The Journal of Arabian Studies and the Development of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies

Abstract

On the occasion of the 10^th anniversary of the Journal of Arabian Studies (JAS), this article offers the first history of the field of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies (GAPS), including the origins and evolution of JAS. It begins with an overview of the origins and evolution of GAPS as a field of scholarship, then provides a detailed survey of the field’s institutional development, which can be traced back to the region’s post-war oil wealth and the large oil-funded archaeological expeditions of the 1950s–60s. This is reflected in GAPS’s first societies, centres, and journals, which catered exclusively to archaeologists, historians, and Arabists. The transformation of GAPS into a global interdisciplinary field (encompassing both humanities and social sciences) began in 1969, although it remained a fringe field within Middle East Studies. The expansion of GAPS into a mainstream field in its own right began in the 2000s, reaching critical mass in the 2010s, resulting in the establishment of the Association for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies (AGAPS) and the launch of JAS. In the past decade, GAPS also expanded beyond Middle East Studies to embrace Indian Ocean Studies. The article concludes with an overview of JAS’s first decade: 2011–20.

Key words:

• Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies
• Journal of Arabian Studies

1 Introduction

This issue marks the 10^th anniversary of the Journal of Arabian Studies –– the third incarnation of a journal that began as Arabian Studies (University of Cambridge, 1974–90) and then New Arabian Studies (University of Exeter, 1994–2004). While the scope of these predecessors was limited to the humanities and mostly pre-20^th century in order to avoid “controversial topics” like contemporary politics and “purely scientific topics” such as economics,¹ JAS broke new ground by incorporating social science subjects and extending its scope to the present day. JAS is the leading international refereed scholarly journal focusing on the Arabian Peninsula, its surrounding waters, and their connections with the western Indian Ocean (from West India to East Africa), from antiquity to the present day, in all disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences. For the past year, it has been included in Scopus, the world’s largest citation index of peer-reviewed journals –– a step that only happens after the most rigorous external scrutiny of a journal.

In this survey, we discuss the origins of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies as an academic field and the scholarship boom that has coincided with the lifespan of this journal and its predecessors. We then explain the institutional development of the field from the 1950s through to today before concluding with our reflections on the journal’s first decade.

2 The academic study of the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula

2.1 Origins and early days

While scholars and others have been writing about the Arabian Peninsula since the days of Herodotus,² if not earlier, the first modern scientific studies of the Arabian Peninsula were unpublished Dutch East India Company reports on Mocha and Oman from 1614–74, followed by two published Dutch accounts by François Valentijn on Mocha (1726) and Cornelis Eyks on Oman (1766).³ The first institutional academic study by subject matter experts was the royal Danish scientific expedition to Arabia in 1761–7,⁴ which resulted in Carsten Niebuhr’s two books on the Arabian Peninsula published during 1772–78 –– the first attempt at a comprehensive scientific survey of the entire peninsula.⁵ Over the next two centuries, an increasing number of scholarly publications appeared internationally, the majority written by lay experts –– most being Western officials stationed in, or travellers to, the region who had a personal interest in its archaeology, history, society, or geography. Examples include the archaeological investigations of Bahrain by Edward Durand and Francis Prideaux; the ethnographic and historical studies of South Yemen by Frederick M. Hunter, of Kuwait by Harold Dickson, and of eastern Arabia by Samuel Zwemer and Paul Harrison; the historical works on Oman by Vincenzo Maurizi, George Percy Badger, and Samuel B. Miles, on Saudi Arabia by St John Philby, on the Trucial States (UAE) by Sir Donald Hawley, on Yemen by Daniel van der Meulen, Harold Ingrams, and Eric Macro, and on the Gulf in general by Sir Lewis Pelly, Sir Arnold Wilson, and Sir Rupert Hay; the geographical and historical studies by Albrecht Zehme and Aloys Sprenger; the geographical explorations of and writings on Arabia by James Raymond Wellsted, Henry Whitelock, Charles Huber, Charles Forster, Bertram Thomas, and Sir Wilfred Thesiger; the photographs and travel accounts of Yemen and the Gulf by Herman Burchardt; as well as the famous travel accounts by Ludovico di Varthema, Joseph Pitts, Jean de la Roque, Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, William Heude, G. Forster Sadleir, Adolph von Wrede, Heinrich von Maltzan, Gifford Palgrave, Carlo Guarmani, Lady Anne Blunt, Charles Doughty, Sir Richard Burton, John F. Keane, Robert E. Cheesman, T.E. Lawrence, Hugh Scott, and Alan Villiers.⁶ The (British) government of India also produced a number of important scholarly publications in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, not least John Lorimer’s Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, ‘Oman, and Central Arabia (1908, 1915) and Jerome Saldanha’s 17-volume Précis series on the Gulf (1903–08), but they were secret at the time and did not become available to the public until 1950s–70s.⁷

Within the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula, a smaller number of Arab and Persian writers (mainly historians) were active –– such as Husain Ibn Ghannam in the early 19^th century; Uthman Ibn Bishr and Humayd Ibn Ruzayq in the mid-19^th century; Othman Al-Basri in the late 19^th century; Mahmoud Al-Alusi, Khalid Al-Bassam, Abdul-Rahman Al-Khayri, Nasser Al-Khairi, Khalifa Al-Nabhani, Nur al-Din Al-Salimi, Muhammad Ali Sadid Al-Saltana (Kababi), Muhammad Al-Tajir, Abdulaziz Al-Rashid, Yousef Al-Qinaʿi, and Husain Nasif in the early 20^th century; and Salah Al-Bakri, Muhammad bin Nur al-Din Al-Salimi, Saif Al-Shamlan, Salim bin Hamud Al-Siyabi, Abdullah Al-Jarafi, Abd al-Wasi Al-Wasiʿi, Khayr Al-Din Al-Zirkali, and ʿAbd al-Haqq Naqshabandi in the mid-20^th century. While they were naturally familiar with each others’ work within their own circles, and they and their works circulated around the India Ocean through the Arab diaspora,⁸ they were somewhat disconnected from their European and American counterparts before the mid-20^th century due to the relatively poor access each had to the others’ work. Even though a fair number of writers from the Arabian Peninsula published their books in Cairo, Bombay (Mumbai), Singapore, and Batavia (Jakarta), their works were acquired by just a handful of libraries outside the Middle East, India, and the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago. Another problem was that some books were available only in manuscript form and were not published until long after the author’s death. Finally, only a handful of the Arabic books on Arabia were translated and published in the West, such as Ibn Raziq’s History of the Imams and Sayyids of Oman (covering 661–1856 AD), which George Percy Badger translated into English and the Hakluyt Society in London published in 1871.⁹

The study of the Arabian Peninsula as a modern field of professional scholars based at academic institutions (universities, academies, museums, libraries) emerged during the mid-19^th to mid-20^th century. In the West, this took place within the context of Oriental Studies, where the field was dominated by humanities scholars –– Arabists (specialising in the language and classical texts of the Arabian Peninsula), epigraphers, archaeologists, historians, and ethnographers –– as well as geographers. Pioneering scholars included the Arabist-explorer Georg August Wallin; Arabists Michael Jan de Goeje, Julius Euting, C. Snouck Hurgronje, Robert B. Serjeant, George Rentz, A.F.L. Beeston, Jacques Ryckmans, and R. Bayly Winder; Arabian epigraphists David Heinrich Müller and Gonzague Ryckmans; geographers Carl Ritter and Alexander Melamid; Arabist-archaeologists Eduard Glaser and Joseph Halévy; archaeologists Theodore and Mabel Bent, D.G. Hogarth, Ernest Mackay, Peter Bruce Cornwall, Gertrude Caton-Thompson, Frank P. Albright, Richard Le Baron Bowen Jr., Ray L. Cleveland, Wendell Phillips, P.V. Glob, Geoffrey Bibby, Holger Kapel, Tareq Rajab, Abdulrahman Al-Ansary, and Gerald Lankester Harding; anthropologists Alois Musil, Peter Lienhardt, Klaus Ferdinand, Jette Bang, and Henny Harald Hansen; ethnomusicologist Poul Rovsing Olsen; and the historians J.B. Kelly, Stephen Hemsley Longrigg, and Ameen Rihani.¹⁰

2.1.1 The 1960s—1970s

The 1960s–70s witnessed an expansion of scholarship on the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula beyond the humanities to include the first social scientists and legal scholars to analyse the region’s contemporary affairs –– an expansion that was part of the post-war development of Middle Eastern Studies (and Area Studies more broadly). Pioneers included the legal scholars Husain Al-Baharna and Herbert Liebesny; sociologists Muhammad Al-Rumaihi and Jean-Jacques Berreby; architect and urban geographer Saba George Shiber; political scientists M.S. Agwani, John Duke Anthony, Fred Halliday, Jacqueline Ismael, Majid Khadduri, Enver Koury, Helen Lackner, David E. Long, Emile Nakhleh, Tim Niblock, James Piscatori, Muhammad Sadik, and Jean-Louis Soulié; security specialists Anthony Cordesman and Alvin J. Cottrell; economists J.S. Birks, Ragei El-Mallakh, Kevin G. Fenelon, William Snavely, Kamal S. Sayegh, and Clive A. Sinclair; and the diplomat Lucien Champenois.¹¹

These social scientists were joined by another generation of pioneering humanities scholars during this period, including some of the first Arab PhD graduates of Western universities to specialise on the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula: the historians Ahmad Abu-Hakima, Morsy Abdullah, Ali Khalifa Al-Kuwari, Yaqub Abdulaziz Al-Rashid, Calvin Allen, Abdul Amir Amin, Raymond D. Bathurst, Robin Bidwell, R. Michael Burrell, Briton Cooper Busch, Frank A. Clements, R.J. Gavin, Frauke Heard-Bey, Friedrich Kochwasser, Zaka Hanna Kour, Robert Landen, Joseph J. Malone, John Marlowe, Elizabeth Monroe, J.E. Peterson, Christian Julien Robin, Penelope Tuson, J.C. Wilkinson, H.V.F. Winstone, Hikoichi Yajima, and Rosemarie Said Zahlan; bibliographer/historians Derek Hopwood and Heather Bleaney; architectural historian Geoffrey King; archaeologist-cum-historian Richard I. Lawless; archaeologists Beatrice de Cardi, E.C.L. During Caspers, Paolo Costa, John E. Dayton, Brian Doe, Monique Kervran, Peter J. Parr, and Donald Witcomb; Arabists Bruce Ingham, Theodore Prochazka Jr, and G. Rex Smith; epigraphist A.G. Lundin; anthropologists Paul Bonnenfant, Abdalla Bujra, Donald Cole, Fuad Khuri, Colette Le Cour-Grandmaison, Gerald Obermeyer, and Louise E. Sweet; ethnomusicologist Simon Jargy; and the geographer Keith McLachlan.¹²

The emergence of this nascent community of pioneering Gulf and Arabian Studies specialists eventually resulted in the first international conferences on the region, which began in 1969. In January of that year, the newly-formed Arabian Society at the Institute of Archaeology, University of London, convened a one-day seminar at which papers were given on the archaeology of the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula by John Dayton, Peter Parr, Edmond Sollberger, Margaret Drower, and Brian Doe. This was followed by another one-day Arabian Society seminar in June on the archaeology, history, and society of the region at the Middle East Centre at Cambridge, at which six papers were presented by Robert Serjeant, Walter Dostal, David Whitehouse, Raymond D. Bathurst, Beatrice de Cardi, and Brian Doe. Finally, in March 1969, the Middle East centres at Oxford and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London convened the world’s first interdisciplinary conference on the Arabian Peninsula encompassing both the humanities and the social sciences. Presenters included the Arabist George Rentz; bibliographer/historian Derek Hopwood; historians Ahmad Abu-Hakima, Raymond D. Bathurst, R. Michael Burrell, J.B. Kelly, and J.C. Wilkinson; anthropologist Peter Lienhardt; political scientists Abbas Kelidar and Frank Stoakes; and the economists Edith Penrose, Yusif Sayigh, and Thomas Shea.

The next year, 1970, the Arabian Society convened its third seminar, now called the Seminar for Arabian Studies, at Cambridge’s Middle East Centre on the archaeology, history, Arabic, and epigraphy of the region. Key presenters included the Arabists Robert Serjeant, A.F.L. Beeston, and Jacques Ryckmans; Arabian epigraphist A.G. Lundin; historians Morsy Abdullah, Elizabeth Monroe, and J.C. Wilkinson; archaeologists Geoffrey Bibby, John Dayton, Peter Parr, Beatrice de Cardi, Brian Doe, Paolo Costa, Wilfred G. Lambert, and E.C.L. During Caspers; and the museum consultant and amateur archaeological historian Michael Rice. The Seminar for Arabian Studies has been held annually ever since and is the longest-running conference series on the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula.

The next major development was in June 1972, when the Center for Mediterranean Studies in Rome convened a four-day conference on the changing balance of power in the Gulf in the aftermath of Britain’s military withdrawal from the region the previous year, as well as recent social and economic changes. Presenters included academics, senior officials, bankers and oilmen from Britain and America.

The number of conferences gathered pace through the 1970s, culminating in 1979 with three important conferences. The first was the annual Seminar for Arabian Studies, held in July at the Middle East Centre at Cambridge –– the longest-running annual conference series on the region.¹³ The second was another July conference on the theme of “Strategies of Social and Economic Development in the Arab Gulf” convened by the newly-established Centre for Arab Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter¹⁴ –– the first of what would become the second-longest-running annual conference series on the region. The third was the Gulf Development Forum convened in Abu Dhabi in December: a privately-run symposium for intellectuals in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states to discuss development issues facing the region. This would become the third-longest-running annual conference series on the region, hosted by a different GCC state each year.

2.1.2 Major collaborative interdisciplinary book projects of the 1970s and early 1980s

As a result of these activities, the 1970s saw the appearance of the first collaborative interdisciplinary books on the Arabian Peninsula, beginning with the Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 1 (1971), containing the papers of the 1970 seminar: the first in what would become a key annual publication series in the field. This was followed by The Arabian Peninsula: Society and Politics (1972) edited by Derek Hopwood of Oxford’s Middle East Centre, containing the papers of the 1969 Oxford/SOAS conference.¹⁵ The same year, the findings of the 1972 Rome conference were published as The Changing Balance of Power in the Persian Gulf (1972) edited by Elizabeth Monroe, also from Oxford’s Middle East Centre.¹⁶ Finally, 1972 saw the publication of Muhammad Sadik and William Snavely’s jointly-authored Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates: Colonial Past, Present Problems, and Future Prospects, an interdisciplinary study encompassing politics, economics, and history.¹⁷

The growing number of collaborative interdisciplinary book projects in the 1970s culminated in the publication of a series of major edited volumes during 1980–82: three years marking a watershed moment for scholarship on the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula.

One was the 729-page volume The Persian Gulf States: A General Survey (1980) edited by Alvin J. Cottrell, C. Edmund Bosworth, R. Michael Burrell, Keith McLachlan, and Roger Savory. At the time, this was the most significant interdisciplinary collaborative humanities and social sciences production on the Gulf since Lorimer’s 3,577-page Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, ‘Oman, and Central Arabia (1908, 1915), although it would soon be rivalled by Paul Bonnenfant’s 1,135-page La Péninsule Arabique d’aujourd’hui (1982), discussed below. The Persian Gulf States contains 30 chapters and appendices on eastern Arabia, southern Iraq, and southern Iran by the Arabists Bruce Ingham and George Michael Wickens; bibliographer/historian Heather Bleaney; historians C. Edmund Bosworth, R. Michael Burrell, Roger Savory, and Malcom Yapp; art historian Robert Hillenbrand; anthropologist Michael Fischer; geographers Michael Bonine, Gerald Blake, Brian Clark, Keith McLachlan, Richard Lawless, and David Imrie; political scientists James E. Dougherty and Ralph H. Magnus; and the security specialists Alvin J. Cottrell, Robert J. Hanks, and Frank T. Bray.¹⁸

The other major collaborative volume to come out in 1980 was Social and Economic Development in the Arab Gulf edited by Tim Niblock, based on papers presented at the 1979 Exeter conference.¹⁹ Authors include the political scientists Muhammad Al-Rumaihi, Fred Halliday, Emile Nakhleh, and Tim Niblock; historians J.C. Wilkinson, Rosemarie Said Zahlan, and Joseph J. Malone; anthropologist Donald Cole; media scholar Naomi Sakr; economists J.S. Birks, Clive A. Sinclair, and John Townsend; and the geographer Keith McLachlan. This was the first of the centre’s conference-based series to be published, initially with Croom Helm (nine volumes) and later with the University of Exeter Press (three volumes) and Ithaca Press (three volumes). This volume was followed in 1981–82 by two more interdisciplinary, conference-based books edited by Tim Niblock. The first, State, Society and Economy in Saudi Arabia (1981), was based on the 1980 Exeter conference on the same subject, and brought together several scholars already mentioned ­(John Duke Anthony, J.S. Birks, Fred Halliday, Derek Hopwood, and Clive A. Sinclair) with others, including the Middle East economist Rodney Wilson, oil economist Paul Stevens, historians Peter Sluglett and Marion Farouk-Sluglett, and the anthropologists Ugo Fabietti and Shirley Kay.²⁰ The second book, Iraq: The Contemporary State (1982), based on the 1981 conference, was co-sponsored by the Centre for Arab Gulf Studies at the University of Basra and contained a noteworthy balance of Iraqi and Western scholars, including several of those already mentioned as well as political scientists Saad Jawad, Barry Rubin and Joe Stork, and Women Studies scholar Amal Al-Sharqi.²¹ The Exeter volumes, together with the other books discussed in this section, played a critical role in establishing Gulf Studies in the West, while drawing in a significant number of Arab scholars from the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq.

