min Maʻqil Akhḍar ilá Ḥudūd Tabshīrīyah wa-ʻAskarīyah: Taṣwīrāt al-Jabal al-Akhḍar fī al-Khiṭābayn al-Brīṭānī wa-al-Amrīkī - Ḥajrī, Hilāl ibn Saʻīd ibn Muḥammad; Multaqá al-Tīn wa-al-Zaytūn al-Awwal (2026) (Wilāyat al-Jabal al-Akhḍar) (Wilāyat al-Jabal al-Akhḍar : Markaz Dhākirat ʻUmān, 2026)
This study explores British and American conceptions of Al Jabal Al Akhdar in Oman between the early nineteenth and the late twentieth centuries, through travel literature, geographical, historical, missionary and political studies, and war memoirs. All of these writings display imperial interests, yet the early British explorers of the mountain — Wellsted, Miles and Cox — concentrated principally on terrain, climate and the characteristics of the population within a context of mapping and imperial control, while American missionaries such as Zwemer and Thoms were occupied with exploring the possibilities of conversion. The study examines how far attitudes towards religion and race permeate the different accounts, and the shifts that occurred in the portrayal of Al Jabal Al Akhdar from a site of exploration and mission to a site of counter-insurgency. The first part treats British travel literature and geography of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries concerning the Arabian Peninsula, together with the accounts of missionaries from the United States, considering the journeys of James Wellsted (1835), Charles Cole (1845), Samuel Miles (1876) and Percy Cox (1902).
Permanent citation identifier: MHF-TEENZAYTOON-036.
Conference theme (in Arabic): التراث العلمي والثقافي.
Text in Arabic; title also romanized (ALA-LC); abstract and keywords in English.
Keywords: Colonial discourse; Travel writing; Missionary accounts; Al Jabal Al Akhdar; Orientalism; British Empire