During the return trip from Sharjah, there was only one book in the bag that I decided to take specially to be my seat companion in the plane: Kurdji’s trip to the Gulf (notes on the racism of the travele On the sidelines of the conference.
Curiosity attracted me to search for the original version and its other translation translated into Arabic for the book written by the traveler Christgy entitled “The Land of the Palm”, which makes you feel at first sight as merely documentation of a naval journey between Bombay and Basra at the end of the nineteenth century, but immediately after browsing you will find that he carries in his folds more than what the headlines say, and the Muslim doctor has revealed, in a brilliant critical reading of a saturated text on the view Orientalism, which printed most European, British and Indian blogs for Arabs and Muslims during that period, and perhaps what is most drawn in this version is that it provides a distorted image of the way the other sees us, at a time when the military force intersects with cultural influence.
But away from the superstructure that Christje uses in his book by describing the Arab and Persian passengers, and his contempt for the social environment he went through on his journey, I was stopped by accurate and important signals about Bahrain, which had a great share of attention in the pages of the book, and Christji spoke in detail about Manama, and I will not go into an analysis of his talk about Manama, but he drew my attention to his speech in a different way and a different tone of a different personality Her name was engraved in the commercial and political memory of Bahrain and the region, which is the face Youssef bin Ahmed Kano, may God have mercy on him.
In Manama, Kristi did not notice a “noisy and unclean” scene as he described other ports, and he said that it was organized in a natural way, then he suddenly moved to talk about a high -end meeting with a respectable man, who welcomed him in his council, presented him with Arabic coffee, and spoke to him in English fluently, and Kurdji indicated that Youssef was speaking as someone who told Western capitals, he understood the next Behind the sea with a closer eye, without getting off its roots or his respect for his guest.
These words written by Christji in the blogs of his journey exceeded that they are a transient compliment in an an Orientalist text that is steeped in prejudices, as it came as a rare exception, as if the writer himself was forced to admit that what he saw in Manama – represented by the personality of Yusuf bin Ahmed – shakes the stereotype that he saturated with, which appears clear in the text, as he was not satisfied with his praise, but described him as a respect Relationships, present trick, runs prosperous trade with India and the Gulf, and knows how the British interviews his language and addresses his community in his logic.
The evocation of this character today is a evocation of an authentic dimension in the history of Bahrain: a place characterized by openness to the world without melting in it, and local leaders that combined originality and modernity, between traditional generosity and commercial intelligence, as the face Youssef bin Ahmed was a model for a national businessman who preceded his time, and in the awareness of the other, a picture is completely contradictory to the image that he tried to impose by the Orientalist discourse on the Arabs And the Gulf.
At the conclusion of my reading, I did not escape from note that the writer – despite his admiration – in Bahrain, was that there were many negatives in which the place and notes about hygiene were also described, and his religious and cultural affiliation did not hide when Zoroaster was mentioned and lost in words of nostalgia and glorification more than he said about any Arab or Islamic figure, which indicates the background of Zoroastrian Magi, and a British raising that clearly affected His cultural perspective.
I thank the Sharjah Heritage Institute for this sophisticated version, and I thank Dr. Abdulaziz Al -Muslim for his continuous intellectual project in analyzing these texts and converting raw documents to the tools of critical awareness.