A further major collaborative book project to appear in 1981–82 was the four-volume “Security in the Persian Gulf” project commissioned by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), prompted by regional security concerns after the Islamic revolution in Iran, followed by the outbreak of the Iraq-Iran war:

• Security in the Persian Gulf I: Domestic Political Factors (1981) edited by Shahram Chubin

• Security in the Persian Gulf II: Sources of Inter-State Conflict (1981) by Robert Litwak

• Security in the Persian Gulf III: Modernization, Political Development and Stability (1982) by Avi Plascov

• Security in the Persian Gulf IV: The Role of Outside Powers (1982) by Shahram Chubin

A seminal contribution to the study of Gulf politics and international relations, these four volumes were subsequently also published as a single 634-page compilation in 1982. They, together with Cottrell’s Persian Gulf States (1980) and Niblock’s Social and Economic Development in the Arab Gulf (1980), merited a major review article in the top international affairs journal World Politics, bringing the region to the attention of mainstream political science.²²

The final major collaborative book project to come out in the early 1980s was the 1,135-page La Péninsule Arabique d’aujourd’hui [The Arabian Peninsula Today] (1982) edited by Paul Bonnenfant of the Institut de Recherches et d’Études sur les Mondes Arabes et Musulmans (IREMAM) in Aix-en-Provence. It contains 43 chapters spread across two volumes. Volume 1 offers a series of thematic chapters on geopolitics, Islam, oil, economic development, demographics, migration, ideology, modernisation, and foreign aid, while Volume 2 contains multidisciplinary country studies on North Yemen, South Yemen, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia. The work’s 30 contributors include the anthropologists Paul Bonnenfant, Colette Le Cour Grandmaison, Anie Montigny-Kozlowska (later Anie Montigny), and Jon Swanson; sociologist Gilbert Grandguillaume; art historian Lucien Golvin; historians Frauke Heard-Bey, Jean-Louis Miège, Gerald Obermeyer, Christian Julien Robin, and J.C. Wilkinson; geographers Hermann A. Escher and André Bourgey; demographers Philippe Fargues, Serge de Klebnikoff, and Hans Steffen; political scientists Olivier Carré, Pierre Rondot, and Yves Schemeil; political economist Michel Chatelus; economists Olivier Blanc, Geneviève Cayre, Bruno Le Cour Grandmaison, and Traute Wohlers-Scharf; the international relations scholars, Henri Labrousse, Pierre Marthelot, and Jean-Louis Soulié; Bahrain specialist Antoine Aubry; Yemen specialists Étienne Renaud and Michel Tuscherer; the diplomat Lucien Champenois; and the engineering scholar Jacques Longchampt.²³

The above overview is intended to chart the broadening group of scholars writing on the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf, who would eventually coalesce into an international scholarly community, the story of which will be told in Section 3 below. The intellectual developments within the field, including the development of national narratives by the state-funded research centres surveyed in Section 3 below, are beyond the scope of this overview, but are discussed in a number of works listed in the Bibliography.²⁴

Despite the slowly growing number of scholars writing on the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula, including the path-breaking collaborative volumes discussed above, the region still remained the least written about part of the Middle East. As a result, it was long regarded as a fringe field within Middle Eastern Studies. Fahad Bishara has best articulated the implications of this for Gulf historiography, although his comments can be applied more broadly to Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies as a whole:

It is no secret that the historiography of the Gulf has long been the poor cousin to its counterparts in Turkey, the Levant, and North Africa. In its representation in both academic publications and academic conferences, the Gulf has trailed far behind other regions of the Middle East, as a subfield of Middle Eastern Studies in general and in the field of Middle Eastern history in particular. For those working on Gulf history, the jeremiad has by now become well-rehearsed: the Gulf is absent from Middle Eastern history surveys until the discovery of oil. The pre-oil past has been declared largely irrelevant to the established Middle Eastern history narrative. … . As such, it was marginal and hardly worth serious consideration; from early on, surveys on the history of the Middle East preferred to leave it out altogether, and when they did include it there was (again) little beyond the arrival of oil companies and migrant workers in the 20^th century. The 19^th-century history of the Gulf, to say nothing of the preceding centuries, has been hardly worth a footnote in a narrative that has been dominated by the Ottoman and post-Ottoman Arab world. Scholars had long located the principal anchors of modern Middle Eastern history –– empire, scholarly circles, nationalist movements, and even colonialism –– elsewhere.²⁵

This situation slowly began to change after the scholarship boom in Yemeni Studies in the 1970s and Gulf Studies in the 2010s, which we discuss next.

2.2 The scholarship boom in Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies

Historically, the Arabian Peninsula had long been the least-studied part of the Middle East. This state of affairs slowly began to change in the late 20^th century, starting with Yemen in the 1970s. When the first issue of Arabian Studies appeared in 1974, Yemeni Studies was at the start of a boom that would catapult it into the mainstream, leaving the rest of the Arabian Peninsula in its wake. Consider, for instance, the rise in English-language books in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Publication of scholarly English-language books on Yemen in the humanities and social sciences, 1950–2000²⁶

The boom began in the humanities, then expanded to the social sciences in subsequent years. The rise in publications was due in large part to the fact that Yemen, from the 1970s onwards, was a relatively easy and affordable country for researchers to gain access to and conduct research in. This happy state of affairs continued for 40 years, until the start of the civil war in late 2014. Yemen has, once again, become a difficult country to gain access to and conduct research in, and scholarship on contemporary Yemen has declined as a result.

In sharp contrast to pre-2014 Yemen, access to the GCC states by international scholars was difficult and expensive. Research visas were hard or impossible to obtain because the GCC governments regarded most research topics in the social sciences and humanities as politically sensitive. The perceived sensitivity of seemingly innocuous topics stemmed from the poor understanding GCC government officials had about the role of scholars and scholarly research. They typically viewed research requests on almost any contemporary topic with suspicion, asking “why does this foreigner want to know these things?” Those who could obtain research visas found the high cost of living (hotels, transportation) prohibitive without research funding, which was scarce. As a result, relatively few international scholars, especially foreign PhD students, managed to conduct fieldwork in the GCC states in the 20^th century. Within the GCC states themselves, governments sent a few of their own citizens each year to universities overseas to pursue PhDs in Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies on “approved topics”, but, after their graduation and return home, their scholarly output was low relative to their international counterparts. This was partly because the primary duty of professors at national universities in the GCC states was to teach, so they were burdened with heavy teaching loads (typically four courses a term, 12 classes a week). They were also concerned about government censorship or job loss, should they publish anything that deviated from the national narrative or touched on a politically-sensitive topic. This helps explains why the majority of GCC PhD graduates (especially from British and American universities) in the 20^th century chose not to publish their dissertations/theses on the Gulf. The result of all this was a relatively low level of scholarly output on the GCC states by scholars both in and outside the Gulf. Although scholarship on the GCC states did slowly rise, eastern Arabia remained the least researched and written about part of the Middle East –– both in terms of publications and of papers presented at the annual conference of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) –– until the late 1990s.

From the late 1990s onwards, US and US-affiliated universities began to open in the GCC states –– starting with the American University of Sharjah (1997), then the American University of Kuwait (2003), Georgetown University in Qatar (2005), and New York University Abu Dhabi (2010) –– which protected the academic freedom of its professors and provided a base for visiting scholars.²⁷ Professors at these universities had time for research and were protected from government censorship, while a growing number of scholars were able to visit the GCC states for research. This eventually influenced national universities in the GCC states to accord their professors time for research and the GCC governments to permit greater academic freedom as well (at least for publications outside the country). Today, research and international peer-reviewed publication is a requirement at most universities in the GCC states. The gradual opening up to research and researchers corresponded with these states’ growing global importance and the public’s growing interest in them, which, in turn, attracted more scholars to the field. The increased number of scholars working on the GCC states is perhaps most noticeable at the annual MESA conference, where the number of panels on the GCC states has increased from one or two in the 20^th century to ten by 2020.

However, the Arab Spring of 2011–12 interrupted this process for some social scientists (mainly political scientists), prompting a return to the old restrictions on those who write critically about politically-sensitive topics, as Kristian Coates Ulrichsen explains:

The increasing scholarly interest in Gulf Studies has, however, clashed with a decreasing threshold of tolerance for academic — or any other — criticism, however well-grounded or rooted in facts and evidence. Moreover, changes to the nature of scholarly engagement and academic analysis in free-to-access online platforms have intersected with the rise of the Gulf States as regional powers invested heavily in shaping the direction and pace of change in the post-Arab Spring Middle East. While this has created opportunities for scholars and students to engage in and contribute to public debate of timely and relevant issues, it also has landed many academics on security lists in individual countries and, since 2015, on the new regionwide list. When the GCC-wide list was announced, it was portrayed as a “unified terrorist blacklist,” but observers wondered if the definition would stretch to encompass critical voices. Sure enough, within weeks, reports began to appear of scholars and even students being denied entrance to countries they previously had no problems accessing.²⁸

As a result, field research in the Gulf for those writing on politically-sensitive topics is once again challenging. Scholars working in or visiting the GCC states are vulnerable to deportation or imprisonment, as illustrated by the case of Matthew Hedges in the UAE in 2018, which sent shockwaves through the Gulf Studies community.²⁹ The result is that some scholars working on politically-sensitive topics have begun to self-censor and some who do not risk being blacklisted in some of the GCC states. Despite this, scholarship across the humanities and social sciences within the GCC states and internationally continues to grow.

As more scholars were drawn to Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies, some began to incorporate the field within Indian Ocean Studies –– a process JAS embraced by including the Indian Ocean within its scope from the beginning. Others began publishing in mainstream Middle East Studies journals and disciplinary journals, helping to integrate Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies into wider bodies of literature. The result was an eventual boom in publications on the GCC states, which was just beginning when the first issue of JAS appeared in 2011. Take, for instance, what had long been the least-studied country in the GCC: Qatar.

The first English-language scholarly book on Qatar to appear in the humanities and social sciences was published in 1967.³⁰ By end of the 1970s, there were four books.³¹ By the end of the 1980s, there were eight. By the end of the 1990s, there were 11 –– the smallest number of any country in the Middle East. By contrast, around 350 English-language books had been published on Yemen in the humanities and social sciences by that time. The 2000s marked the start of serious global interest in the GCC states. In that decade, the number of books on Qatar more than doubled from 11 to 26. The 2010s were the decade in which the GCC states became global players, and global scholarly interest increased accordingly. This is when the boom in scholarship took off: the number of books on Qatar more than tripled that decade, from 26 to 83. In the first nine months of 2020 alone, eight books were published, four times the annual average of a decade earlier –– see Figure 2.

Figure 2: Publication of scholarly English-language books on Qatar in the humanities and social sciences, 1967–2020³²

But this was just the tip of the iceberg: for every book on Qatar, several more article-length studies appeared, twelve of them in this journal. Qatar and the other GCC states now enjoy the same scholarly attention as Yemen and the rest of the Middle East and Indian Ocean. Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies, as a whole, is now mainstream. This is reflected in the large number of active publication series in the field today: 83, most launched since 2000 (see Appendix A).

The rise of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies within Middle Eastern Studies and its incorporation into Indian Ocean Studies is nicely symbolized by the front cover of the latest issue of the International Journal of Middle East Studies, which features a historical photograph of a Gulf dhow off the coast of Kenya in the early to mid-20^th century— see Figure 3.³³ The image is from the lead article in that issue by Fahad Bishara, who seeks “to re-situate the Gulf historically as part of the Indian Ocean world rather than the terrestrial Middle East.”³⁴

Figure 3: The cover of IJMES 52.3 (August 2020), featuring a Gulf dhow off the coast of Kenya

While the boom in contemporary studies on the GCC states is a natural reflection of the states’ growing global importance over the same time, the rise in historical studies since 2015 was facilitated by the launch of the Qatar Digital Library (www.QDL.qa) in late 2014, which has placed two million pages of the British Library’s historical Gulf collection online to date. For the past three years, one of JAS’s editors, James Onley, has led the Qatar National Library’s search for more historical material for the QDL in the BL and other archives in Britain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Turkey, India, and the Gulf region itself. The QDL is now the largest digital archive on the Middle East. Its focus on the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula makes this region the easiest part of the Middle East and Indian Ocean to conduct archival research on, from anywhere in the world.

3 The institutional development of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies

While Gulf and Arabian Peninsula as a modern academic field of study began in the mid-19^th century, the field’s institutional development as an organised community of scholars (with societies, centres, publication series, activities, and large team-based projects) did not begin until the mid-20^th century. What follows below is a narrative of this development, focusing on the major projects, societies, centres, and journals. A more detailed, chronological list of these developments can be found in Appendix B.

3.1 Origins and early days

The origins of the field’s institutional development can be traced back to the dawn of the oil era in Arabian Peninsula and the sudden availability of funding for research, starting with a series of large archaeological expeditions, which, in turn, generated the momentum that led directly to the foundation of the first societies, centres, activities, and publication series. The first large archaeological expeditions were organised by Wendell Phillips, a wealthy oil-concession holder with a passion for archaeology who founded the American Foundation for the Study of Man in 1949, the non-profit organisation through which he funded archaeological expeditions on the Arabian Peninsula and published their findings. In 1950, Phillips assembled a team of professional archaeologists led by Frank P. Albright for four highly-publicized expeditions to the Aden Protectorate (1950–1), North Yemen (1951–2), and Oman (1952–3, 1958–60). The discoveries, press coverage, and rapid publications by Phillips, Albright, and their team in the world’s first book series on the Arabian Peninsula greatly popularised the academic study of the Arabia Peninsula in the post-war West.³⁵ Archaeologists working on other parts of the Middle East took notice and turned their attention to the Arabian Peninsula, where archaeology had made few inroads.

Soon after, the Danish archaeological expeditions to the Gulf began, which were to have an even greater impact. They were initiated by Peter V. Glob, Professor of Archaeology at Åarhus University and Director of the Prehistoric Museum (now the Moesgård Museum) in Åarhus, Denmark. He was assisted by Geoffrey Bibby, a Briton who had worked for the Iraq Petroleum Company in Bahrain during 1947–9 and had been impressed by the Dilmun burial mounds on the island. While these had been investigated by archaeologists in small-scale digs,³⁶ they had never been the subject of a large, team-based archaeological expedition and no one had been able to find the settlements of the people who built them. The expedition became possible because the Ruler of Bahrain agreed to contribute funds towards it, which was unheard of for archaeological expeditions at the time. Later, the Bahrain Petroleum Company, Danish Scientific Foundation, and Carlsberg Foundation also contributed funding. This funding model laid the foundations for modern, post-war archaeology in the GCC states.³⁷ Glob and Bibby’s expeditions to Bahrain (1953–65, 1970, 1978) generated considerable interest across eastern Arabia, leading to additional government-funded expeditions to Qatar (1956–64, 1973–4), Kuwait (1958–63), Abu Dhabi (1958–72), Saudi Arabia (1962–65, 1968–9), and Oman (1972–3).³⁸ In the Danish expedition’s first year, it helped found the world’s first Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies society in 1953: the Bahrain Historical and Archeological Society, with its research library, event series, and scholarly journal, Dilmun: Journal of the Bahrain Historical and Archaeological Society, launched in 1971. The society’s first public event was an exhibition of the expedition’s findings in Bahrain. In the late 1950s, the expedition was joined by a Danish ethnomusicologist in Bahrain (Poul Rovsing Olsen) and two Danish anthropologists in Qatar (Klaus Ferdinand and Jette Bang), followed in 1960 by another Danish anthropologist in Bahrain (Henny Harald Hansen).³⁹

The findings of the Danish expeditions in the Gulf were showcased to the world at the Third International Conference on Asian Archaeology in Manama in March 1970 on the occasion of the opening of the first Bahrain Museum. The conference was well attended by government representatives from the other Gulf states and archaeologists from the region and the West –– about 120 people in total. In his report on the conference, Richard Barnett, the Keeper of Western Asiatic Antiquities at the British Museum, explained:

The conference [was] opened by H.H. Sheikh Issa [the Ruler of Bahrain]. … . Particular stress … . was laid on the archaeology of the Persian Gulf. This is a subject that has now, largely as a result of this congress, emerged as an increasingly important field of study in its own right.

This accent on the archaeology of the Gulf and of the immediately adjacent regions was of course assisted, if not created in a favourable climate, by the presence of the Danish archaeological expedition led by Professor P.V. Glob and Dr G. Bibby, whose successful excavations at Barbar, at Qalaat el Bahrein, and at various of the Bahrein burial mounds, were visited by the congressists in the sessions. … . A most welcome aspect of the conference was the active and lively participation of Arab scholars and authorities at all levels. … . After the conclusion of the congress, a select party of 14 was most generously invited by H.H. the Ruler of Abu Dhabi to visit Abu Dhabi and the Danish excavations there.⁴⁰

The conference did for eastern Arabian archaeology what the American Foundation for the Study of Man had done for southern Arabian archaeology: it published its findings, raised global attention, attracted more archaeologists to the field, and galvanized local government support for more archaeological missions to the region.⁴¹ The 1970s thus saw the Danes joined by missions from Britain, France, and Iraq (see Appendix B).

