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Torah with Haftarah Selections
This Hebrew Pentateuch with Haftarot (portions from the Prophets section of the Hebrew Bible, read in synagogue on Sabbaths and holidays following the Torah portion) added at the end was created in Sana'a, Yemen, in 1485. The manuscript includes full vocalization, accentuation, and Masorah annotation. The Haftarot include the Targum, or Aramaic translation, following each verse. Preceding the Torah text itself are two grammatical treatises (comprising 15 leaves in total) common in Yemen. The manuscript is written on paper in Yemenite square script, in two columns per page, with ...
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National Library of Israel
The Near East
This 1952 map by the Army Map Service of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers provides a broad overview of the Near East, the geographic region traditionally thought of as encompassing the countries of southwest Asia, including Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Israel, and Jordan, and the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. In addition to political borders, the map shows lakes, rivers, and other bodies of water, marshlands, cities by population, pipelines, railroads, and pumping stations. Above the key is a glossary of topographic terms with transliterations and translations into ...
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Library of Congress
Map of Persia, Turkey in Asia: Afghanistan, Beloochistan
Samuel Augustus Mitchell (1792–1868) was a renowned American geographer and cartographer. The majority of his work focused on the United States, but he also made maps of other parts of the world, including this 1868 map of the Ottoman Empire, Persia (present-day Iran), Afghanistan, and Baluchistan. The main territorial units that Mitchell shows are Turkey, meaning the core of the Ottoman Empire comprised of present-day Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon; Persia; Afghanistan; and Baluchistan (mainly present-day Pakistan). Egypt and much of the Arabian Peninsula were at that time technically ...
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Library of Congress
Persia, Arabia, et cetera
This map appeared in A New Universal Atlas, published in 1846 by Henry Schenck Tanner, an early American geographer and cartographer. This map shows the political and geographic features of the Arabian Peninsula, using the traditional divisions of Arabia Petraea, Arabia Deserta, and Arabia Felix. Also shown are the region of the Hedjaz with the cities of Mecca and Medina, and Al-Dahna (present-day Kuwait and southern Iraq). The key in the bottom right differentiates between capitals, important towns, and smaller towns by means of starred and shaded circles. The boundaries ...
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Library of Congress
War Map of Egypt, Palestine, and Arabia
This German-language military map, published some time in the late-19th century, depicts Egypt, Palestine, and the Arabian Peninsula. It also includes parts of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (present-day Sudan), Ethiopia, and Eritrea. Railroads, caravan routes, telegraph lines, pyramids, fortifications, and ruins are indicated by symbols shown in the key at the lower left. The German equivalents of some Arabic topographic terms are given. An inset map in the upper right shows the Nile Delta and the Sinai Peninsula. Relief is shown by shading, and the heights of important mountains and passes are ...
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Library of Congress
Persia, Arabia, Tartary, Afghanistan
This map by Thomas Gamaliel Bradford (1802–87), depicting parts of the Middle East and Central Asia, appeared in Bradford’s A Comprehensive Atlas: Geographical, Historical & Commercial, which was published in Boston in 1835. Bradford was born in Boston of a distinguished New England family. He made maps of both U.S. states and foreign countries and became the assistant editor of the Encyclopedia Americana, the first significant encyclopedia produced in the United States. The map uses colored lines to delineate the boundaries of the Persian Empire, Afghanistan, Arabia, and ...
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Library of Congress
The Distant Countries: Notes on the Journey (California, Mauritius, Aden, Madagascar)
Louis Laurent Simonin (1830–86) was a French mining engineer, writer, and traveler, who in this book, published in 1867, chronicled his impressions of four widely different places: the U.S. state of California; the British-controlled island of Mauritius; Aden (Yemen); and Madagascar. Simonin explained that these places would be of interest to European readers and that all four had shown economic development and other progress in recent years. He was impressed by California’s diverse population, and remarked on the state’s achievements in communications and transportation. Turning to ...
