Gulf historiography is still under the curse/spell of the India Office Records. De-IOR the Gulf!! It's not only an archival convenient excuse but also devaluing local knowledge and avoiding alternative sources and methodologies that were developed for parallel parts of the world!
As researchers on Gulf politics and history, we are often told that there are no local archives (& sometimes that there is no such thing as civil society in the Gulf), but sources like Sawt al-Bahrain, though not archives per say, show how such claims are flawed
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@Ahmed_Yaqoub
This is a good point, of course. But IOR is tremendously useful. There are all sorts of things in there that defy the local/colonial binary. The Political Agent court records, for one, are a treasure trove of local materials, to say nothing of the caches of contracts, deeds, etc.
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@TheNakhoda
The target here is the exclusive, uncritical use of IOR. A complementary/critical/deconstructionist reading of it is commendable and honestly unavoidable, as long as, there's an honest attempt to foreground local knowledge and perspectives rather than making archival assumptions.
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@Ahmed_Yaqoub
But the point is well taken, that IOR is far, far from everything, and should be used to complement local materials rather than being read in place of them.
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@awannabemarxist
I really appreciate the scholars of indigenous studies and African history, they have confronted these issues long ago and debunked these assumptions. That's not to say the Gulf is void of local textual sources, on the contrary, but that also in itself is one source among many.
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