Another factor making these missions possible was oil, as Geoffrey Bibby explains:

There is hardly a government or an oil company in the Arabian Gulf which has not repeatedly come to our aid with grants of money, with loan of houses and tents, of transport and heavy equipment, of maps and instruments and air photographs, with analysis of samples or with radio-carbon dating.⁴²

Eastern Arabia’s new-found oil wealth, combined with the strong interest in Arabian history and heritage generated by the American and Danish expeditions, motivated local governments to establish antiquities departments and to fund a growing number of archaeological missions from Denmark and other countries. This created a momentum, eventually leading to the establishment of the first museums in Kuwait (1957, 1964), Aden (1966), Saudi Arabia (1966, 1974, 1978), Bahrain (1970), Abu Dhabi (1970), Fujairah (1970), Dubai (1971), Oman (1974, 1978), and Qatar (1975),⁴³ and to the foundation of the Archaeological Historical Society of Saudi Arabia (1970) and the Historical Association of Oman (1971). For example, in 1973–4, the Qatari government funded a further Danish expedition as well as a British archaeological survey of Qatar (led by Beatrice de Cardi) to collect more information and material for Qatar’s first National Museum, which opened in 1975.⁴⁴

The new-found oil wealth and interest in Arabian history and heritage also led to the establishment of the world’s first Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies research centres and de facto national archives: in Abu Dhabi, Doha, Riyadh, Basra, Ṣanʿāʾ, and Aden. The first of these was the Documents and Research Bureau, founded by the Abu Dhabi government in 1968, later renamed the Center for Documentation and Research (CDR) in 1972, and housed for many years in Qasr al-Hosn, the old fort of Abu Dhabi. Its first Director was the Emirati historian, Morsy Abdullah. The CDR was a de facto national archive, library, and research centre dedicated initially to Trucial States history, and later to Gulf and Arabian Peninsula history, with its own book series and programme of lectures and conferences. One of the JAS’s Editorial Board members, Frauke Heard-Bey, was a founding member of this centre. Today, it is the National Archives of the UAE.

Next came the King Abdulaziz Foundation for Research and Archives (known as Al-Dara) in Riyadh, founded by the Saudi government in 1972. Al-Dara houses a de facto national archive, research library, and research department dedicated to Saudi history and heritage, convenes lectures and occasional conferences, funds research, and publishes its own journal, Al-Dara, launched in 1975, along with a history magazine and occasional books. It also maintains a number of subordinate research centres established over the years, including the King Salman bin Abdulaziz Center for the Restoration and Preservation of Historical Materials (2005), the History of Mecca Center (2008), the Medina Research and Studies Centre (2011), the Red Sea and Western Saudi Arabia History Center (2013), and the Saudi Digital History Center (2018).

1972 also saw the establishment of Yemen’s first national studies centre: the Yemen Center for Studies and Research (YCSR) in Ṣanʿāʾ, founded by the Yemeni poet and writer, Abdulaziz al-Maqaleh. The YCSR is a semi-autonomous research centre affiliated with Ṣanʿāʾ University, which maintains a research library and archive. It documents, researches, publishes, and convenes public lectures on Yemeni history and heritage.

Three more research centres followed in 1974. The first was the Centre for Arab Gulf Studies at the University of Basra, the world’s first interdisciplinary Gulf Studies institution, encompassing both the humanities and social sciences. It was home to a renowned archive and research library that, sadly, was destroyed in the 2003 Iraq war. It maintains a large research staff, a programme of lectures and occasional conferences, and publishes the oldest interdisciplinary journal on the Gulf, the Majallat al-Khalīj al-ʿArabī [Arab Gulf Journal], launched in 1973 and now in its 47^th year.⁴⁵ The timing of the centre’s establishment suggests that it was in recognition of the rising importance of the Arab states of the Gulf due to their new-found oil wealth.

The second centre to be established in 1974 was the Documents and Research Department at the Amiri Diwan in Qatar, founded by the Amir, Shaikh Khalifa Al Thani, as a de facto national archive to collect and preserve historical documents on Qatar, and to publish books on Qatari history –– beginning with an Arabic translation of John Lorimer’s Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, ‘Oman, and Central Arabia (1908, 1915) in 1975. The department was also given responsibility to review and approve histories of Qatar submitted for publication in the country but, in practice, it has rarely approved such books, preventing Qatari scholars from publishing in their own country.

Finally, in Aden in 1974, the South Yemeni government established the Yemeni Center for Cultural Research, Archaeology, and Museums to document and preserve the history and heritage of the country.

Another major development was the establishment of ongoing French archaeological missions in the Arabian Peninsula –– in Yemen (1972), Qatar (1976), the UAE (1977), Bahrain (1977), and Kuwait (1983) –– funded, not by oil, but by France’s Ministère des Affaires Étrangères as part of its strategy of cultural diplomacy. Annual funding applications for these missions are vetted by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, which submits its recommendations to the Ministère des Affaires Étrangères. The missions form part of a global network of 70 such missions around the world supported by the French government. They, along with the Danish archaeological expeditions and a growing number of British expeditions (most led by Beatrice de Cardi) and Iraqi expeditions,⁴⁶ contributed indirectly to the launch of a number of government-run archaeology journals in the Arabian Peninsula:

• Atlal: Journal of Saudi Arabian Archaeology (Saudi Ministry of Antiquities and Museums, 1976–present)

• Archéologie aux Emirats Arabes Unis / Archaeology in the United Arab Emirates (Department of Archaeology and Tourism in Al-Ain, 1976–89)

• Raydān: revue des antiquités et de l’épigraphie du Yémen antique / Journal of Ancient Yemeni Antiquities and Epigraphy (Yemeni Center for Cultural Research, Archaeology, and Museums, 1977–94; Yemeni Ministry of Culture with Centre Français d’Études Yéménites, 2013)

• Arrayan (Qatar National Museum, 1977–85)

To this list one can add Dirāsāt Yamaniyya (Yemen Center for Studies and Research, 1979–2011), dedicated more broadly to the history and heritage of Yemen and the wider Arabian Peninsula.

Outside of the region itself, the first Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies societies were also archaeological and historical in focus. The first was the Bahrain Society in London, formed in 1965 to promote friendship and understanding between Britons and Bahrainis, but with a strong interest in the archaeological discoveries of Geoffrey Bibby. The society runs an annual lecture series on Bahrain and organises social and cultural events. One of its founding members was Michael Rice, a museum consultant and amateur archaeological historian who helped establish the first national museums in Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Oman.⁴⁷ Next was the Arabian Society, formed in London in October 1968 by John Dayton, Peter Parr, and Gerald Lankester Harding at the Institute of Archaeology, University of London. Established as a study group to convene a seminar series on archaeological and historical research on the Arabian Peninsula, it soon evolved into an annual conference series. Two founding members were Robert Serjeant, Director of the Middle East Centre and Chair of Arabic at the University of Cambridge, and Robin Bidwell, a Gulf historian and the Centre’s Secretary, who, together, would later found Arabian Studies in 1974.⁴⁸ The first Arabian Society conference was convened in June 1969 by Serjeant and Bidwell at the Middle East Centre in Cambridge. In 1970, the Arabian Society renamed itself the Seminar for Arabian Studies, which has convened its annual conference by that name ever since, focused primarily on archaeology, but including other humanities subjects like history. Since 1971, the conference proceedings have been published by Archaeopress as the Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies.⁴⁹

In March 1969, in the wake of the British government’s announcement the previous year that it would be withdrawing Britain’s military forces and protection from eastern Arabia, the Middle East centres at Oxford and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London organised the world’s first international interdisciplinary conference on the Arabian Peninsula covering both the humanities and social sciences. This resulted in the afore-mentioned The Arabian Peninsula: Society and Politics (1972) edited by Derek Hopwood, which was the world’s first interdisciplinary humanities/social science book on the Arabian Peninsula.⁵⁰

In 1973, a member of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, Richard Barnett of the British Museum (quoted above), founded the Committee for Arabian and Gulf Studies in London to promote and secure funding for British archaeology in eastern Arabia, which had, so far, been dominated by the Danes. Peter Parr explains how the origins of the committee

can ultimately be traced back to March 1970 and the meeting in Bahrain of the Third International Conference on Asian Archaeology. At the conclusion of this, a small group of us were invited to visit the Emiri Documentation Centre in Abu Dhabi, and it was during this visit that disappointment was expressed by some of the UK participants that there was no British involvement in the exciting archaeological activity in the Gulf states about which we had been hearing at the conference. My recollection is that it was Richard Barnett who was most vocal in his insistence that something should be done to rectify this, and it was certainly he who sometime afterwards set up a small ad hoc committee to discuss appropriate action.⁵¹

In its first year, the committee sponsored and secured funding for two British archaeological digs in Bahrain. Over the next decade, it obtained funding for other expeditions, primarily for Beatrice de Cardi in Oman and Qatar, who eventually became the committee’s Chairperson and later President. In 1987, the committee was reconstituted the Society for Arabian Studies (1987–2010). In 2010, the society merged with the Seminar of Arabian Studies to become the British Foundation for the Study of Arabia (2010–19) and later the International Association for the Study of Arabia (since 2019).⁵²

By 1974, there was sufficient interest in, and scholars working on, the Arabian Peninsula to support an interdisciplinary area studies journal. Thus, Robert Serjeant and Robin Bidwell at the Middle East Centre in Cambridge founded Arabian Studies (1974–90) and later New Arabian Studies (1994–2004), which the Journal of Arabian Studies follows in the footsteps of.⁵³ In their introduction to the first issue, they explain how the modern evolution of Arabian Peninsula Studies was a natural outcome of the post-war development of Middle Eastern Studies and Area Studies more broadly, and argue it is better to study a region as a whole than from a single discipline:

In practice, it proves impossible for an individual research worker to confine himself within the restricted range of a single discipline –– this becomes ever more patently obvious in dealing with the Arabian Peninsula. … .

The Arabian Peninsula with its immediate confines constitutes a coherent whole appropriate to area study, within which there is a unity, yet much diversity. The extent to which interest in it has expanded is manifest in the great growth of writing on it during the last two decades [1950s–60s]. For these reasons, the moment is opportune to establish Arabian Studies as a multi-disciplinary journal.⁵⁴

However, Serjeant and Bidwell restricted the journal to the humanities on the grounds that it was necessary to exclude “immediately contemporary politics on live contested issues”.⁵⁵ They never stated the real reason for this, but it may have been due to possible anonymous financial support from the Amir of Bahrain.⁵⁶ They published Arabian Studies on an annual, later semiannual, basis for eight issues from 1974 to 1990, before moving it to the Centre for Arab Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter, where they published it under the title of New Arabian Studies with the University of Exeter Press. NAS continued on an annual, later semiannual, basis for six issues during 1994–2004. The reason for the move was the need to find a new publisher and to pass the baton to the next generation. G. Rex Smith, Professor of Arabic at the University of Manchester, who began his career at Cambridge’s Middle East Centre under Serjeant and Bidwell, joined as the third editor of New Arabian Studies 1 (1994) together with two Exeter University-based “production editors”: Brian Pridham (then Director of the Centre for Arab Gulf Studies) and Jack Smart (Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies) who, like Smith, had previously taught Arabic at Cambridge. Serjeant passed away during the production of the first issue, while Bidwell passed away during the production of the second (1995). Thereafter, the journal’s generational change and transfer to Exeter was complete.⁵⁷ In 1997, the Ruler of Sharjah, Shaikh Sultan Al-Qasimi, began funding the journal’s production.⁵⁸ The last issue of New Arabian Studies appeared in 2004, after which the editors, who had all retired, chose to retire the journal as well.⁵⁹ After a hiatus of seven years, the (now renamed) Centre for Gulf Studies relaunched the journal as the Journal of Arabian Studies in 2011, the story of which is told in Section 4 below.

In 1975, Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies as an interdisciplinary field, encompassing both the humanities and social sciences, took another step forward with Kuwait University’s launch of its bilingual Journal of the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies, now in its 45^th year. In Oman, the Ministry of Heritage and Culture established its (eventually) bilingual Journal of Oman Studies, which publishes articles on Oman’s cultural and natural heritage. In Saudi Arabia, the History Department at King Saud University in Riyadh convened the first International Symposium for Studies of the History of the Arabian Peninsula. It has convened periodic symposia ever since, most recently the ninth in 2018.

Finally, in 1976, the Anglo-Omani Society was founded in London to promote friendship between the two countries and to advance (mainly historical and cultural) knowledge about Oman in Britain through an annual lecture series. It was a logical extension of the Sultan’s Armed Forces Association, founded in London in 1968, whose role was more limited with membership restricted to veterans.

3.2 The development into a global, interdisciplinary field

The development of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies into a global interdisciplinary field arguably began in 1978. In March that year, M.S. Agwani at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi established the Gulf Studies Programme at the Centre for West Asian Studies. The programme consists of a research team, lectures, conferences, publications, and graduate courses (for the MPhil and PhD in West Asian Studies) –– especially during the tenure of its longest-serving Director, A.K. Pasha, who is a member of JAS’s Editorial Board. In Yemen the same year, the American Institute for Yemeni Studies (AIYS) was founded in Ṣanʿāʾ. The AIYS is a consortium of institutions of higher education promoting scholarly research on Yemen (primarily in the humanities and social sciences), as well as scholarly exchange between Yemen and the USA. Its office in Ṣanʿāʾ was opened in 1978 under the aegis of the Yemen Center for Studies and Research, mentioned above. The establishment of the AIYS was a turning point for American researchers working on the country. Over the past 42 years, the AIYS has published 19 books in its monograph series (1981–2009) and a newsletter (1979–2009), developed an excellent research library on Yemen, and hosted hundreds of American and Yemeni researchers through its visiting fellowship program. Its current President, Daniel Varisco, is a member of JAS’s Editorial Board. In Bahrain the same year, the then Crown Prince, Shaikh Hamad Al Khalifa, established the Historical Documents Centre at his Court in Riffa to document the history of the country.

In February 1979, Mohamed Shaban at the University of Exeter established the Centre for Arab Gulf Studies: the first and, for long, the most important Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies centre in the Western world.⁶⁰ The centre’s Deputy Director and intellectual lead, Tim Niblock, who later became the first member of JAS’s Editorial Board, explained that the centre was

intended to foster research into the society, politics, economics, and history of the Arab Gulf region. The area covered by the “Arab Gulf” is taken to be the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq; there is a peripheral interest in Iran. The rationale for taking the Arab Gulf as an area for separate study is that this area is evidently of crucial international importance; that the social, economic and political problems facing the peoples of the area are complex –– and distinct from the problems facing peoples in most other Middle Eastern states; and that a disturbingly small amount of research effort is currently being directed towards the area. Even in centres devoted to Middle Eastern Studies, the Arab Gulf area seems to have attracted only limited attention.⁶¹

Since 1979, the centre has convened the annual Gulf Conference (the second-longest-running annual conference series on the Gulf after the Seminar for Arabian Studies), which has produced numerous edited volumes –– the first of which, Social and Economic Development in the Arab Gulf, edited by Tim Niblock (1980), was based on the 1979 conference. The centre was home to New Arabian Studies during 1994–2004 and its successor, the Journal of Arabian Studies, during 2011­–16. The centre boasts the Gulf Collection, the largest archival and library collection on the Arabian Peninsula at any university in the world, and is home to the leading MA/PhD programme in Gulf Studies.⁶² Both of JAS’s editors have served as Directors of the centre: James Onley during 2005–09, 2010–12 and Gerd Nonneman during 2009–10.

Also in 1979, the Qatari scholar Ali Khalifa Al-Kuwari founded the Gulf Development Forum, an annual symposium for GCC intellectuals to discuss development issues facing the GCC states. Membership is granted by invitation only. The first symposium was held in Abu Dhabi in December 1979. From 1994, it began publishing the proceedings of its annual meeting (in Arabic), which are available on its website. In 2009, the Forum began publishing articles on development issues facing the GCC states on its website.

In 1981, the then Crown Prince of Bahrain, Shaikh Hamad Al Khalifa, established the Bahrain Centre for Studies and Research to conduct research and surveys and convene conferences on policy-related matters of concern to Bahrain. The centre operated for 29 years, until it was closed by royal decree in 2010. In Riyadh, the Archaeology Department at King Saud University established the Saudi Society for Archaeological Studies to promote archaeology in the kingdom.

In the UK, Bill Charlton and May Ziwar-Daftari launched the short-lived Arab Gulf Journal, published in London by MD Research and Services Ltd (1981–86). The journal focused on contemporary economic issues in the GCC states and was aimed at a readership beyond academia. Its advisory board consisted of three British academics, the Managing Director of Qatar Petroleum, and the President of the Arab Monetary Fund.⁶³

In 1982, a major French research centre was established in Ṣanʿāʾ: the Centre Français d’Études Yéménites (CFEY), the French equivalent to the AIYS, which hosted French archaeological missions and social scientists working on North Yemen and, after Yemeni unification in 1990, South Yemen as well. During 1993–2013, CFEY convened a programme of lectures and conferences, and published an annual journal called Chroniques yéménites [Yemeni Chronicles].

In 1983, two years after the birth of the GCC, it established the Arab Gulf States Folklore Centre in Qatar. The centre was housed in a large complex of five buildings in Doha, with a research department, research library, archive, and lecture theatre. The centre collected and documented all aspects of Arab folklore in the Gulf region, on which topic it convened seminars, workshops, and conferences, and published books and a quarterly journal, Al-Maʾ thūrāt al-sha ʿbīya [Journal of Popular Heritage], launched in 1986.⁶⁴ The centre closed around 2004, but the Qatari Ministry of Culture continued publishing the journal until 2016.