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Library of Congress
A Voyage in the Indian Ocean and to Bengal, undertaken in the Years 1789 and 1790: Containing an Account of the Sechelles Islands and Trincomale
Louis de Grandpré was a French army officer who made an extensive tour of the Indian Ocean region in 1789-90. This account of his voyage is an English translation of the original French version, which was published in Paris in 1801 under the title Voyage dans l’Inde et au Bengale fait dans les années 1789 et 1790, contenant la description des îles Séchelles et de Trinquemaly. Grandpré began his voyage in the French-controlled Île de France (Isle of France), as Mauritius was called, passed by the Maldives, and visited ...
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Library of Congress
Imperial Military Middle School, Ṣanʻāʾ
This photograph from the Abdul-Hamid Collection in the Library of Congress shows the Imperial Military Middle School in Ṣan'ā', Yemen. Sultan Abdul-Hamid II (1842-1918) ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1876 to 1909. The Abdul-Hamid Collection consists of 1,819 photographs in 51 large-format albums dating from about 1880 to 1893. An avid collector and promoter of photography, the sultan appears to have conceived the work as a portrait of his empire for a Western audience, intended to highlight the empire's modernization. Well-known Ottoman commercial photographers such as Abdullah ...
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Library of Congress
Port of Aden from the Sea
This 1894 photograph depicts Aden (in present-day Yemen) as viewed from the sea. The port city of Aden was occupied by the British in 1839 and became an important fueling depot for the British Navy. Situated at a strategically advantageous spot at the entrance to the Red Sea, Aden became a British Crown Colony in 1937 and remained under British control for another three decades. William Henry Jackson (1843-1942) took the photograph for the World’s Transportation Commission, a mission organized by U.S. railroad publicist Joseph Gladding Pangborn to ...
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Library of Congress
Cairo to Kisumu: Egypt-Sudan-Kenya Colony
Cairo to Kisumu: Egypt-Sudan-Kenya Colony was the fifth in a series of books known as Carpenter’s World Travels, written by Frank G. Carpenter (1855–1924) in the 1920s and published by the Garden City, New York, firm of Doubleday, Page & Company. Carpenter was an American author of books on travel and world geography whose geographical readers were popular in American schools in the early 20th century. Cairo to Kisumu is not an account of a single journey, but a composite based on the notes Carpenter made on several trips ...
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Library of Congress
Voyages and Travels in India, Ceylon, the Red Sea, Abyssinia, and Egypt, in the Years 1802, 1803, 1804, 1805, and 1806
George Annesley, second Earl of Mountnorris (1770-1844), was a British aristocrat who, in 1802-06, undertook an extensive tour of parts of Asia and Africa. He was accompanied by Henry Salt (1780-1827), a trained artist who served as his secretary and draftsman. Mountnorris published this three-volume account of his travels upon his return to Britain, under the name Viscount Valentia, the title by which he was known in his younger years. The work includes engravings based on paintings and drawings made on the voyage by Salt, as well as two very ...
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Library of Congress
Sixth Map of Asia
Several editions of Ptolemy’s Geographia (Geography), translated into Latin from the original Greek, were published in Europe in the 15th century. This map is from the 1478 edition, which was published in Rome. Ptolemaic atlases included 12 maps of Asia. The “Sixth Map of Asia” covered the Arabian Peninsula. The outlines of this map are crude, but many geographic features, including the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and different features of the peninsula are clearly recognizable.
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Qatar National Library
The Coast of Arabia the Red Sea, and Persian Sea of Bassora Past the Straits of Hormuz to India, Gujarat and Cape Comorin
This 1707 map of the Arabian Peninsula and adjacent regions is the work of Pieter van der Aa (1659-1733), a Dutch publisher and bookseller based in Leiden who specialized in reissuing maps acquired from earlier mapmakers. The map appears to be based on an earlier Portuguese work, and uses a mix of Dutch, Latin, and Portuguese for titles and place names. The map covers only the eastern and central parts of the peninsula, which is shaped differently than shown on many other maps. The map shows four rivers on the ...
