Diplomacy and deep sea treasures

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Diplomacy and

deep sea treasures

In this first instalment of a series of articles on Qatar’s history, the British Library’s Mark Hobbs gives us a picture of one of the country’s earliest legacies – pearls.

T

he earliest mention of how important pearl diving was to the region’s economy was found in James Buckingham’s records. In 1829, this British officer noted that the volume of the pearl trade was close to £200,000 (not adjusted for inflation). By the time John Lorimer’s extensive survey of the region was compiled and realised as the Gazetteer in 1905-06, the industry was worth £1.43 million. Over the next decade, the numbers steadily rose till they peaked in 1920, with the best harvest

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on record. We know how this story goes from here on. Soon cultured pearls from Japan started to appear in the market. Artificially mass-produced in farms, they were sold for one-third of the price of natural pearls. There was no competing with that.

Prominent pearling towns slipped into poverty and most people moved away. In fact, there was a significant population decrease between the 1920s and 1940s, which didn’t reverse till the discovery and export of oil in the 1950s. Despite this, the quality of natural pearls fished in the region was

Map of pearl diving beds along the coast of Bahrain, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, comissioned by the British offices in Bahrain

incomparable, and people were willing to pay premium prices for these until the Great Depression of 1929 sounded the death knell for the industry.

So it must come as no surprise that the mentions of the pearl trade were integral to records of British offices in the region – the one in Basra (Iraq), the political agency and, even ones in Kolkata make references to this lucrative activity in the Persian Gulf.

These records include maps of rich pearl beds in the Gulf, off the coast of Abu Dhabi and to the north of Qatar, made in the 1930s.

These were commissioned and drawn by the British for their own reference and only one of these maps (of the coast of Dubai) is in Arabic. There is no evidence of the pearl divers or boat owners ever using such maps.

They probably didn’t need map, as they came from generations of pearl divers who knew instinctively where to dive and passed down this knowledge from father to son.

Navigation was done through traditional means and so were the dives. Divers would hold their breath and gather the pearls by hand, averaging 10-12 per dive.

This meant that the deeper pearl beds weren’t exploited till the 1940s, when deep sea suits started to become available. There is evidence of renewed interest in the region’s pearling industry from other countries like France and Japan and private British companies who wanted to use this new technology to explore the deeper beds.

Communications to the British offices from the Japanese in the mid–1930s indicating their desire to fish for pearls in the Gulf were largely met with anxiety and suspicion as the British didn’t want foreign interests interfering with what rightfully belonged to the Arabs.

Documents from the Bahrain office between 1900 and 1940 contain a wealth of information on pearling. Bahrain was the largest and busiest pearling centre, with 917 boats involved in the retrieval of these precious gems, as per Lorimer’s count in 1905.

Abu Dhabi, Doha and Dubai were in close competition for second place, with 410, 350 and 335 boats respectively. Several reforms and regulations were enacted during these years to bring efficiency and accountability to the industry, like issuing licences, registering boats and dispatching hospital boats to patrol the pearling banks – diving was a dangerous affair because of the strain on the body and shark attacks

An ambitious project is currently underway at the British Library where more than 350,000 government documents relating to the Gulf, newly unearthed from the depths of the library archives, are throwing new light into the history of the region.

qatar today > october 2013 > 73