Also in 1983, the Historical Documents Centre in Bahrain launched Al-Watheeka / The Document, a bilingual half-yearly journal dedicated to the history and heritage of Bahrain and the Gulf. In Riyadh, the King Faisal Foundation opened the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies to document Saudi and Islamic history, with a focus on the life and legacy of Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (1906–75). The Center began as an archive, but, in 1999, it established a research library and a visiting fellowship programme, and expanded its focus on Saudi and Islamic history to encompass Gulf Studies and Islamic Studies more broadly, convening regular talks, workshops, conferences, and exhibitions on these subjects.

In 1984, the Amir of Kuwait, Shaikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, established the Historical Documents Center at the Amiri Diwan as a de facto national archive to collect and preserve historical records relating to the history of Kuwait, and to publish books on the subject. The centre was later expanded to include the Amiri Diwan Library. During the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein seized the centre’s entire collection and transported it to Baghdad. The documents have yet to be returned.⁶⁵ The centre was originally housed in the Seif Palace complex but, as of 2016, it is housed at the Shaikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Cultural Center complex.

In 1985, Omar Said Al-Hassan established the Gulf Centre for Strategic Studies in London, a semi-independent think tank funded by donations from the GCC governments that convened seminars and occasional conferences, and ran an active publication series of books and papers. It operated local branches in Bahrain, the UAE, and Egypt. The centre ceased operations in 2013, although a number of books by Al-Hassan on Bahrain continued to be published under its name.

In 1986, the Ruler of Ras al-Khaimah established the Studies and Documentation Center to collect historical documents and books on Ras al-Khaimah, publish books on Emirati history, and convene a periodic conference. The centre is housed in the Ras al-Khaimah National Museum (opened in 1987). The same year, the Saudi-British Society was established in London, which runs an annual lecture series on Saudi Arabia and organises social and cultural events.

In 1987, the Committee for Arabian and Gulf Studies in London renamed itself the Society for Arabian Studies and expanded its focus to encompass history and culture, although archaeology retained pride of place. The society began convening an annual lecture series on the Arabian Peninsula, which one of JAS’s editors, James Onley, managed during 2009–11. The society, the Seminar for Arabian Studies, and the Centre for Arab Gulf Studies in Exeter together would be the main focal points for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies in the UK until the turn of the century.

In 1988, members of the History Department at King Saud University in Riyadh founded the Saudi Historical Society to replace the Archaeological Historical Society (founded in 1970), which had been absorbed by the Department of Antiquities and Museums, Ministry of Education in the early 1980s. The society convenes an annual conference and would later launch its own journal and book series. The following year, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia established the National Center for Archives and Records at his court in Riyadh to collect and preserve historical documents relating to the kingdom’s history and heritage.

In Dubai in 1989, Juma Al-Majid founded the Juma Al-Majid Center for Culture and Heritage. The centre has a research library and archive dedicated to UAE and Gulf history and culture, a book series launched in 1990, and a journal, Āfāq al-thaqāfiyya wa-al-turāth [Horizons of Culture and Heritage] launched in 1993, dedicated to the heritage of the UAE and the wider Arab and Islamic worlds. The same year, UAE University in Al-Ain established the History and Folklore Research Center to document, preserve, and research the history and folklore of the UAE.⁶⁶ The centre ceased activities in the mid-1990s.

Also in 1989, the independent Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies Center was established in Tehran, with a Persian Gulf Studies department and Saudi Arabia Studies department –– the first research institution in Iran to focus on the Arabian Peninsula. These departments hold public talks and conferences, and publish frequent articles on the GCC states and Yemen in the centre’s four Middle East Studies journals.

In 1990, a group of American scholars working on the Gulf established the Society for Gulf Arab Studies (SGAS). This was the first attempt to create a global Gulf Studies network and only the third American academic organisation on the Arabian Peninsula to be established after the American Foundation for the Study of Man in 1949 and the American Institute for Yemeni Studies in 1978. SGAS became an affiliate of MESA and held its AGM at the annual MESA conference. It published a newsletter and awarded a PhD dissertation prize. But with Gulf Studies still lacking critical mass in the 1990s, attendance at the society’s AGM remained small, and its activities were limited. The society eventually ran out of steam by the late 1990s and was disbanded in 2000.

Another development in 1990 was the foundation by Daniel Potts (another JAS Editorial Board member) of Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy, the leading international journal in its field, now in its 30^th year.

Finally, 1990 saw the establishment of the Bahrain-British Foundation (BBF) by Michael Rice and Yousif Al-Shirawi under the auspices of the Bahraini and British governments to fund a full academic year of postgraduate research or pre-vocational training for one Bahraini and one British university student in each other’s country.⁶⁷ British BBF awardees were typically PhD students working on Bahrain, including two members of JAS’s editorial team: Robert Carter (JAS Editorial Board) in 1997–8 and James Onley (JAS Editor) in 1998–9. The BBF closed in 2005 after Al-Shirawi passed away and Rice retired.

In 1991, following the liberation of Kuwait, the American diplomat Nathanial Howell established the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf Studies Program (APAG) at the University of Virginia, which organises a lecture series, occasional conferences, and hosts visiting scholars. APAG was the first academic programme on the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula in the USA, building on the Gulf courses taught by Rouhollah Ramazani at the university in the 1950s–90s. Today the programme is led today by Fahad Bishara, the Rouhollah Ramazani Assistant Professor of Arabian Peninsula and Gulf Studies and a former JAS Book Review Editor.

In Yemen the same year, following the unification of the country, the government in Ṣanʿāʾ founded the National Center for Archives (later renamed the National Center for Documentation) to document the history and heritage of Yemen.

In 1992, a year after the liberation of Kuwait, the Center for Research and Studies on Kuwait was established to document Kuwait’s history. It started as an archive and research library, but quickly developed a programme of talks, conferences, and exhibitions, as well as a book series on Kuwaiti history, including both primary source material (sea captains’ diaries, memoirs, oral histories) and scholarly studies. In the UAE the same year, the Abu Dhabi Islands Archaeological Survey (ADIAS) was established by Shaikh Zayed Al Nahyan, the Ruler of Abu Dhabi and President of the UAE, to survey, record, and excavate archaeological sites on the coast and islands of Abu Dhabi, which was later extended to the interior. ADIAS convened public talks and conferences, and published books, articles, and a newsletter. In 2005, it was absorbed into the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH).

The next major step towards the development of a global Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies community occurred in 1993 when Gary Sick (also a member of JAS’s Editorial Board) and Lawrence Potter at the Middle East Institute, Columbia University, launched the Gulf/2000 project. Gulf/2000 provides an invaluable email forum and archive for its members to exchange information and expertise on Gulf issues and events on a daily basis. It also convenes periodic conferences, publishes a highly regarded edited volume series based on these conferences, and maintains the Gulf/2000 website and e-library.

The same year, the British-Yemen Society was founded in London to advance friendship between the two countries and promote knowledge about Yemen’s history, geography, economy, and culture in Britain. It publishes the Journal of the British-Yemen Society, now in its 27^th year, convenes an annual lecture series, and organised group tours to Yemen before the start of the Yemen civil war in late 2014.

In the UAE in 1993, Shaikh Zayed established the Emirates Heritage Club to promote awareness and appreciation of Emirati heritage through seminars, conferences, exhibitions, and a book series, as well as an extensive programme of social activities and festivals for Emiratis. It maintains a network of heritage activity centres around Abu Dhabi. In 1997, the club became an independent authority of the Abu Dhabi government.

In 1994, a team of archaeologists at the School of Oriental and African Studies, led by Geoffrey King, established the British Archaeological Mission to Yemen (BAMY) to screen and obtain Yemeni government approval for all British research carried out in Yemen in the fields of archaeology, history, epigraphy, numismatics, pre-Islamic and Islamic architecture and all manuscript and museum-based studies. Before the Yemen civil war, the applications it approved and obtained permits for became official BAMY projects. BAMY operates under the auspices of the Society for Arabian Studies (now the International Association for the Study of Arabia).

The same year, Kuwait University established its Centre for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies, building on the momentum generated by its Journal of the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies, launched in 1975. In Bahrain, the Ministry of Culture launched a quarterly journal, Al-Baḥrain al-thaqāfiyya [Bahrain Culture], a scholarly magazine dedicated to Bahraini culture, heritage, and history. In the UAE, the Abu Dhabi government established the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR), with a research library, research department, lecture series, and conference series. In 1995, the ECSSR launched its Occasional Papers Series, Emirates Lecture Series, Strategic Studies Series, and a book series.

Also in 1995, Aden University established the Al-Dhofari Center for Yemeni Research and Studies, with a research department and research library, lecture and conference series, and a journal, Majallat al-Yaman [Yemen Journal].

In 1996, Prince Sultan bin Salman Al Saud founded the Al-Turath Foundation to preserve the national heritage of Saudi Arabia, focusing initially on architectural heritage, but later expanding to national heritage more broadly. The foundation collects historical photographs and was instrumental in the establishment of the National Archive for Historical Photographs at King Fahad National Library in 1997. It publishes books on Saudi history and heritage, organises lectures and conferences, and restores historical buildings, especially mosques. It was the first organisation devoted chiefly to the preservation of the Arabian Peninsula’s architectural heritage, and would be followed by others in Bahrain (2002), the UAE (2003), Saudi Arabia (2010), the UK (2010), and Qatar (2019).

1996 also saw the Society for Arabian Studies launch its Bulletin of the Society for Arabian Studies (1996–2011), later renamed the Bulletin of the British Foundation for the Study of Arabia (2012–18) and, later again, the Bulletin of the International Association for the Study of Arabia (2019–present).

In 1997, the GCC established the Association of History and Archaeology in the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries, headquartered in Riyadh, to promote the history and archaeology of the GCC states, holding conferences and seminars. The same year, the Qatari historian, Shaikh Hassan bin Muhammad Al Thani, established his own research centre and library in Doha: the Hassan Bin Mohammed Center for Historical Studies, which conducts and funds research on Qatari and Gulf history, and convenes lectures and symposia on these topics. The centre housed a large rare book and manuscript collection on the Gulf and wider Middle East, which now forms part of the Qatar National Library’s “Heritage Library”. Today the centre houses a research library on Gulf history and a lecture theatre.

Finally, in December 1998, the Emirates Heritage Club established the Zayed Center for Heritage and History in Al-Ain (inaugurated in March 1999) to document, record, research, and promote Emirati history and heritage, especially archaeology, folklore, and oral history. It has a research department, archive (with a major collection of Ottoman and British records, oral histories, films/videos, manuscripts, journals, and newspapers), and research library. It convenes lectures, seminars, and conferences, and published a book series and a monthly magazine, Turāth [Heritage].⁶⁸ Its first Director was Hasan Al-Naboodah (1999–2006), an Associate Professor of History at UAE University and a member of JAS’s Editorial Board. In 2009, the centre relocated to Abu Dhabi city, where it was renamed the Zayed Center for Studies and Research.

3.3 Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies in the 21^st century

By the end of the 20^th century, then, Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies had developed into a respectable, although still relatively small, field within wider Middle Eastern Studies, while it was still largely disconnected from Indian Ocean Studies. The first two decades of the 21^st century were to change that, as a dramatic growth in the number of societies, centres, publication series, activities, and graduate programmes plunged Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies into the mainstream, as shown in Table I.

Table I: The development of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies since 1949

	est. during 1949–1999	est. during 2000–2020	active as of 2020
Societies, centres, projects, programs	50	55	91
Publication series	51	56	83
Conference series	24	34	49
Lecture series	21	33	46
Graduate programmes	2	12	13

As can be seen, more societies, centres, projects, programs, publication series, conference series, lecture series, and graduate programmes were established in the first two decades of the 21^st century than the last five decades of the 20^th century. It was this growth that would eventually give birth to JAS in 2011.

This new phase began in 2000 with the establishment of the Gulf Research Center (GRC) in Dubai by Abdulaziz Sager. The GRC quickly became a globally recognised centre for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies, publishing an impressive number of books and articles on social science topics, and convening the annual Gulf Research Meeting (GRM) at Cambridge, where several workshops each year resulted in several edited volumes published in the GRC’s Gulf Studies book series, which, since 2012, has been published by Gerlach Press in Berlin, one of the most prolific publishers on the region. These annual GRMs have also provided an important opportunity for Gulf Studies researchers from the West, the Gulf, India, East Asia, Australia, and elsewhere to meet and collaborate, and have become a major pathway into Gulf Studies for new researchers in the social sciences.

In Ṣanʿāʾ the same year, Zaid bin Ali Al-Wazir founded the Yemen Heritage and Research Center, which published a bilingual quarterly journal called Al-Masār [The Path] during 2000–16. In Riyadh, the Saudi Historical Society launched its own journal, Majallat al-jamʿīyah al-tārīkhīyah al-Saʿūdiyah [Journal of the Saudi Historical Society], and book series.

In 2001–02, the Ruler of Sharjah, Shaikh Sultan Al-Qasimi (himself a noted scholar of Gulf history), funded two new purpose-built homes for Middle East Studies at the universities of Exeter and Durham, which would also house their Gulf Studies staff, students, programmes, and events: the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies (IAIS) at Exeter, founded in 1999 by joining together the Center for Gulf Studies and Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies, with Tim Niblock as Director; and the Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (IMEIS) at Durham, which had been founded in 1962. Shaikh Sultan also endowed a Chair of Gulf Studies at Exeter, first held by Tim Niblock, during 1999–2007, and then by one of JAS’s editors, Gerd Nonneman, during 2007–11. A decade later, Durham would establish the Sheikh Nasser Al-Sabah Programme, named after its benefactor, which funds a Gulf Studies chair and a PhD studentship, and runs a series of workshops and occasional conferences on the Gulf, a series of occasional papers and the Al-Sabah monograph series (Routledge, 2013–15). A crucial aspect of these initiatives at Exeter and Durham has been the firewall between their funders and their academic activities –– essential for the academic integrity of scholarly research and teaching on the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula.

Elsewhere in 2001, the University of Calicut in India established the Kunjali Marakkar Centre for West Asian Studies, with a lecture series and occasional conferences on West Asia (focusing mainly on the Indian Ocean). The same year, the Centre Français d’Études Yéménites (CFEY) in Ṣanʿāʾ changed its name to the Centre Français d’Archéologie et de Sciences Sociales (CEFAS) and expanded its scope to the entire Arabian Peninsula. Since 2002, it has been sponsored by France’s Ministère des Affaires Étrangères and the CNRS, and, since 2013, it has formed part of a global network of regional studies centres and country-based archaeological missions supported by the French government. During 2006–14, it also published the book series Chroniques du manuscrit au Yémen [Manuscript Chronicles in Yemen]. In 2013, CEFAS broadened the scope of Chroniques yéménites (published in French since 1993) to encompass the whole Arabian Peninsula and renamed it Arabian Humanities, which publishes articles in French, English, and Arabic. In 2016, CEFAS opened a second office in Kuwait after the start of the Yemen war and, in 2019, a third office in Abu Dhabi. Like its London-based cousins, CEFAS organises a series of lectures, conferences, and publications on the Arabian Peninsula.

In 2002, the Bahraini historian Shaikha Mai Al Khalifa founded the Shaikh Ebrahim bin Mohammed Al Khalifa Center for Culture and Research in Muharraq to promote and preserve Bahraini heritage, especially the architectural heritage of Muharraq. The centre is housed in a restored historical building in Muharraq (opened 2003) equipped with a lecture theatre, small library, and museum displays. It convenes a popular lecture series on Bahraini heritage and culture, curates exhibitions, publishes books (since 2008), and restores historical buildings in Bahrain.

Also in 2002, the Society for Arabian Studies in London convened the first of its Biennial Conference series under the theme of the Red Sea. The next two conferences continued this theme, and became known as Red Sea II (2004) and Red Sea III (2006). Subsequently, responsibility for these conferences has been taken over by other academic institutions: Red Sea IV (2008) was convened by the Centre for Maritime Archaeology at University of Southampton; Red Sea V (2010) by the MARES Project at the University of Exeter; Red Sea VI (2013) by the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities at Tabuk University in Saudi Arabia; Red Sea VII (2015) by the Asia, Africa and Mediterranean Department at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”; Red Sea VIII (2017) by the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Warsaw; and Red Sea IX (2019) by the ERC-funded Desert Networks Project at the CNRS research centre for Histoire et Sources des Mondes Antiques (HiSoMA) at the Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée in Lyon in collaboration with Artois University.

In 2003, Gilles Kepel at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), with support from France’s Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, launched the EuroGolfe Network of scholars to facilitate new research and PhDs on the GCC states at Sciences Po on topics of interest to the public and private sectors, and to foster collaboration and dialogue between Europe (mainly France) and the GCC states on the challenges facing the Gulf and the wider “EuroGolfe region” (Europe and West Asia). The network met at the EuroGolfe Forum for Human Development, a series of conferences convened in Abu Dhabi (2004), Menton (2005), Riyadh (2007), and Venice (2008). EuroGolfe came to an end in late 2010 when funding for it dried up in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. A legacy of the EuroGolfe Network is the four GCC-related books published during 2011–17 in the “Proche Orient” (Near East) book series of Presses Universitaires de France edited by Gilles Kepel, who is also a member of JAS’s Editorial Board.

Also in 2003, the UAE government established the Architectural Heritage Society to document, preserve, and promote the architectural and urban heritage of the country. It organises public lectures, seminars, conferences, and exhibitions, and is headquartered in a historical building in the Al-Bastakiya (later renamed the Al-Fahidi) district of Dubai close to the Dubai Municipality’s Architectural Heritage Department, which seems to have initiated the Society.

