Records of the Ruling Family in Qatar as a Historical Source (April 2018)

        In the presence of H. H. Salah bin Ghanim Al Ali, Minister of Culture and Sports, the center organized a symposium, where Dr. Sheikh Khalid bin Mohamed bin Ghanim Al Thani gave a lecture entitled “Personal Records as a Source of Writing History: Records of the Ruling Family in Qatar as an Example”. He asserted that personal records are of great importance as a historical source for events, especially as writing them was not intended for publication. Furthermore, the writer was an eyewitness of and a contemporary with events; sometimes he was part of or played role in them. Therefore, these records give idea about the most important events from the writer’s point of view and provide us with unique information about social, cultural and political environment. They also provide a general view of methods of writing and the vocabularies that were used at the era of the writer. The lecturer pointed out that Gulf people wrote many records, but writing was rarely done by the ruler or members of the ruling family. This fact makes the records of the ruling family in Qatar a unique source. Many personal records, written by scholars and notables of Qatar, were maintained through history, like the records of Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul-Aziz Al Mana, Mulla Salih Jabir, Hassan bin Mohamed Al Jabir and the poet Abdullah bin Saleh Al-Khulaifi. The records of the ruling family in Qatar include the records of Sheikh Jassim bin Mohamed Al Thani (65 records), Sheikh Mohamed bin Jassim Al Thani (184 records), Sheikh Abdul-Aziz bin Jassim Al Thani and Sheikh Ali bin Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani (30 records). The topics of those records ranged from dates of birth and death, to travels and roaming, to political events like battles and others, to private occasions like marriage, circumcision, planting and construction, to natural events like floods and locust infestation and to economic affairs like markets, wages...etc. 

Author

Aly