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Qatar National Library
A Drawing (with a Western Perspective) of the East Indies from the Promontory of Good Hope to Cape Comorin
This portolan map by the Dutch engraver, publisher, and map seller Frederick de Wit (1629 or 1630-1706) shows the Indian Ocean from the Cape of Good Hope to the west coast of India (Malabar). The map was first published in 1675 and was reprinted in 1715. It is oriented with east at the top. Kishm is placed in the present-day United Arab Emirates (UAE) and repeated as “Quaro” and “Quiximi.” The shape of the Arabian or Persian Gulf differs from that shown on other maps. There is a big island ...
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Qatar National Library
Sixth Map of Asia: Which Includes Arabia Felix, Carmania, and the Persian Gulf
This map from Ptolemy’s Geographia was published in 1578 and reprinted on many occasions between 1584 and 1704. It is much more finely engraved than maps in previous Ptolemy editions. The map mentions several places in present-day Qatar (Abucei, Leaniti, Themi, Asateni, and Aegei). Names added to this edition of the map include Mesmites Sinus, Idicar, and a second Idicar, located in present-day Kuwait. This name is similar to the island of “Ichara” found near Magorum Sinus. Contemporary research has confirmed that Kharj is the island known to the ...
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Qatar National Library
A Chart of the Coast of Arabia, the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, Drawn from the Chart of the Eastern Ocean
This English map is a reprinting, with slight changes, of an earlier French map published in 1740 by order of Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, Count de Maurepas (1701-81), secretary of state under King Louis XV. The map was drawn from an earlier chart of the Eastern Ocean, “improv’d from particular surveys and regulated by astronomical observations.” This English edition of the de Maurepas map has a different title cartouche. The “Remarks” section at the lower right gives abbreviations for physical features on the map, and notes: “ A Stroke under ye Name ...
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Qatar National Library
Map of the Coast of Arabia, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf
This 1740 map is by the French cartographer and hydrographer Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1703-72). It was published by order of Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, Count de Maurepas (1701-81), secretary of state under King Louis XV. The map focuses exclusively on the coastlines, and provides no detail about the interior of the Arabian Peninsula. It shows pearl banks along the coast from Bahrain to Julfar. Qatar is noted (“Katara”), but the peninsula that it occupies is not accurately drawn. Kuwait is not shown, but the island of “Peleche” is indicated. The Red Sea is ...
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Qatar National Library
Arabia
This 1662 Latin map of Arabia is a copy of an earlier map by Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571-1638), the founder of the Blaeu cartographic firm. It is one of the first maps to show internal features of the Arabian Peninsula. Mountains are depicted, oases denoted by trees, and points used to indicate pearl deposits in the Arabian Gulf. The map uses dotted lines to show international borders. The Red Sea is denoted by three Latin names: Mare Rubrum (Red Sea), Mare Mecca (Sea of Mecca), and Sinus Arabicus (Gulf of ...
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Qatar National Library
Arabia
This map of 1616, with Latin place names, is a reprint of a work by Jodocus Hondius (1563-1612), a Flemish cartographer and engraver who settled in Amsterdam in about 1593 and established a business that produced globes and the first large maps of the world. The place names on the map are unclear. “Coromanis” is shown on many older maps as located in present-day Kuwait, but here is shown as lying beyond “Catiffa,” or Al Qatif. “Luna,” on the coastal belt of the Arabian Gulf, could be Ras Tanurah, located ...
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Qatar National Library
Arabia
This 1616 map is a reprint of a map originally published in 1598 by Jodocus Hondius (1563-1612), a Flemish cartographer and engraver who settled in Amsterdam in about 1593 and established a business that produced globes and the first large maps of the world. The map covers the territory from west of the Gulf of Suez to the eastern side of the Arabian Peninsula, and from the mouth of the Euphrates River to Aden. The only cities indicated on the western coast of the Persian or Arabian Gulf are Qatar ...
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Qatar National Library