In parallel with EuroGolfe, the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science (KFAS) launched its famous “Kuwait Programs” in Gulf Studies at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 2002, the London School of Economics in 2007, and finally Sciences Po in 2012 (picking up where EuroGolfe left off) to generate new research on pressing issues facing Kuwait and the GCC states through a series of publications, lectures, workshops, conferences, and PhD studentships.

In 2004, the Dubai government, in a related move, entered into partnership with the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University to establish the Dubai School of Government (2005) and the Dubai Initiative (DI) at the Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Relations. Through the DI, the Dubai School of Government funded PhD studentships and visiting fellowships at Harvard, and collaborated in the convening of lectures, workshops, and conferences on the Gulf at Harvard. The DI closed down in 2011 in the wake of the Arab Spring.

Meanwhile, in Muscat, Sultan Qaboos University established the Oman Studies Center in 2004, with its own purpose-built building, archive, research library, and lecture hall. It convenes regular lectures and conferences on Omani history, culture, and society, and publishes a book series, including conference proceedings.

In London the same year, the Society for Arabian Studies launched the Society for Arabian Studies monograph series (2004–11) with Archaeopress in Oxford, which was later renamed the British Foundation for the Study of Arabia monograph series.

In 2005, the Association of History and Archaeology in the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries headquartered in Riyadh launched its annual bilingual journal, Majallat al-Khalīj lil-tārīkh wa al-āthār / Gulf Journal for History and Archaeology. The same year, the Bahrain Centre for Studies and Research launched its own journal, the Journal of Strategic Studies (2005–10), which focused on the GCC. In the UAE, the Abu Dhabi government established the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) to document, record, protect, conduct research on, and promote the cultural heritage and history of Abu Dhabi. ADACH maintained a research department, organised conferences, and published books. In 2012, ADACH was merged with the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority to become the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism, which continues the work of ADACH. Also in 2005, the Ruler of Sharjah, Shaikh Sultan Al-Qasimi, established the Sharjah Heritage Institute to document, preserve, and promote the UAE’s intangible cultural heritage. It has a research department and organises annual events, such as Sharjah Heritage Days (started in 2003), the Sharjah International Narrator Forum (since 2005), and the Sharjah Forum for Traditional Crafts (since 2007).

In New Delhi, the long-established Gulf Studies Programme at the Centre for West Asian Studies at JNU was joined by two more centres focusing on the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula: Jamia Millia Islamia –– the Centre for West Asian Studies (2005) and the India-Arab Cultural Centre (2007) –– making New Delhi the leading centre for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies in Asia outside of the Arabian Peninsula itself. Together, they have generated an impressive number of lectures, conferences, and publications, as well as the largest number of MA, MPhil, and PhD graduates in Gulf Studies anywhere in the world. Two members of JAS’s Editorial Team are graduates of JNU’s West Asian Studies programme: N. Janardhan and Fatemeh Teimoorzadeh.

Also in 2005, the Omani government opened the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center in Washington DC to promote Omani culture and history in America. It offers internships at the centre, a funded research fellowship for fieldwork in Oman, and a summer Arabic programme in Oman. The centre holds lectures, workshops, an annual conference, exhibitions, and cultural events.

In 2006, members of Kuwait University’s History Department established the Kuwaiti Historical Society to promote the history of the country through public talks, conferences, and research.

In 2007, Georgetown University established the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) at its campus in Qatar, which had opened at Doha’s Education City in 2005. Under the leadership of Mehran Kamrava, a member of JAS’s Editorial Board, this quickly established itself as the leading social science hub in the region for the study of the modern Gulf, convening regular talks and workshops, and producing one of the most reputable series of publications on the Gulf and the wider Middle East, including 41 books, over 50 summary reports in Arabic and English, 24 CIRS Occasional Papers, and nine special issues of scholarly journals by 2020.

Also in 2007, the Omani government established the National Records and Archives Authority in Muscat to collect, preserve, and digitise historical records relating to the history of Oman. The NRAA houses an archive, research library, offices, and exhibition hall. In the UAE, Shaikh Sultan Al-Qasimi opened his impressive Dr Sultan Al-Qasimi Centre for Gulf Studies (known as Al-Dara) in Sharjah’s Education City: a large, purpose-built Gulf Studies museum, library, and archive, which houses the world’s largest collection of historical maps and photographs of the region, as well as digital copies of historical records on the Gulf from archives around the world. Al-Dara has hosted numerous Gulf-related events over the years, such as an annual reunion of Exeter University alumni (of which Shaikh Sultan is a member) and a Gulf/2000 conference held in 2009, which resulted in the edited volume, The Persian Gulf in Modern Times: People, Ports and History (2014) edited by Lawrence Potter.

In 2008, the University of Bahrain established the Center for Historical Studies, renamed the Centre for Bahrain Studies in 2013, to promote the study of Bahraini history and heritage. It organises lectures and seminars in the fields of history, anthropology, sociology, politics, economics, and geography. It publishes a book series, launched in 2009, and an annual journal, Ḥawliyya al-sanwī li-markaz dirāsāt al-Baḥrain [Yearbook of the Centre for Bahrain Studies], launched in 2019. The same year, 2015, King Hamad established the Isa Cultural Centre at his court in Riffa in memory of his father to preserve and promote Bahrain’s national heritage. It houses the Historical Documents Centre (founded in 1978), National Library and National Archives (founded in 2015), and organizes occasional lectures, conferences, and other public events.

In Yemen in 2008, Mohammed Al-Maitami founded the Sheba Center for Strategic Studies (SCSS) in Ṣanʿāʾ as an independent think tank to advise the government on security, political, economic, social, and energy issues affecting Yemen. It convened a lecture and conference series and published reports, a book series (c.2009–14), and a bilingual journal, the Sheba Journal of Mid-East Studies (c.2009–15), which focused on Yemen, the Red Sea, and the Gulf. The centre’s activities ceased in 2015, after the start of the civil war.

Also in 2008, Rouzbeh Parsapour and Mohammad Ajam established the Persian Gulf Studies Centre, a virtual independent research centre in Karaj, Iran, to promote the study of the history, politics, security, economy, demographics, and geography of the region. Its ten-member staff publishes and holds seminars on these topics, while the centre’s website hosts a digital collection of historical maps and documents pertaining to the historical name of the Persian Gulf.

In the UK the same year, Dionisius Agius (a member of JAS’s Editorial Board and one of its founding Associate Editors) launched the MARES Project affiliated with the Exeter Centre for Gulf Studies. MARES was a three-year multi-disciplinary project funded by the Golden Web Foundation in Cambridge that focused on the maritime archaeology, ethnography, history and linguistics of the peoples of the Red Sea and the Gulf. Its five-person research team, including John P. Cooper (a member of JAS’s Editorial Board and a former Book Review Editor), conducted fieldwork trips to the Red Sea, convened a lecture series, collaborated in the Red Sea conference series (convening Red Sea V in Exeter in 2010, along with an exhibition showcasing the project’s work), and published its findings in a series of books and articles.⁶⁹

In 2009, the Center for Documentation and Research in Abu Dhabi, which had changed its name to the National Center for Documentation and Research the year before, launched a Gulf history and heritage journal: Liwa: Journal of the National Center for Documentation and Research, published in English and Arabic. The same year, the Emirates Heritage Club moved the Zayed Center for Heritage and History in Al-Ain to Abu Dhabi city, rehoused it in the purpose-built Zayed Heritage Center and renamed it the Zayed Center for Studies and Research. The Zayed Heritage Center houses an archive, library, lecture hall, and a museum with permanent exhibitions on Shaikh Zayed, the armed forces, police, postal service, and oil sector. The centre also expanded its activities to include festivals and Nabati poetry recitals and competitions. In Ras al-Khaimah, the Ruler opened the Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research, which focuses on the social, cultural, and economic development of the UAE. It conducts and funds research on the arts, culture, education, community development, and public health, which it publishes in its Policy Papers and Working Papers series. The Foundation houses a research library, a lecture theatre, and an art gallery for exhibitions. It convenes panel discussions (known as the Majlis Series), a biannual symposium, community engagement gatherings, a fine arts festival, and art workshops, and has an artist-in-residence programme.

Also in 2009, the government of Bahrain established a new policy research centre in Awali to replace the Bahrain Centre for Studies and Research in Manama, named Derasat: Bahrain Center for Strategic, International, and Energy Studies. It maintains a research department and research library, convenes public lectures and workshops, and has an active publications programme, including a book series, the Derasat Journal, the Bahrain Economic Bulletin, the Strategic Studies paper series, and a report series.

Meanwhile in Israel the same year, the University of Haifa established the Ezri Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies. While the Center’s focus was primarily Iran, it did include the GCC states in its lecture series and annual conference. In 2019, the Center was merged with the university’s Maritime Policy and Strategy Research Center.

The 2010s saw Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies become a mainstream field within Middle East Studies and expand beyond it to embrace Indian Ocean Studies. It began with the establishment of the Centre for the Study of Architecture and Cultural Heritage of India, Arabia and the Maghreb (ArCHIAM) in 2010 by Soumyen Bandyopadhyay at Nottingham Trent University. It later moved to the University of Liverpool, where Bandyopadhyay has been the Sir James Stirling Chair in Architecture and Head of the School of Architecture since 2015. ArCHIAM is an interdisciplinary centre (encompassing architecture, archaeology, social history, and ethnography) that conducts research, convenes public lectures and conferences, curates exhibitions, advises governments, and publishes books and articles. The core of its focus has been Oman, where Bandyopadhyay originally practiced as an architect and where he and ArCHIAM have done extensive work documenting the country’s historical buildings and settlements and advising on their conservation since 1993.

Also in 2010, the Seminar for Arabian Studies and the Society for Arabian Studies in London merged to form the British Foundation for the Study of Arabia. In the UAE, the Ruler of Sharjah established the Sharjah Centre for Documentation and Research (renamed the Sharjah Documentation and Archives Authority in 2016) to collect, preserve, digitise, and publish historical records relating to the history of Sharjah and the UAE, and to make them available for researchers.

In Saudi Arabia the same year, the Saudi Heritage Preservation Society was founded as a charitable society to document and protect intangible heritage, historical buildings, and archaeological sites in the kingdom, and to promote public awareness about Saudi heritage. Over the course of a decade, the society has succeeded in inscribing six elements in UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list and five heritage sites in the World Heritage List.

Finally, 2010 saw the establishment of the Gulf Center for Development Policy at the Gulf University for Science and Technology (GUST) in Kuwait by Ali Khalifa Al-Kuwari, the founder of the Gulf Development Forum. Its first (and still current) Director was Omar AlShehabi, an Associate Professor of Political Economy at GUST. The centre publishes online articles, a paper series, and (since 2013) a book series in Arabic on development issues and policy reform in the GCC states. It also organises public talks, seminars, and workshops at which these issues are discussed, and participates in the annual Gulf Development Forum.

The year 2011 was a major turning point for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies. By 2010, there were finally enough scholars globally to support an international peer-reviewed journal with more than one issue a year and an international scholarly society. Thus, in 2011, both the Journal of Arabian Studies (published by Taylor & Francis) and the Association for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies (AGAPS) were founded. Both include the Arabian Peninsula’s links with Indian Ocean within their scope, thus encouraging the connection of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies with Indian Ocean Studies. AGAPS is an affiliate of MESA and holds its AGM at the annual MESA conference. AGAPS offers networking possibilities for scholars and students of the region, and sponsors several panels at the annual MESA conference, where it also holds a popular film festival. At its AGM, it awards prizes for the best book, PhD dissertation, and graduate paper in the field, as well as a student travel grant award. Notices of these awards are published in JAS, while the winning graduate paper is offered publication in JAS. AGAPS’s website boasts a collection of syllabi and teaching resources, along with country resource guides. AGAPS’s founding President (Gwenn Okruhlik) and Vice-President (Greg Gause) serve on JAS’s Editorial Board, while James Onley and Gerd Nonneman have served on AGAPS’s Board. Since 2015, JAS has been published in association with AGAPS and AGAPS members receive online access to JAS as part of their membership package.

Four other major events in 2011 were the launch of a Gulf Studies Program at Qatar University, with an MA in Gulf Studies; the establishment of the Center for Gulf Studies at the American University of Kuwait (AUK) with a Certificate in Gulf Studies for visiting students and an annual lecture series; and the partnership between the GRC and the Migration Policy Centre at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, to jointly manage the Gulf Labour Markets and Migration (GLMM) programme, launched the year before. GLMM maintains a dedicated website and publication series (notably the GLMM Explanatory Notes, GLMM Research Papers, GLMM Book Series, and a newsletter), and organises panels at the annual GRM and MESA conferences. The fourth major event was the launch of the Gulf Sustainable Urbanism project by Harvard University and Msheireb Museums in Doha: a large, four-year collaborative project funded by the Qatar Foundation involving 22 experts to produce an extensive, 880-page encyclopedia of the Gulf’s architecture and urban geography.⁷⁰

However, the start of the Arab Spring in the Gulf in 2011 also prompted some GCC governments to reimpose restrictions on politically-sensitive social science research topics, as noted in Section 2.2 above. Symbolic of this was the expulsion of all international policy think tanks from the UAE, including most strikingly the non-renewal of the Gulf Research Center’s licence to operate in Dubai and the closing down of the Dubai Initiative with Harvard. (Despite this setback, the GRC continued operations through its other offices in Jeddah, Geneva, and Cambridge, including most importantly the annual Gulf Research Meeting in Cambridge.) Some governments began blacklisting academics, initially Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, followed by the UAE in 2013. This alarming turn of events reached its nadir in 2018 with the arrest and conviction of Matthew Hedges for “spying” in the UAE in the course of his PhD fieldwork.⁷¹

In 2012, Princeton University opened the Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies, named after its benefactors. The centre is mainly concerned with Iran, but it does include the GCC states in its public lecture series. The same year, in the UK, Ali Mahdi Ali Al-Aswad, a former Bahraini Al-Wefaq party MP living in exile in London, established the Awal Centre for Studies and Documentation to promote Bahraini history. In Iraq, the University of Basra merged its Centre for Arab Gulf Studies (founded in 1974) with its Center for Iranian Studies (founded in 1986) and Center for Basra Studies (founded in 2004) to form the Centre for Basra and Arab Gulf Studies, which still publishes Majallat al-Khalīj al-ʿArabī, now in its 48^th year. In Saudi Arabia, King Saud University’s History Department established the Center for Studies of the History and Civilization of the Arabian Peninsula to expand on the symposium series by the same name that it has been convening since 1975. The centre organises public lectures, seminars, and conferences.

In Qatar, Robert Carter at UCL Qatar launched the Origins of Doha Project, a two-phase, seven-year project funded by the Qatar National Research Fund. Carter worked with a network of 26 scholars (including JAS’s Editor, James Onley) to compile a comprehensive historical record of Doha and Bidda’s foundation dates, occupation, expansion, and integration into regional and global networks. Phase 2 of the project (2015–19) expanded the work to Fuwairit on Qatar’s northeast coast. The Origins team at UCL conducted numerous archaeological digs and extensive fieldwork, recorded oral histories, collected archival records and historical aerial surveys, and created the Doha Online Historical Atlas and a school resources pack for Qatari schools on Qatari history and heritage. They also presented papers and will be publishing their findings in the coming years.

In 2013, Qatar University re-established its Gulf Studies Center with its own research staff, annual conference, and lecture series, with Abdullah Baabood as its first Director.⁷² In Kuwait, AUK’s Center for Gulf Studies, directed by Farah Al-Nakib, launched its biennial Gulf Studies Symposium. In Riyadh, the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies greatly expanded its activities by establishing a research department with a team of full-time scholars and visiting researchers, who began publishing scholarly work on the Gulf region, notably through its Dirasat paper series, as well as in international journals, including JAS, which has published two articles by members of this department.

In 2014, Farea Al-Muslimi and Maged Al-Madhaji founded the Ṣanʿāʾ Center for Strategic Studies, an independent think tank that publishes online articles, offers an intensive online course on Yemen, and convenes occasional public talks at international venues. While the centre itself is in Ṣanʿāʾ, most of the centre’s staff have worked remotely from locations around the world since the start of the civil war in late 2014. In the UAE, the National Center for Documentation and Research in Abu Dhabi was reconstituted as the National Archives of the UAE.

In Doha and London in October 2014, the Qatar Foundation in partnership with the British Library launched the Qatar Digital Library (www.QDL.qa): the world’s largest digital archive on the Middle East, which focuses on the Arabian Peninsula and the wider Gulf region. Starting with half a million digitised pages from the BL’s archival collections, this has since grown to two million. Two months later in Doha, the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies launched the Gulf Studies Forum, an annual conference held in Doha every December to discuss the most pressing issues facing the GCC states. In London, the Anglo-Omani Society began publishing its annual Review of the Anglo-Omani Society.

The year 2015 saw Gulf Studies shift into high gear. In Qatar, the Gulf Studies Program at Qatar University launched its PhD in Gulf Studies (the first Gulf Studies PhD in the MENA region) followed soon after by a dual PhD in Gulf Studies with Durham University. At the same time, QU’s Gulf Studies Center launched an occasional paper series, the Gulf Monographic Series, while the Hassan Bin Mohammed Center for Historical Studies in Doha also launched its own bilingual journal: Rewaq: History and Heritage.

In the USA, the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington (AGSIW) was established: a think tank that, while initially funded partly by the UAE government, has developed a track record of high-quality analysis of recent events and political, social and economic trends by respected researchers. The AGSIW maintains an active programme of monthly panel discussions on issues of the day and publishes weekly analytical pieces in its seven online short paper series: Politics and Government, Security, Economy, Energy, Society, Arts and Culture, and Environment. At Harvard University, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies launched its Arabian Peninsula Studies Lecture Series. For three years, until 2018, the centre flew in scholars from the US and overseas to speak on a broad range of topics.

