The Many Voyages of Fateh Al-Khayr

Unfurling the Gulf in the Age of Oceanic History

Bibliographic Data

ID8969813
AuthorsFahad Ahmad Bishara (0000-0001-9965-2540, University of Virginia, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume52
Issue3
Pages397-412
Publication date2020-06-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal Middle East Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-7438 • E-ISSN: 1471-6380
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0020743820000367
OpenAlexW3036045013
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited105

In this article, I make the claim that the time has come to re-situate the Gulf historically as part of the Indian Ocean world rather than the terrestrial Middle East. I explore the historical potential of thinking “transregionally” – of what it means to more fully weave the history of the Gulf into that of the Indian Ocean, and what the ramifications are for orienting it away from the terrestrially-grounded literature in which it has long been situated. The promise of an oceanic history, I argue, is both academic and political: first, it opens up the possibilities of new narratives for the Gulf’s past, suggesting new periodizations, fruitful avenues of historical inquiry, and new readings of old sources. But more than that, an oceanic history of the Gulf allows historians to push against the discourses of nativism that have pervaded the public sphere in the Gulf States

Ancient history · Art · Gulf war · Literature · Narrative · Narrative history · Political history · Political science · Politics · Psychological nativism · Situated · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Geology · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts · Oceanography

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