From the Archives: a photo and a letter

While searching through some of my research material from my MA thesis I came across these two documents from the National Archives in Kew: 1. A photo (probably) by the British Consul in Damascus, C. E. S. Palmer, of the Ruwallah “Bairak” (fighting troops) taken in 1923. The photo is an attachment to a report [...]

“Grenser i det grenselause” på BORA

Masteravhandlinga i historie eg har streva med dei siste åra er no tilgjengeleg på BORA, Bergen Open Research Archive: Grenser i det grenselause – Opprettinga av Transjordan sine ørkengrenser (pdf) Avhandlinga fokuserar for det meste på grensene som vart etablert mellom eit nyoppretta emiratet Transjordan og det raskt ekspanderande Nejd under Ibn Saud, grunnleggaren av [...]

The Thief and the Orphan

A British observer, a Mr. C. C. Lewis, tells us two stories from Arabia in the early 1930s, a few years after Ibn Saud conquered the Holy Cities Mecca and Medina. The two stories are supposed to be examples of “punishments ferocious to European eyes”: “Not long ago a wretched Hadhrami stole a piece of [...]

Clayton’s Slave

In a continuation of my post from yesterday, Travelling with loaded rifles, here is a new entry from Clayton’s diary. It is five days later, 15th of October 1925, and he is well settled in Ibn Saud’s camp that is situated right outside Mecca. Every evening he, his aide (George Antonius) and their personal bodyguard [...]

Travelling with loaded rifles

On the 10th of October 1925 Gilbert Clayton was travelling to Ibn Saud’s camp outside of the besieged city of Jeddah in present-day Saudi Arabia. The road to the camp at Bahra was not an easy ride and in his diary Clayton describes the road itself like this: Hereafter, the road became very bad – [...]