In the UK, a group of DPhil students from the Gulf at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, founded the Oxford Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies Forum (OxGAPS) to promote interdisciplinary research and dialogue on the pressing issues facing the GCC states. OxGAPS organised lectures on the GCC and published Gulf Affairs, a scholarly magazine, with each issue examining a topical theme. The last issue appeared in the summer of 2019. In London, the Awal Centre for Studies and Documentation launched an Arabic-language book series on the marginalized aspects of Bahraini history, including translations of English-language books and historical records. Finally, in December 2015, the Hadhramaut Centre for Historical Studies, Documentation, and Publication was founded in Mukalla. It houses a research library, organises public lectures and conferences, and publishes a book series and a journal, Majallat Ḥaḍramūt al-thaqāfiyya [Hadhramaut Cultural Journal], on Hadhramauti history and culture.

In March 2016, QU’s Gulf Studies Center launched a second occasional paper series, Gulf Insights, while, in June, the Awal Centre for Studies and Documentation in London launched its own magazine, Arshīfū [Archives] / Archivo, dedicated to Bahraini and Gulf archival sources and history, as well as its own digital archive, the Awal Search Engine (https://awaldocs.com), to promote access to Bahraini history.⁷³

In January 2017, the Aden Center for Historical Studies, Research, and Publishing was established. It organises public lectures and conferences, and publishes a book series and a journal, Majallat al-dirāsāt tārīkhiyya [Journal of Historical Studies], on Yemeni history and culture. The same year, the Sharjah Heritage Institute launched a book series on Emirati history and heritage, followed by its own heritage magazine, Marawed, the next year.⁷⁴

In 2018, another think tank was founded in Washington DC: the Gulf International Forum (GIF), with funding from various private sources, NGOs, and educational institutions in both the Gulf and the USA. GIF convenes frequent lectures and panel discussions plus an annual conference on contemporary issues facing the GCC states, and publishes four online short paper series (Commentary, Policy Focus, Reports, and Translations) and two edited books so far. Thus, by 2018, Washington DC, with its four Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies centres, had become one of a growing number of global hubs for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula scholars, workshops, conferences, and publications.

In 2019, in recognition of the increasing number of humanities scholars working on the Arabian Peninsula, the British Foundation for the Study of Arabia expanded to become the International Association for the Study of Arabia (IASA). Four members of IASA’s Committee of Trustees sit on JAS’s Editorial Board: Dionisius Agius, Robert Carter, Clive Holes, and Derek Kennet. The same year, ArCHIAM in Liverpool and the Qatar National Library launched the Gulf Architecture Project (led by Soumyen Bandyopadhyay and James Onley) to create a digital collection documenting the Gulf’s architectural heritage and urban geography for the Qatar Digital Library, compiled from private and institutional collections around the world. In May, the National Archives of the UAE launched its own such Digital Library: the Arabian Gulf Digital Archive (www.AGDA.ae), with thousands of historical records on the Gulf that are free to use and download. The AGDA complements the QDL’s collection from the British Library with its own collection from the National Archives of the UK and the UAE. The two digital archival collections, together with the Awal Search Engine, make the region even easier to conduct historical research on, from anywhere in the world.

In Washington DC, the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center launched its Indian Ocean in World History website (www.indianoceanhistory.org), a remark­­­able resource with maps, lesson plans, and videos for the teaching of the social and economic history of Oman and the wider Indian Ocean, as well as “An Ocean of Paper” database developed by Fahad Bishara and Thomas McDow of over 5,000 documents from the 19^th century detailing the activities of Omani merchants and migrants in Oman and East Africa. The purpose of the database is “to facilitate research by students and academics writing the social and economic history of the Sultanate, as well as Omanis interested in tracking the movements and activities of their ancestors.”⁷⁵ Finally, 2019 also saw the launch of the QU Gulf Studies Center’s self-published Shura Councils in the Persian Gulf monograph series in partnership with the Al-Sabah Programme at Durham University.

The current year, 2020, so far has seen the QU Gulf Studies Center launch its Gulf Studies book series (with Springer) and the Al Qasimi Foundation launch its own journal: the Gulf Education and Social Policy Review.

4 Ten years of JAS, 2011–20

The story of JAS itself within this wider development of the field begins with New Arabian Studies, which had been affiliated with the University of Exeter’s Centre for Arab Gulf Studies since 1994.⁷⁶ The last issue of NAS, issue 6, which appeared in 2004, featured an article by James Onley, who became Director of the centre the following year. In November 2007, Onley suggested to the now retired members of the NAS editorial team, Brian Pridham and Jack Smart, that the journal might be continued by a new team at the Centre, if the focus could be expanded to include the social sciences, including contemporary topics. Although amenable to a continuation under new editors, the old team insisted on maintaining the original policy of excluding the social sciences, especially contemporary politics.⁷⁷ The two sides were unable to agree, so the old team decided to formally wind up NAS in December 2007.⁷⁸

Following this development, Onley, Gerd Nonneman, and Dionisius Agius drafted a proposal for the Journal of Arabian Studies, which would be based at the Centre and “follow in the footsteps” of Arabian Studies and New Arabian Studies, while expanding the coverage to encompass the social sciences and the Indian Ocean. Their proposal to Taylor & Francis (Routledge) was submitted in May 2008 and finally accepted in October 2009. The first issue appeared in June 2011, with Onley as Editor, Nonneman and Agius as Associate Editors, Steven Wright as Assistant Editor, and John P. Cooper and Matteo Legrenzi as Book Review Editors. Although not listed in the editorial page until later, Lindy Ayubi was a de facto member of the Editorial Team, copy editing each issue. In their editorial introduction to JAS 1.1, the editors wrote:

Welcome to the first issue of the Journal of Arabian Studies. JAS is the only international journal focusing on the Arabian Peninsula, its surrounding waters, and their connections with the Western Indian Ocean (from West India to East Africa), from Antiquity to the present day. It covers a wide range of topics, in all disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. It presents the results of new observations and original research, providing authoritative information in an accessible way to appeal to the general reader as well as the specialist. JAS follows in the footsteps of Arabian Studies (University of Cambridge, 1974–1990) and New Arabian Studies (University of Exeter, 1994–2004), although it breaks new ground by incorporating social science subjects and extending the journal’s scope to the present day.

JAS welcomes submissions in anthropology, archaeology, architecture, Arabic literature, archives, cultural studies, economics, ethnography, gender studies, history (ancient to modern), human geography, Indian Ocean studies, international relations, Islamic studies, linguistics, literature, material culture, maritime culture, media studies, migration studies, political economy, political Islam, political science, security studies, socio-linguistics, sociology, travel literature, and urban studies.

We hope you enjoy this first issue of the Journal of Arabian Studies.⁷⁹

A decade on, as the earlier survey has shown, the field of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies has evolved significantly and so, too, has JAS’s Editorial Team, although the journal’s concept and mission have not. While two of the three founding editors remain in place –– James Onley and Gerd Nonneman –– the rest of the team has changed. After Dionisius Agius retired, he moved to the journal’s Editorial Board in 2017. Meena Janardhan and N. Janardhan (Managing Assistant Editors), first in Dubai, now in Abu Dhabi, have managed the peer review process since 2012 with great skill and energy. Fatemeh Teimoorzadeh (Assistant Editor), first in Exeter, now in Doha, has ensured every article conforms to JAS’s house style since 2015. And Suzi Mirgani (Assistant Editor) at CIRS, Georgetown University in Qatar, has managed book reviews since 2016, continuing the work started by Matteo Legrenzi (2011), John P. Cooper (2011–13), and Fahad Bishara (2013–15). Finally, Lindy Ayubi in Exeter, has been an invaluable member of the Editorial Team from the beginning, meticulously copyediting many articles.

JAS’s affiliation has also changed over the years. In its first year, it was edited solely by the members of the University of Exeter’s Centre for Gulf Studies. In JAS’s second year, after Gerd Nonneman left Exeter to take up the role of Dean of Georgetown University’s campus in Qatar, Georgetown became a joint affiliate and has provided crucial support for the journal’s operations ever since. In 2015, JAS became affiliated with AGAPS and its members began receiving online access to the journal as part of their AGAPS membership package (just $15 for students and $30 for regular members!). A formal affiliation with AGAPS was a logical step, since many of JAS’s readers, authors, and Editorial Board members are AGAPS members. The last major changes occurred in 2017: JAS ceased its affiliation with Exeter’s Centre for Gulf Studies when James Onley left Exeter to join the Qatar National Library as its founding Director of Historical Research with responsibility for the Qatar Digital Library, and JAS entered into partnership with CIRS at Georgetown University in Qatar, with the option to publish a CIRS special issue of JAS every year or two (subject to the usual double-blind peer review process). This year will see the third special issue produced by CIRS.

JAS has published 141 articles across 21 issues since its inception in 2011: more than the combined output of Arabian Studies and New Arabian Studies during 1974–2004. As intended from the outset, the range of subjects, themes, periods, and countries covered has been spread broadly across the journal’s scope. The journal has published 60 articles on the region as a whole and 81 on specific countries, with Yemen and the UAE being the most numerous, as Figure 4 shows.

Figure 4: JAS articles by country

Coverage by discipline or subject has been broad across 16 categories, with some articles falling into more than one category (hence the larger total of 151): see Figure 5.

Figure 5: JAS articles by discipline or subject

Aside from hard copies of the journal, the online version has also brought ever higher visibility and impact. JAS articles, book reviews, and notices were downloaded 15,817 times in 2019 –– more than double the downloads in 2017 (7,136) and over three and a half times the downloads in 2013 (4,328). Some of these articles appeared as part of a special section or special issue, as shown in Table II.

Table II: JAS special sections and issues to date

title	guest editors	jas issue
1. “Rethinking the Monarchy-Republic Gap in the Middle East” special section	Russell Lucas, Thomas Demmelhuber, Claudia Derichs	4.2 (December 2014)
2. “New Perspectives on UAE Foreign Policy” special section	Karen Young	7.1 (April 2017)
3. “Art and Cultural Production in the GCC” special issue	Suzi Mirgani (CIRS)	7, supp. 1 (August 2017)
4. “The ‘Heritage’ Boom in the Gulf: Critical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives” special section	Gerd Nonneman, Marc Valeri	7.2 (December 2017)
5. “The ‘Resource Curse’ in the Persian Gulf” special issue	Mehran Kamrava (CIRS)	8, supp. 1 (September 2018)
6. “Revisiting Yemen’s Political History: From the Late Ottoman Era to the End of the Hamid al-Din Imamate” special section	Bernard Haykel	8.1 (June 2018)
7. “China and the Arab Gulf: Developing a Multidisciplinary Approach”	Yuting Wang	9.2 (December 2019)
8. “Rethinking Gulf Energy Security in the 21^st Century” special section	Clive Jones Tore Petersen	10.1 (June 2020)

The editors strongly encourage the submission of proposals for further special sections or special issues in and across all fields in the humanities and social sciences. Original empirical work and theoretical/conceptual innovation, bringing together regional expertise with disciplinary or cross-disciplinary advances, are especially welcomed.

The next stage in JAS’s development will be to republish some of its 141 articles to date in thematically organised edited books to enhance their visibility and accessibility. Indeed, CIRS has already done this with two of its special issues: Art and Cultural Production in the GCC edited by Suzi Mirgani (Routledge, 2018) and The “Resource Curse” in the Persian Gulf edited by Mehran Kamrava (Routledge, 2020).

JAS has achieved this remarkable progress because of a dedicated and efficient Editorial Team, supported by the ever-growing community of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies scholars that provides, reviews, and reads the articles we publish. JAS thanks them all. Together we are creating an increasingly connected Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies community. We thank you for your support.

***

In closing, we want to draw special attention to one of our authors. In September 2018,

Kylie Moore-Gilbert author of “From Protected State to Protection Racket: Contextualising Divide and Rule in Bahrain” in JAS 6.2 (December 2016), was unjustly imprisoned in Iran on spurious charges: a grim reminder of the risks facing bona fide researchers in the region and the wider Middle East. On behalf of the global Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies community, we express our support for her and call for her early release.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James Onley

James Onley is Editor of the Journal of Arabian Studies and Director of Historical Research and Partnerships at the Qatar National Library, Education City, Doha, PO Box 5825, Qatar, [email protected], [email protected].

Gerd Nonneman

Gerd Nonneman is Editor of the Journal of Arabian Studies and Professor of International Relations and Gulf Studies at Georgetown University in Qatar, Education City, Doha, PO Box 23689, Qatar, [email protected].

Notes

1 Serjeant and Bidwell, “Introduction”, Arabian Studies 1 (1974), p. viii; Serjeant, Bidwell, and Smith, New Arabian Studies 1 (1994), p. ix. Also see Arthur Irvine’s reviews of Arabian Studies and New Arabian Studies in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, issue 39.3 (1976), p. 711 and issue 59.1 (1996), pp. 218–19.

2 Herodotus discusses the Arabian Peninsula and its inhabitants in Book III of The Histories (c.430 BCE). For a survey of the earliest writings on the Arabian Peninsula, see: Retsö, The Arabs in Antiquity: Their History from the Assyrians to the Umayyads (2003).

3 See the works by Valentijn, Eyks, Floor, and Brouwer and in the Bibliography. Willem Floor and C.G. Brouwer translated the unpublished reports from 1614–74 into English and published them in the 1980s–90s. Our thanks for Willem Floor for this information.

4 For details, see the works by Baack, Blake et al. (pp. 112–13), Chelhod, Rasmussen, Varisco (1995), and Wolff in the Bibliography.

5 See the books by Niebuhr in the Bibliography.

6 For surveys of notable Western amateur writings on the Arabian Peninsula, see the works by Aloboudi, Auchterlonie, Bidwell (1976), Blake et al., Canton, De Maigret, Freeth/Winstone, Hogarth, and Hopwood in the Bibliography.

7 See: Bidwell, “Review: A British Official Guide to the Gulf: Review of Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman, and Central Arabia by J.G. Lorimer”, The Geographical Journal 138.2 (June 1972), pp. 233–5.

8 See the studies by Bahl, Freitag/Clarence-Smith, and Ho in the Bibliography. A symbolic example is Kuwait’s first historian, Abdulaziz Al-Rashid (1887–1938), who moved to Batavia (Jakarta), Indonesia in 1931, where he founded the monthly Majallat al-Kūwaitī wa al-ʿIraqī [Kuwaiti and Iraqi Journal] (1931–33) with his Iraqi friend, Yunus Bahri.

9 Authors’ names are spelled according to the most common transliteration in English. For surveys of the writings by Yemeni scholars, see the works by Serjeant (1962) and Gochenour in the Bibliography; for surveys of the writings by Arab and Persian scholars from the Gulf region, see the works by Abdulla et al., Blake et al., Bishara (2014), Determann, Matthiesen, Ochsenwald, and Vatandoust; for surveys of the writings by Arab scholars of the Hejaz, see the works by Abdulla et al., Determann, and Ochsenwald.

10 The first of these academic scholars to publish on the Arabian Peninsula was Carl Ritter (1846–47), followed by Georg August Wallin (1851), Michael Jan de Goeje (1862), Joseph Halévy (1872), David Heinrich Müller (1877), Eduard Glaser (1884), Julius Euting (1885), C. Snouck Hurgronje (1888–89), Theodore and Mabel Bent (1900), D.G. Hogarth (1905), and Alois Musil (1911) – see their works in the Bibliography. These are the dates of their first publications on the Arabian Peninsula; most published more in subsequent years.

11 For a survey of the early social science work in Gulf Studies, see the article by Nakhleh in the Bibliography.

12 For a survey of the key Gulf Studies writers and scholars in the USA in the 20^th century, see the article by Zahlan (1980) in the Bibliography.

13 The published conference proceedings are mistitled “25–27 July 1980” instead of “25–27 July 1979”. See: Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 10 (London: Archaeopress, 1980).

14 “Arab” was later dropped from the centre’s name in 2005.

15 For a review, see the article by Merriam in the Bibliography.

16 For a review, see the article by Schulz in the Bibliography.

17 For a review, see the article by Khouri in the Bibliography.

18 For a review, see the articles by Piscatori and Zahlan (1981) in the Bibliography.

19 For a review, see the articles by Hablutzel and Wilton in the in the Bibliography.

20 For reviews, see the articles by McLachlan in the Bibliography.

21 For reviews, see the articles by Marr in the Bibliography.

22 Bakhash, “The Persian Gulf” [review article], World Politics 37.4 (July 1985), pp. 599–614.

23 See the review articles by Bahry and Hamès in the Bibliography.

24 See the works by Al-Rasheed, Auchterlonie, Bishara, Bsheer, Carapico, Determann, Freitag (1994), Macro, Matthiesen, Okruhlik, Peterson, and Zahlan in the Bibliography.

25 Bishara, “The Many Voyages of Fateh Al-Khayr: Unfurling the Gulf in the Age of Oceanic History”, IJMES 52.3 (August 2020), p. 6.

26 Estimate based on annual publication numbers in WorldCat.org and adjusted down by a calculated average of 90% to exclude duplicate entries and books outside the humanities and social sciences.

27 See the works by Kelly, Noori, Romanowski/Nasser, Tétreault, and Vora in the Bibliography.

28 Ulrichsen, “Qatar and the GCC Crisis and the Impact on Scholarship on the Gulf”, MENA Politics Newsletter 2.1 (Spring 2019).

