitants, their culture and history. Building on their earlier study
undertaken between 1969 and 1974, Anne Coles and co-author Peter Jackson have re-visited and expanded their
original research, incorporating interviews with the families concerned and the latest technical techniques.
Biography: Dr Anne Coles is a geographer, who lived and worked in Dubai from 1968-71. She has spent many years
in the Middle East, and her career has combined research, university teaching and professional practice.
She has particular interests in the cultural aspects of development, migration and human responses to ‘difficult’
environments. Anne is presently a research associate at the International Gender Studies Centre in Department
of International Development, University of Oxford.
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3 December 2009, Thursday
STARGAZING IN OMAN: A DYING ART, a lecture by Dr Harriet Nash of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies,
University of Exeter.
5:30pm in room 116, SOAS.
Abstract: In Oman, stars are still used to time water shares for irrigation at night. In many places light pollution
means that stars cannot be used, and elsewhere most people prefer to use wristwatches. However, the oral
tradition of using stars, probably dating to pre-Islamic times, survives in eight villages. Over the last four
years the stars used and methods of telling the time with them have been recorded for the first time in seven of the
eight villages. The stars were identified by watching them with the farmers, returning at different times of year
to see all of the stars used. The decline of star use in these communities was also documented. The presentation
will give some of the results of this research, describing how the information was collected, how the farmers
time their water shares by the stars, and how they organise the management of the irrigation systems.
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21 January 2010, Thursday
ANCIENT SOUTH ARABIA AND THE NEAR EAST, a lecture by Alexandra Porter of the British Museum,
Department of Middle East. Held in conjunction with the Council for British Research in the Levant and the Palestine Exploration Fund.
6:00pm in the Stevenson Lecture Theatre, British Museum.
Abstract: South Arabia does not even feature on many maps of the ancient Near East. Scholars have not recognised
the significance of South Arabia in the ancient Near East due a limited knowledge of this area.
However, in recent decades there have been astonishing developments in the understanding of the region,
as a result of archaeological excavations and the enormous quantity of written sources that have been discovered.
This information demonstrates that South Arabia had a strong cultural identity characterised by unique and original
features but was at the same time part of the broader historical and cultural system of the ancient Near East.
In this lecture we will outline the history of interaction between the Fertile Crescent and South Arabia.
We will examine the models of migration vs indigenous development in the origins of the ancient South Arabian civilisation,
the role of the incense trade in the rise of the South Arabian kingdoms, and the various influences reflected
in ancient South Arabian art.
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17 February 2010, Wednesday
‘THAT WAS HOW WE LIVED’: RECONSTRUCTING URBAN SPACE AND EVERYDAY LIFE IN PRE-OIL KUWAIT, a lecture by Farah Al-Nakib
of SOAS, sponsored by the LSE Kuwait Programme.
5:30pm in the Khalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS.
Abstract: Over the course of nearly 250 years, from the time of its settlement in the early 18th century until the advent
of oil urbanization in the 1950s, Kuwait town grew into a thriving maritime urban centre serving as a gateway between
the Gulf littoral, southern Iraq, and the hinterlands of Najd. Most English-language histories of pre-oil Kuwait have
focused on the port town's economic and political developments in relation to its various external links: the
Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean trading networks, the pearling industry, international diplomacy vis-à-vis the Ottoman
and British empires, and the international market economy. Less attention is given in the historiographic discourse to
the internal dynamics and patterns of urban life in Kuwait before oil. This absence is no doubt due to the paucity of
available local records and the relative abundance of British and foreign sources on Kuwait's early history. My paper
attempts to close this gap in both the historic record and the historiographic discourse by using a number of oral histories
conducted with members of Kuwait town's early inhabitants who are still alive today to trace the socio-spatial growth,
layout, and organization of urban space and to analyze the patterns and practice of everyday life in Kuwait before the advent of oil.
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17 March 2010, Wednesday
BETWEEN NOTABLES AND REVOLUTIONARIES: A POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY OF SHIA COMMUNITIES IN EASTERN SAUDI ARABIA, a lecture by Toby Matthiesen of SOAS.
5:30pm in room B102, Brunei Building SOAS.
Abstract: The Shia communities in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia underwent profound socio-economic
changes in the 20th century. In the Ottoman period, local notable families worked together with Ottoman officials
and, in 1913, these notables submitted peacefully to Ibn Saud. Although the important administrative posts in the
Eastern Province were given to Saudi allies from Najd, these notables continued to play an important role throughout
the first half of the 20th century. The post of the Shia Qadi, for example, was constantly occupied by some of the
main Shia notable families. This Shia elite benefitted from the oil boom and managed to get relatively high posts
in the oil industry. Many members of these families were also drawn into the various leftist groups active in the
Eastern Province such as the Communists and the Baathists. The Shia Islamist movements that emerged in the 1970s,
however, started struggling against this Shia elite as much as against the state. Although in al-Ahsa and Tarout,
for example, descendants of the main notable families were recruited into these movements, the bulk of the activists
in Qatif stemmed from other families. After the death of some of their leaders and the return of the Shia Islamist
Opposition from exile in 1993, the politial role of these notable families has been diminished.
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26 May 2010, Wednesday
THE SOCIETY'S ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING, followed immediately by the lecture listed below.
5:30pm in the Khalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS. This lecture is shared with the Bahrain Society.
HOW PEARL FISHING SHAPED THE SOCIETIES OF THE GULF, FROM THE NEOLITHIC TO THE 20TH CENTURY, a lecture by Dr Rob Carter of
Oxford Brookes University about the subject of his forthcoming book.
Abstract: The pearling industry of the Persian Gulf is of immense antiquity, going back over 7000 years to the Stone Age.
The peoples of the Gulf then gathered and wore pearls, along with other elaborate combinations of shell jewellery,
and may even have traded them by sea with their neighbours in southern Iraq. In later centuries, the pearls of the Gulf
were well known to the Achaemenids, the Greeks and the Romans, and famed for their quality and abundance. The industry
continued to thrive after the coming of Islam, with pearls being treasured possessions of the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphs
and their courtiers. Gulf pearls flowed in increasing quantities into the international markets from China to Europe,
and by the 18th century AD the settlement patterns of the Gulf had begun to change in order to accommodate a voracious
global demand. Numerous coastal settlement sprang up which specialised in pearl fishing, and most of the modern towns
of the Gulf owe their origins to the pearl fishery. The cash economies of the Arab states along the Gulf littoral soon depended
almost entirely on pearls, and the crash in global pearl markets, prompted by the advent of Japanese cultured pearls
in the 1920s and 30s, brought both an end to the industry and the onset of great hardship. Many of the coastal towns may
have disappeared entirely, but for the income derived from oil exploration concessions, followed by the advent of oil revenues.
Dr Carter has been researching the historic and prehistoric pearl fishery since 2005, and is currently completing a book
on the subject, to be produced by Arabian Publishing.
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16-19 September 2010, Thursday-Sunday
RED SEA V: NAVIGATED SPACES, CONNECTED PLACES, a conference at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter.
Please see the Red Sea V page for details.
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