The earliest known photograph of any identifiable Emirati: a unique portrait of Sheikh Saqr, ruler of Sharjah

(Saqr bin Khalid al-Qasimi) / Bell, Charles Courtenay. [Photograph album: The Sheikh of Sharjah and the Trucial Coast].

€ 150,000.00

A previously unknown photograph of the ruler of Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah, Sheikh Saqr bin Khalid Al Qasimi (r. 1883-1914), in a photograph album compiled by a British Navy officer. The photograph, measuring 85 by 119 mm, was taken aboard H.M.S. Argonaut during Lord Curzon's state tour of the Gulf in 1903. It is contemporaneous with the only previously known surviving photograph of Sheikh Saqr, making this the clearly superior one of only two known photographs. The other, taken on the same day and kept at the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, shows a blinking Sheikh Saqr at the centre of a group portrait taken aboard H.M.S. Hardinge (Al-Qasimi, plate 3). A further photo, held at the British Library, shows the full audience of Curzon's reception, but no specific Gulf state ruler is recognizable, as they sit with their backs to the camera ("Durbar on board R.I.M.S. Argonaut, Shergah", BL Visual Arts coll., 49/1/7). Exceedingly few photographs of Muscat, Oman and the Trucial Coast survive from the pre-war years; the present example must therefore be considered the first identifiable portrait of any tribesman of the Trucial States and an extremely important survival documenting the early history of Sharjah and the future United Arab Emirates.

The album was compiled by Captain Charles Courtenay Bell (1883-1966) and covers the first decade of his career in the Royal Navy. Its Gulf section comprises five images of Muscat and Oman, also including a fascinating, uncommon snapshot of pearl divers in action. These images must date from November 1903, when H.M.S. Argonaut was employed to escort the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, on his important official tour of the Gulf. From Muscat the fleet moved further up the littoral to the Trucial States: there, anchored off Sharjah on 21 November, Curzon commenced a durbar aboard the Argonaut. The rulers of "Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman and Um al-Quwain" (Al-Qasimi, p. 39) were invited aboard. It was surely this event that gave Bell (or one of his shipmates) the chance to photograph Sheikh Saqr bin Khalid Al Qasimi. The photograph shows him seated, flanked by a yet-unidentified second sheikh and further dignitaries, looking directly into the camera.

At the time, Sheikh Saqr was the sole ruler of Sharjah and Ras al Khaimah, and was engaged in a long struggle to maintain his control of the latter. He was partly hindered by the British authorities in the Gulf, who once dissuaded him moving troops to Ras Al Khaimah by sea to enforce his rule there. Despite these challenges, he maintained his rule over Ras Al Khaimah till 1910, and over Sharjah until his death in 1914 (cf. Al-Qasimi, p. 48).