29 In 2018, Matthew Hedges was held in solitary confinement in the UAE for almost six months on charges of “spying” during his two-week PhD fieldwork trip in the country. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but then pardoned and released under pressure from the British government. See: Committee on Academic Freedom, “British PhD Student Matthew Hedges Given Life Sentence”, Middle East Studies Association, 25 November 2018; Hedges, “My UAE Spy Arrest Shows Universities Must Do More to Protect Academics Working in the Field”, The Conversation, 14 October 2019.

30 Kapel, Atlas of the Stone-Age Cultures of Qatar, Reports on the Danish Archaeological Expedition to the Arabian Gulf vol. 1 (1967), also published in Arabic.

31 De Cardi (ed.), Qatar Archaeological Report: Excavations 1973 (1978); El Mallakh, Qatar: Development of an Oil Economy (1979); Zahlan, The Creation of Qatar (1979).

32 Numbers based on the individual verification of each book using Worldcat.org and Google Books.

33 The dhow is flying a flag used by three of the Trucial States: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Umm al-Quwain.

34 Bishara, “The Many Voyages of Fateh Al-Khayr: Unfurling the Gulf in the Age of Oceanic History”, IJMES 52.3 (August 2020), pp. 1, 3.

35 See the works by Albright, Cleveland, De Maigret, Kutner, Perkins, and Phillips, as well as the American Foundation for the Study of Man book series in the Bibliography.

36 Edward L. Durand (1878), Theodore and Mabel Bent (1889), André Jouannin (1903), Francis B. Prideaux (1905–6, 1908), Ernest Mackay (1925), Peter Bruce Cornwall (1940).

37 Bibby, Looking for Dilmun (1969), p. 15.

38 See the works by Bibby, Glob, Højlund, Kapel, Potts and Sowaileh in the Bibliography.

39 See the works by Ferdinand, Hansen, Højlund (ed., 2017), Mitchell/Curtis, Nielsen, Olsen, and Yateem in the Bibliography.

40 Barnett, “The Third International Conference on Asian Archaeology”, Antiquity 44.176 (December 1970), p. 317. For a full review of the conference and its significance for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies, see the article by Porada at al. in the Bibliography.

41 Barnett, “The Third International Conference on Asian Archaeology”, pp. 316–17; De Cardi, “Exploring the Lower Gulf, 1947–2007”, Antiquity: A Quarterly Review of World Archaeology, 82.315 (March 2008), pp. 173; Parr, “The Founding of the Seminar and the Society for Arabian Studies”, Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 46 (2016), pp. ix; Rice, The Archaeology of the Arabian Gulf, c.5000–323 BC (1994), p. 59.

42 Bibby, Looking for Dilmun, p. viii.

43 Al-Belushi, “Archaeology and Development in the GCC States”, Journal of Arabian Studies 5.1 (June 2015), pp. 41–2. Also see: Bibby, Looking for Dilmun (1969), pp. 208–09, 242–3, 366–7; Exell, Modernity and the Museum in the Arabian Peninsula (2016), chap. 2. The development of museums in Arabia is too large a topic to include in this article and has been examined elsewhere –– see the works by Bandarin, Bouchenaki, Erskine-Loftus, Exell, Hightower, and Wakefield in the Bibliography.

44 Højlund (ed.), Danish Archaeological Investigations in Qatar, 1956–1974 (2017); De Cardi (ed.), Qatar Archaeological Report: Excavations 1973 (1978); Rice, “National Museum of Qatar, Doha”, Museum International 29.2–3 (1977), pp. 78–87.

45 Brady, “The Centre for Arab Gulf Studies of the University of Basrah”, British Society for Middle Eastern Studies Bulletin 6.1 (1979), pp. 58–9.

46 See: De Cardi, “Exploring the Lower Gulf, 1947–2007”, pp. 165–77.

47 See: Exell, Modernity and the Museum in the Arabian Peninsula (2016), chap. 2.

48 See: Seminar for Arabian Studies, “In Memoriam: Robert Bertram Serjeant, 1915–1993”, Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 23 (1993), p. iv; Costa, “Robert Bertram Serjeant, 1915–1993”, East and West 43.1–4 (December 1993), pp. 321–3; Smith, “Robin Leonard Bidwell, 1929–94”, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 21.1 (1994), pp. 152–3.

49 For more details, see: Parr, “The Founding of the Seminar and the Society for Arabian Studies”, pp. vii-xiv; Anon., “Seminar for Arabian Studies”, Bulletin of the Institute of Archaeology 10 (1971), p. 161; Seminar for Arabian Studies, “The Seminar for Arabian Studies: A Summary of Meetings since 1968”, Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 15 (1985), pp. 99–109.

50 For a review, see: Merriam, “Review of The Arabian Peninsula: Society and Politics by Derek Hopwood”, American Political Science Review 68.3 (September 1974), pp. 1359–61.

51 Parr, “The Founding of the Seminar and the Society for Arabian Studies”, p. ix.

52 Ibid., pp. ix-xiv

53 See: Seminar for Arabian Studies, “In Memoriam: Robert Bertram Serjeant, 1915–1993”, p. iv; Costa, “Robert Bertram Serjeant, 1915–1993”, pp. 321–3; Smith, “Robin Leonard Bidwell, 1929–94”, pp. 152–3.

54 Serjeant and Bidwell, “Introduction”, Arabian Studies 1 (1974), pp. vii-viii.

55 Ibid., vii.

56 Parr, “The Founding of the Seminar and the Society for Arabian Studies”, p. xi.

57 Serjeant, Bidwell, and Smith, New Arabian Studies 1 (1994), p. ix; Smith, Smart, and Pridham, “Editorial Forward”, New Arabian Studies 3 (1996), pp. ix­–xi.

58 Smith, Smart, and Pridham, “Editorial Forward”, New Arabian Studies 4 (1997), p. vii.

59 Pridham to Onley, email of 18 November 2007; Smart to Onley, emails of 19 November and 9 December 2007.

60 For details, see: Niblock, “The Centre for Arab Gulf Studies University of Exeter”, Bulletin of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies 6.2 (1979), pp. 116–18.

61 Ibid., p. 116.

62 Exeter’s MA in Gulf Studies was closed in 2015.

63 Day, “Review of The Gulf Arab Journal”, MELA Notes 27 (Fall 1982), p. 30–2.

64 For more details, see: Varisco, “The Arab Gulf States Folklore Centre: A Resource for the Study of Folklore and Traditional Culture”, Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 23.2 (December 1989), pp. 157–67.

65 It is possible that the collection was destroyed in the 2003 Iraq war, or that it is mixed in with the 48,000+ boxes of Iraqi government records seized by US forces after the Iraq war, which now sit in storage at US Central Command forward headquarters at Al-Udeid Airforce Base in Qatar. See: Franks and Bernier (eds), The International Directory of National Archives (2018), p. 200.

66 Anon. [Al-Naboodah?], “United Arab Emirates: History and Folklore Research Center”, Asian Folklore Studies 51.1 (1992), pp. 127–9.

67 Anon., “The Bahrain-British Foundation”, Arab Law Quarterly 7.1 (1992), p. 94.

68 Seaman, “Recorded Interviews”, The National, 8 July 2010.

69 Cooper, “Exeter Sets Sail on MARES Project” and Zazzaro, “Ancient Egypt’s Red Sea Contacts Explored”, Bulletin of the Society for Arabian Studies 14 (2009), pp. 12–14.

70 Pollalis and Ardalan (eds), Gulf Sustainable Urbanism: The Past, 2 vols (2018), 880 pages.

71 Committee on Academic Freedom, “British PhD Student Matthew Hedges Given Life Sentence”; Hedges, “My UAE Spy Aarrest Shows Universities Must Do More to Protect Academics Working in the Field”.

72 An earlier incarnation of the Gulf Studies Center at QU had been established in 2002, directed by Hassan Al-Ansari, but it was not very active and closed within a few years.

73 Bahrain Mirror, “Awal Centre Launches Online Search Engine with Over 45,000 Documents”, 2 June 2016; Kazem, “How Awal Centre for Studies and Documentation Designs Archives in the 21st Century”, 25 September 2019, International Council on Archives blog.

74 Marawed is the Emirati name for the kuḥl stick or kuḥl eyeliner, the ancient eye cosmetic used throughout the Middle East for millennia to beautify one’s eyes.

75 Bishara and McDow, “The Origins of an Ocean of Paper” (2019), www.indianoceanhistory.org.

76 In 2005, “Arab” was dropped from the name of the centre.

77 Serjeant, Bidwell, and Smith, “Introduction”, New Arabian Studies 1 (1994), p. ix; Onley to Pridham, emails of 18 and 19 November 2007; Pridham to Onley, emails of 18 and 19 November 2007; Onley to Smart, emails of 19 and 30 November 2007; Smart to Onley, emails of 19 and 30 November 2007.

78 Onley to Smart, email of 9 December 2007; Smart to Onley, email of 13 December 2007.

79 Onley, Nonneman, and Agius, “Introduction”, Journal of Arabian Studies 1.1 (June 2011), p. 1.

Appendix A: Publication Series

Black text = still active, grey text = ceased publication

Table

est.	publication series	language
1958	Book series (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1958–69; Washington, DC: American Foundation for the Study of Man, 1982) produced by American Foundation for the Study of Man, edited by William F. Albright	English
1967	Jutland Archaeological Society Publications (Åarhus: Moesgård Museum / Åarhus University Press), which has published 20 monographs on eastern Arabia thus far.
1969	Book series (Abu Dhabi: Documents and Research Bureau, 1969–72; Center for Documentation & Research, 1972–2008; National Center for Documentation & Research, 2008–14; National Archives, 2014–)	Arabic, English
1971	Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies (London: Archaeopress) edited by the Seminar for Arabian Studies (1971–2010), British Foundation for the Study of Arabia (2010–18), International Association for the Study of Arabia (2019–)	English
1971	Dilmun: Journal of the Bahrain Historical and Archaeological Society (Bahrain: Government Printing Press) edited by the Bahrain Historical and Archeological Society	Arabic, English
1972	Book series (Yemen Center for Studies and Research, 1972–2011)	Arabic
1973	Majallat al-Khalīj al-ʿArabī [Arab Gulf Journal] (University of Basra: Centre for Arab Gulf Studies, 1974–2019; Centre for Basra and Arab Gulf Studies, 2019–)	Arabic
1974	Arabian Studies (C. Hurst & Co., 1974–79; Scorpion Publishing, 1982–85; Cambridge University Press, 1990) edited by the Middle East Centre, University of Cambridge; later New Arabian Studies (University of Exeter Press, 1994–2004) edited by the Centre for Arab Gulf Studies, University of Exeter	English
1974	Gulf States Newsletter (London: Cross-Border Information, 1989–)	English
1975	Journal of the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies (Kuwait University) edited by the Centre for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies	Arabic, English, French
1975	Journal of Oman Studies (Muscat: Ministry of Heritage and Culture) edited by Sultan Qaboos University	Arabic, English
1975	Al-Dara (Riyadh: King Abdulaziz Foundation for Research and Archives)	Arabic
1975	Book series (Doha: Documents and Research Department, Amiri Diwan)	Arabic
1976	Atlal: Journal of Saudi Arabian Archaeology (Saudi Ministry of Antiquities and Museums)	Arabic, English
1976	Archéologie aux Emirats Arabes Unis / Archaeology in the United Arab Emirates (Department of Archaeology and Tourism in Al-Ain, 1976–89)	English, French
1977	Raydān: revue des antiquités et de l’épigraphie du Yémen antique / Journal of Ancient Yemeni Antiquities and Epigraphy (Yemeni Center for Cultural Research, Archaeology, and Museums, 1977–1994; Yemeni Ministry of Culture with Centre Français d’Études Yéménites, 2013)	English, French
1977	Arrayan (Qatar National Museum, 1977–85)	Arabic, English
1979	Book series (Croom Helm, 1979–88; University of Exeter Press, 1992–97; Ithaca Press, 2001–06) edited by the Centre for Arab Gulf Studies, University of Exeter	English
1979	Dirāsāt Yamaniyya (Yemen Center for Studies and Research, 1979–2011)	Arabic
1981	Monograph series (American Institute for Yemeni Studies, 1981–2009)	English
1983	Al-Watheeka / The Document (Bahrain: Historical Documents Centre)	Arabic, English
1984	Book series (Arab Gulf States Folklore Centre, 1984–2004)	Arabic
1984	Book series (New Delhi: multiple publishing houses) edited by the Gulf Studies Programme, Centre for West Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University	English
1985	Majallat al-iqtiṣādiyyāt al-Khalīj [Gulf Economics Journal] (University of Basra)	Arabic
1985	AIYS Newsletter (1979–85), AIYS Bulletin (1985–87), Yemen Update: Bulletin of the American Institute for Yemeni Studies (1988–2009) published by the American Institute for Yemeni Studies	English
1985	Book series (Kuwait: Historical Documents Center, Amiri Diwan)	Arabic
1985	Book series (London: Gulf Centre for Strategic Studies)	English
1985	Paper series (London: Gulf Centre for Strategic Studies, 1985–2013)	English
1986	Al-maʾ thūrāt al-sha ʿbīya [Journal of Popular Heritage] (Doha: Arab Gulf States Folklore Centre, 1986–2004; Qatari Ministry of Culture, 2004–16)	Arabic
1990	Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy (Wiley)	English, French, German
1990	Book series (Dubai: Juma Al-Majid Center for Culture and Heritage)	Arabic, English
1992	Book series (Center for Research and Studies on Kuwait)	Arabic, English
1992	Paper series (New Delhi: Gulf Studies Programme, Centre for West Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru Universit)	English
1993	Āfāq al-thaqāfiyya wa-al-turāth [Horizons of Culture and Heritage] (Dubai: Juma Al-Majid Center for Culture and Heritage)	Arabic
1993	Chroniques yéménites [Yemeni Chronicles] (Ṣanʿāʾ: Centre Français d’Études Yéménites / CFEY, 1993–2001; Centre Français d’Archéologie et de Sciences Sociales / CEFAS, 2002–12), relaunched as Arabian Humanities in 2013.	French, English
1993	Book series (Ṣanʿāʾ: Centre Français d’Études Yéménites / CFEY, 1993–2001; Ṣanʿāʾ / Kuwait: Centre Français d’Archéologie et de Sciences Sociales / CEFAS, 2001–)	Arabic, French
1993	Journal of the British-Yemen Society (London: British-Yemen Society)	English
1994	Al-Baḥrain al-thaqāfiyya [Bahrain Culture] magazine (Manama: Al-Ayam Foundation) edited by the Bahraini Ministry of Culture (1994–2014), later the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities (2015–present)	Arabic
1994	Book series (Kuwait: Gulf Development Forum)	Arabic
1995	Majallat al-Yaman [Yemen Journal] (Aden: Al-Dhofari Center for Yemeni Research and Studies)	Arabic
1995	ECSSR book series (Abu Dhabi: Emirates Center For Strategic Studies and Research)	Arabic, English
1995	ECSSR Occasional Papers Series (Abu Dhabi: Emirates Center For Strategic Studies and Research)	Arabic, English
1995	Emirates Lecture Series (Abu Dhabi: Emirates Center For Strategic Studies and Research)	Arabic, English
1995	ECSSR Strategic Studies Series (Abu Dhabi: Emirates Center For Strategic Studies and Research)	Arabic, English
1996	Bulletin of the Society for Arabian Studies (London: SAS, 1996–2010; British Foundation for the Study of Arabia, 2010–11), later the Bulletin of the British Foundation for the Study of Arabia (London: BFSA, 2012–18), later the Bulletin of the International Association for the Study of Arabia (London: IASA, 2019–)	English
1997	Book series (Palgrave) edited by Gulf/2000	English
1998	Book series (Riyadh: Al-Turath Foundation)	Arabic, English
1998	Book series (Abu Dhabi Islands Archaeological Survey, 1998–2005)	English
1999	Book series (Abu Dhabi: Emirates Heritage Club)	Arabic
1999	Book series (Al-Ain: Zayed Center for Heritage and History, 1999–2008; Abu Dhabi: Zayed Center for Studies and Research, 2009–)	Arabic
1999	Turāth [Heritage] (Al-Ain: Zayed Center for Heritage and History, 1999–2008; Abu Dhabi: Zayed Center for Studies and Research, 2009–)	Arabic
2000	Majallat al-jamʿīyah al-tārīkhīyah al-Saʿūdiyah [Journal of the Saudi Historical Society] (Riyadh: Saudi Historical Society)	Arabic
2000	Book series (Riyadh: Saudi Historical Society)	Arabic
2000	Al-Masār [The Path] (Ṣanaʿāʾ: Yemen Heritage and Research Center, 2000–16)	Arabic, English
2002	GRC book series (Dubai: Gulf Research Center, 2002–; Hurst, 2007–; Gerlach Press, 2012–; Routledge, 2017–; Palgrave, 2017–) edited by the Gulf Research Center	Arabic, English
2003	GRC paper series (Dubai: Gulf Research Center)	Arabic, English
2004	Monograph series (Oxford: Archaeopress) edited by the Society for Arabian Studies (2004–10), later the British Foundation for the Study of Arabia (2010–19), later the International Association for the Study of Arabia (2019–present)	English, French
2004	Oman Studies Center book series (Muscat: Oman Studies Center, Sultan Qaboos University)	Arabic
2005	Majallat al-Khalīj lil-tārīkh wa al-āthār / Gulf Journal for History and Archaeology (Riyadh: Association of History and Archaeology in the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries)	Arabic, English
2005	Journal of Strategic Studies (Manama: Bahrain Centre for Studies and Research, 2005–10)	Arabic, English
2006	Chroniques du manuscrit au Yémen journal (Ṣanʿāʾ: Centre Français d’Archéologie et de Sciences Sociales / CEFAS, 2006–14)	French
2007	CIRS Occasional Papers (Center for International and Regional Studies, Georgetown University in Qatar)	English
2007	Book series (Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, 2005–12; Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism, 2012–present)	Arabic, English
2008	Sheba Journal of Mid-East Studies (Ṣanʿāʾ: Sheba Center for Strategic Studies, c.2008–14)	Arabic, English
2008	Report series (Ṣanʿāʾ: Sheba Center for Strategic Studies, c.2009–14)	Arabic, English
2008	Book series (Muharraq: Shaikh Ebrahim bin Mohammed Al Khalifa Center for Culture and Research)	Arabic
2009	Book series (Sakhir: Centre for Bahrain Studies)	Arabic
2009	Kuwait Programme Papers (Kuwait Programme, London School of Economics)	English
2009	Liwa: Journal of the National Center for Documentation and Research (Abu Dhabi: National Center for Documentation and Research, 2009–13); later Liwa: Journal of the National Archives (Abu Dhabi: National Archives of the UAE, 2014–)	Arabic, English
2009	Book series (Ṣanʿāʾ: Sheba Center for Strategic Studies, c.2009–14)	Arabic, English
2011	Journal of Arabian Studies (Taylor & Francis) edited by Exeter Centre for Gulf Studies (2011–16) and Georgetown University in Qatar (2012–) in association with the Association for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies (2015–)	English
2011	CIRS book series (University of California Press, 2011–; Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2012–; Cornell University Press, 2015–; Routledge, 2018–) edited by the Center for International and Regional Studies, Georgetown University in Qatar	English
2011	EuroGolfe books in the “Proche Orient” book series (Presses Universitaires de France, 2011–17) edited by Gilles Kepel (EuroGolfe, Sciences Po)	French
2011	Working Papers series (Ras al-Khaimah: Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research)	English
2012	Policy Papers series (Ras al-Khaimah: Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research)	English
2012	Strategic Study Papers (Derasat: Bahrain Center for Strategic, International, and Energy Studies)	Arabic, English
2012	Gulf Studies book series (Berlin: Gerlach Press)	English
2013	Arabian Humanities journal (Ṣanʿāʾ / Kuwait: Centre Français d’Archéologie et de Sciences Sociales / CEFAS)	Arabic, English, French
2013	Persian Gulf book series (Sage, 2013–17; Palgrave, 2018–) edited by the Middle East Institute, JNU (P.R. Kumaraswamy)	English
2013	Book series (Kuwait: Gulf Center for Development Policy)	Arabic
2013	Paper series (Kuwait: Gulf Center for Development Policy)	Arabic
2013	Al-Sabah monograph series (Routledge, 2013–15) edited by the Al-Sabah Programme at Durham University	English
2013	GLMM Explanatory Notes (Gulf Labour Markets and Migration programme) edited by the GRC and the Migration Policy Centre, European University Institute, Florence, Italy	English
2014	GLMM Research Papers (Gulf Labour Markets and Migration programme) edited by the GRC and the Migration Policy Centre, European University Institute, Florence, Italy	English
2014	Dirasat Papers (Riyadh: King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies)	Arabic
2014	Review of the Anglo-Omani Society (Salisbury: Brunton Business Publications) edited by the Anglo-Omani Society	English
2014	Book series (Derasat: Bahrain Center for Strategic, International, and Energy Studies)	Arabic, English
2015	Gulf Affairs magazine (Oxford Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies Forum / OxGAPS, 2015–19) edited by OxGAPS	English
2015	Book series (London: Awal Centre for Studies and Documentation)	Arabic
2015	Rewaq: History and Heritage (Doha: Hassan Bin Mohammed Center for Historical Studies)	Arabic, English
2015	Gulf Monographic Series [an occasional paper series] (Gulf Studies Center, Qatar University)	English
2016	Gulf Insights [an occasional paper series] (Gulf Studies Center, Qatar University)	English
2016	Book series (Aden: Dar al-Wefaq) edited by the Hadhramaut Centre for Historical Studies, Documentation, and Publication in Mukalla	Arabic
2016	Majallat Ḥaḍramūt al-thaqāfiyya [Hadhramaut Cultural Journal] (Aden: Dar al-Wefaq) edited by the Hadhramaut Centre for Historical Studies, Documentation, and Publication in Mukalla	Arabic
2016	Derasat Journal (Derasat: Bahrain Center for Strategic, International, and Energy Studies)	Arabic
2016	Arshīfū [Archives] / Archivo magazine (London: Awal Centre for Studies and Documentation)	Arabic
2017	GLMM book series (Gulf Labour Markets and Migration programme) edited by the GRC and the Migration Policy Centre, European University Institute, Florence, Italy	English
2017	Book series (Sharjah Heritage Institute)	Arabic
2017	Book series (Aden: Dar al-Wefaq) edited by the Aden Center for Historical Studies, Research, and Publishing	Arabic
2018	Majallat al-dirāsāt tārīkhiyya [Journal of Historical Studies] (Aden: Dar al-Wefaq) edited by the Aden Center for Historical Studies, Research, and Publishing	Arabic
2018	Marawed magazine (Sharjah Heritage Institute)	Arabic
2018	Exeter Critical Gulf Studies book series (Berlin: Gerlach Press, 2018–), edited by the Exeter Centre for Gulf Studies (Marc Owen Jones, Ross Porter, and Marc Valeri)	English
2019	Contemporary Gulf Studies book series (Springer / Palgrave) edited by Steven Wright and Abdulla Baabood (originally by the Gulf Studies Center, Qatar University)	English
2019	Shura Councils in the Persian Gulf monograph series (Qatar University and Durham University) edited by the Gulf Studies Center and Al-Sabah Programme	English
2019	Ḥawliyya al-sanwī li-markaz dirāsāt al-Baḥrain [Yearbook of the Centre for Bahrain Studies] (Sakhir: Centre for Bahrain Studies)	Arabic
2020	Gulf Studies book series (Springer) edited by the Gulf Studies Center, Qatar University	English
2020	Gulf Education and Social Policy Review (Dubai: Knowledge E, 2020–) edited by the Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research	English

