A departure this week, with a sketch rather than a photograph. This dates from 1823, which was around four years before Joseph Nicephone Niepoe used a primative camera to record the view from his room in the Burgundy region of France. At this time very little was known about the Gulf in Europe and so, in 1820, a British expedition from the Bombay Marina, as the Imperial Indian navy was then known, set out to chart both coasts.
The published results includes several sketches, including this one, of the “Abothubbee Backwater” attributed to Lieutenant M Houghton. It shows the island of Abu Dhabi, with the town at the bottom and the Maqta tower as a tiny dot at the top. It can be viewed online at www.qdl.qa/en/search/site/Abothubbee.
The sketches also survive in the digitalised records of the British India Office, freely available online as “Coast Views taken while employed on the Survey of the Arabian Side of the Gulf of Persia”. You can view them by navigating www.qdl.qa/en/search/site
The surveyors on board the ships Discovery, Psyche and Benares had to contend with not just storms and treacherous shoals but also how to spell the places they were visiting, mostly gleaned from conversations with locals. Hence Abothubbee, Ras el Khayma, Debay and Seer Beni Yass.
The differences in spellings also cause problems in the digital age, where search engines often miss important documents or images because of the rendering of place names into English.
Time Frame has collected some of these during its research. Abu Dhabi has been recorded Abu Thebi, Abu Zhaby, Aboo Dhebbee and Aboothabee, Dubai as Debey, Dibay and Debai, and Sharjah has been recorded as Sharkah, Sharga, Shargah and Shergah.
* James Langton
