History and writings of travelers in the session “The Emirates in European Memory” at Abu Dhabi Bookstore

Saad Abdul Radi (Abu Dhabi)

A session was organized in Abu Dhabi for the book entitled The United Arab Emirates in European Memory. The session was held in cooperation with the Archives and the National Library, where researcher and academic Dr. Mona Bounaama spoke, stressing that the Gulf had attracted a group of European travelers, starting with the Portuguese and Dutch, to the French, English, Americans and others, since The beginning of the sixteenth century AD, driven by many reasons, including the love of adventure and riding horrors and dangers, and the desire for exploration, reconnaissance, and knowledge, although the latter represents only a few of the new visitors to the desert, because the region was barren sand shaded by a scorching sun, and it was always Constant harshness in living and life, and there was nothing in it that tempted those European travelers, who in their luxurious countries were accustomed to an atmosphere completely different from the repellent desert atmosphere, but that did not discourage their determination to embark on the journey and explore the unknown, driven by the overwhelming desire to achieve their goals.
Bounaam pointed out that love and passion led European travelers to explore the self, the other, and the world, and the hidden, hidden, and secrets it abounds in, and to read signs instead of words, and pushed them to complete the journey and go through it, and travel to the unknown to explore the hidden and forgotten things of the Arab East, and they recorded in their written journeys their observations and impressions. About counterfeit societies and the richness and opulence they abound. They also monitored a lot of cultural, social, political and economic information and data, and what is related to the diaries and life of Gulf and Emirati society in particular, the meeting place of the eighteenth and twentieth centuries AD. The validity of the monitored information varied, and differed according to the purpose and need for recording it.
He pointed out that some European writings reflect a distorted and inflated view, but not all of these writings, regardless of their types and colours, were negative. Rather, many of them included a wealth of abundant and rich information that documented the history of the place and the radical changes and transformations it witnessed. As for the travelers, he confirmed that their writings are full of many images that they stored in their memories, observations, and impressions of the region and the life of its people, their culture, customs, and traditions, and what they were excited to see, stopped them by seeing, and imbued them with a state of astonishment and astonishment, so they immersed themselves in describing the land, its geography, its topography, its climate, and its resources. Its land, sea, and faces, its inhabitants, their political, social, and cultural situation, their customs, traditions, and customs, and everything related to their various conditions, such as their way of living, their ways of thinking, their fashions, their clothes, and their rituals.
He also pointed out that writing about the trip and the adventures, surprises, dangers, and fears that the traveler experiences during the trip, all add a special flavor to the writing, and cover it with a character of suspense full of astonishment and astonishment at the observations and situations that this or that traveler goes through. The scenes he depicts about his stations that Stopping at it, and the pictures it draws in the reader’s imagination, which transport them to the places and nature of the society they are visiting, and the discovery of the hidden, the unknown, and the forgotten in the world, is an observation of great importance, as it has accumulated for us a travel blog full of pictures and scenes about the emirates of yesteryear.