Qatar Digital Library http://www.qdl.qa/en

Our featured collection this term is the Qatar Digital Library  – a vast archive of digitised records from the British Library covering the history of the Gulf region and much of South Asia. Archives, maps, manuscripts, sound recordings and photographs are included along with notes contextualising each record, and links in both English and Arabic.

From the home-page for Qatar Digital Library scroll down and browse results for popular searches such as ‘India Office’ or ‘photographs’, or search the collection with your own search term(s) in the ‘search this website’ box. You will find a surprising number of interesting references.  For example try entering ‘weather’ or ‘hospitals’ and then filtering your results by an additional subject, place, date or material type (archival file, book, letter, manuscript, or archival item).

You may also read essays by experts, e.g. an essay on the purpose of Sir Lewis Pelly’s journey through Afghanistan in 1860, or an overview of key moments from the history of interaction between the British and Baluchistan and Makran as illustrated through the India Office Records, or learn about the life of the first Meccan photographer, al-Sayyid ‘Abd al-Ghaffar, and how his 1880s photographs shed light on life in the holy city. Happy searching and browsing!