Appendix B: Projects, Programmes, Societies, and Centres

Black text = still active, grey text = no longer exists

1 Major post-war archaeological expeditions, 1950–83

1950 American Foundation for the Study of Man expedition to the Aden Protectorate (1950–1)

1951 American Foundation for the Study of Man expedition to North Yemen (1951–2)

1952 American Foundation for the Study of Man expedition to Oman (1952–3, 1958–60)

1953 Danish Archaeological Expedition to Bahrain (1953–65, 1970, 1978)

1956 Danish Archaeological Expedition to Qatar (1956–64, 1973–4)

1958 Danish Archaeological Expedition to Kuwait (1958–63)

1958 Danish Archaeological Expedition to Abu Dhabi (1958–72)

1962 Danish Archaeological Expedition to Saudi Arabia (1962–65, 1968–9)

1968 British Archaeological Survey of Saudi Arabia

1968 British Archaeological Survey of Ras al-Khaimah

1971 British Archaeological Survey of Ras Musandam, Oman (1971–2)

1972 Danish Archaeological Expedition to Oman (1972–4)

1972 French Archaeological Mission to Yemen, Ṣanʿāʾ, North Yemen (periodic since then)

1973 British Archaeological Survey of Qatar (1973–4)

1973 British Archaeological Survey of Bahrain (1973–4)

1973 Iraqi Archaeological Expedition to the UAE (1973–5)

1974 British Archaeological Expedition to Oman (1973–7)

1976 French Archaeological Mission to Qatar (periodic since 1976)

1976 British Archaeological Expedition to Ras al-Khaimah (periodic since 1976)

1977 French Archaeological Mission to the UAE (periodic since 1977)

1977 French Archaeological Mission to Bahrain (periodic since 1977)

1983 French Archaeological Mission to Kuwait (periodic since 1983)

2 Societies, centres, programmes, and projects, 1949–2020

1949 American Foundation for the Study of Man, Washington, DC, USA. Closed 2016.

1953 Bahrain Historical and Archaeological Society, Manama, Bahrain

1965 Bahrain Society, London, UK

1968 Arabian Society, later the Seminar for Arabian Studies (1970), later British Foundation for the Study of Arabia (2012), later International Association for the Study of Arabia (2019), London, UK

1968 Documents and Research Bureau, later Center for Documentation and Research (1972), later the National Center for Documentation and Research (2008), later the National Archives of the UAE (2014)

1970 Archaeological Historical Society, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Replaced by the Saudi Historical Society in 1988.

1971 History Association of Oman, Muscat

1972 King Abdulaziz Foundation for Research and Archives, Saudi Arabia

1972 Yemen Center for Studies and Research (YCSR), Ṣanʿāʾ, North Yemen

1973 Committee for Arabian and Gulf Studies, later the Society for Arabian Studies (1986), later the British Foundation for the Study of Arabia (2012), later the International Association for the Study of Arabia (2019)

1974 Centre for Arab Gulf Studies, University of Basra, Iraq; later merged to become the Centre for Basra and Arab Gulf Studies (2012)

1974 Documents and Research Department, Amiri Diwan, Qatar

1974 Yemeni Center for Cultural Research, Archaeology, and Museums, Aden, South Yemen

1976 Anglo-Oman Society, London, UK

1978 Gulf Studies Programme, Centre for West Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

1978 American Institute for Yemeni Studies, Ṣanʿāʾ, North Yemen

1978 Historical Documents Centre, Riffa, Bahrain

1979 Centre for Arab Gulf Studies, later the Centre for Gulf Studies (2005), University of Exeter, UK

1979 Gulf Development Forum, Kuwait

1981 Bahrain Centre for Studies and Research, Manama, Bahrain. Closed 2010.

1981 Saudi Society for Archaeological Studies, Archaeology Department, King Saud University, Riyadh

1982 Centre Français d’Études Yéménites (CFEY), Ṣanʿāʾ, North Yemen; changed to the Centre Français d’Archéologie et de Sciences Sociales (CEFAS) in 2001; second office opened in Kuwait in 2013; third office opened in Abu Dhabi in 2019.

1983 Arab Gulf States Folklore Centre, Doha, Qatar. Closed c.2004.

1983 King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

1984 Historical Documents Center, Amiri Diwan, Kuwait

1985 Gulf Centre for Strategic Studies, London, UK, later also in Bahrain, the UAE, and Egypt

1986 Studies and Documentation Center, Ras al-Khaimah, UAE

1986 Saudi-British Society, London, UK

1988 Saudi Historical Society, King Saud University, Riyadh

1989 Juma Al-Majid Center for Culture and Heritage, Dubai, UAE

1989 History and Folklore Research Center, UAE University, Al-Ain. Closed mid-1990s.

1989 Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies Center (Persian Gulf Studies department and Saudi Arabia Studies department), Tehran, Iran

1989 National Center for Archives and Records, Royal Court, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

1990 Society for Gulf Arab Studies, USA. Closed 2000.

1990 Bahrain-British Foundation. Closed 2005.

1991 Arabian Peninsula and Gulf Studies Program, University of Virginia, USA

1991 National Center for Archives, later the National Center for Documentation, Ṣanʿāʾ, Yemen

1992 Center of Research and Studies on Kuwait

1992 Dhabi Islands Archaeological Survey. Merged with ADACH in 2005.

1993 Gulf/2000, Middle East Institute, Columbia University, New York, USA

1993 British-Yemen Society, London, UK

1993 Emirates Heritage Club, Abu Dhabi, UAE

1994 British Archaeological Mission to Yemen (BAMY), London, UK

1994 Centre for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies, Kuwait University

1994 Center for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR), Abu Dhabi, UAE

1995 Al-Dhofari Center for Yemeni Research and Studies, Aden University, Yemen

1996 Al-Turath Foundation, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

1997 Association of History and Archaeology in the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

1997 Hassan Bin Mohammed Center for Historical Studies, Doha, Qatar

1998 Zayed Center for Heritage and History, Al-Ain (to 2009); Zayed Center for Studies and Research, Abu Dhabi city (since 2009), UAE

2000 Gulf Research Center, Dubai, UAE, later Jeddah and Geneva

2000 Yemen Heritage and Research Center, Ṣanʿāʾ, Yemen

2001 Kunjali Marakkar Centre for West Asian Studies, University of Calicut, India

2002 Shaikh Ebrahim bin Mohammed Al Khalifa Center for Culture and Research, Muharraq, Bahrain (building opened in 2003).

2002 Kuwait Program, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

2003 EuroGolfe Network, Sciences Po, Paris, France. Closed 2010.

2003 Architectural Heritage Society, Dubai, UAE

2004 Dubai Initiative, Belfer Center for Science and International Relations, Harvard University. Closed 2011.

2004 Center for Basra Studies, University of Basra, Iraq; later merged to become the Centre for Basra and Arab Gulf Studies (2012)

2004 Oman Studies Center, Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman

2005 Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, Washington, DC, USA

2005 Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage / ADACH (absorbed the Dhabi Islands Archaeological Survey). Merged with the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism in 2012.

2005 Sharjah Heritage Institute, UAE

2005 West Asian Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India

2006 Kuwaiti Historical Society

2007 Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS), Georgetown University in Qatar

2007 Dr Sultan Al-Qasimi Centre for Gulf Studies, Sharjah, UAE

2007 National Records and Archives Authority, Muscat, Oman

2007 India-Arab Cultural Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India

2007 Kuwait Programme, London School of Economics

2008 Center for Historical Studies, renamed the Centre for Bahrain Studies in 2013

2008 Isa Cultural Centre, Riffa, Bahrain

2008 Sheba Center for Strategic Studies, Ṣanʿāʾ, Yemen. Closed c.2016.

2008 Persian Gulf Studies Centre, Karaj, Iran

2008 MARES Project, Centre for Gulf Studies, University of Exeter, UK. Closed 2012.

2009 Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research, Ras al-Khaimah, UAE

2009 Derasat: Bahrain Center for Strategic, International, and Energy Studies, Awali, Bahrain

2009 Ezri Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies, University of Haifa, Israel. Merged in 2019 with the Maritime Policy and Strategy Research Center.

2010 Centre for the Study of Architecture and Cultural Heritage of India, Arabia and the Maghreb (ArCHIAM), University of Liverpool, UK

2010 Sharjah Centre for Documentation and Research, UAE

2010 Gulf Center for Development Policy, Kuwait

2010 Gulf Labour Markets and Migration (GLMM) programme, managed by the Migration Policy Centre, European University Institute, Florence, Italy and (since 2011) the Gulf Research Center

2011 Association for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies (AGAPS)

2011 Center for Gulf Studies, American University of Kuwait

2011 Gulf Studies Program, Qatar University

2011 Gulf Sustainable Urbanism project, Msheireb Museums and Harvard University. Finished 2015.

2011 Sheikh Nasser al-Mohammad Al-Sabah Programme, Durham University, UK

2012 Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism (absorbed ADACH), UAE

2012 Kuwait Program, Sciences Po, Paris, France

2012 Center for Studies of the History and Civilization of the Arabian Peninsula, History Department, King Saud University, Riyadh

2012 Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies, Princeton University, USA

2012 Origins of Doha Project, UCL Qatar. Finished 2019.

2012 Awal Centre for Studies and Documentation, London, UK

2013 Gulf Studies Center, Qatar University

2014 Ṣanʿāʾ Center for Strategic Studies, Yemen

2014 Red Sea Institute for Anthropological Research, USA and Germany

2015 Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington (AGSIW), USA

2015 Yemen Cultural Institute for Heritage and the Arts (YCIHA), Washington DC, USA

2015 Hadhramaut Centre for Historical Studies, Documentation, and Publication, Mukalla, Yemen

2015 National Archives of Bahrain, Riffa

2015 Oxford Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies Forum (OxGAPS), Oxford University, UK

2017 Aden Center for Historical Studies, Research, and Publishing, Aden, Yemen

2018 Emirates Society, London, UK

2018 Gulf International Forum, Washington DC, USA

2019 Gulf Architecture Project (GAP), Qatar National Library and ArCHIAM, University of Liverpool, UK

3 Top ten annual and biennial conferences

1969 Seminar for Arabian Studies, UK

1979 Gulf Conference, Centre for Arab Gulf Studies (later Centre for Gulf Studies), University of Exeter

1979 Gulf Development Forum, Kuwait (but held in a difference GCC state each year)

2002 Biennial Conference, Society for Arabian Studies, later the British Foundation for the Study of Arabia (2012), later the International Association for the Study of Arabia (2019)

2002 Red Sea Conference

2010 Gulf Research Meeting (GRM), Cambridge, UK

2012 AGAPS-sponsored panels at MESA annual conference

2012 GLMM-sponsored panels at MESA annual conference

2013 Gulf Studies Symposium, Center for Gulf Studies, American University of Kuwait

2014 Gulf Studies Forum, Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, Doha, Qatar

4 Digital archives

2014 Qatar Digital Library (www.QDL.qa), Qatar National Library, Doha

2016 Awal Search Engine (https://awaldocs.com), Awal Centre for Studies and Documentation, London

2019 Arabian Gulf Digital Archive (www.AGDA.ae), National Archives of the UAE, Abu Dhabi

2019 “An Ocean of Paper” database on the Indian Ocean in World History website (www.indianoceanhistory.org), Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, Washington, DC, USA