As soon as you read this title, it immediately comes to your mind that this article is propaganda in the context of celebrating the World Cup, so here it is a flag, and even uttering the word Qatar became the focus of attention of millions around the world during the hosting of the 2022 World Cup and the controversy surrounding the clash between the Arab and Western cultures in this regard. unique event.
Perhaps this distinctive Arab flag, which dates back more than 100 years, according to British documents of 1916, is surrounded by a lot of ambiguity about its symbolism, differences and similarities with other flags.
From a purely scientific perspective, the story of a state flag itself represents a conflict between its unique visual identity and the historical meaning that was added to it in the British documents of 1916.
We explain here the face and the reason for this inconsistency, as we have found from a group of observations and studies of the environment of the State of Qatar that call for a re-evaluation of what was mentioned in the British documents describing this science.
The dispute suggests that the distortion campaigns and misunderstandings of the Gulf environment are not a spur of the moment, but may go back more than 100 years to the Qatari coasts, which were coveted by the invaders for their marine wealth of pearls and later oil.
To understand the origin of the flag of the State of Qatar, we simply have to understand the visual identity of the environment of the Qatar Peninsula, which we explain here how it was the real source of inspiration for the flag, like many cultures around the world.
For example, the flag of Lebanon is inspired by a pine tree, and the flag of the state of California is inspired by a mountain bear, and many other examples.
Undoubtedly, the flag of the State of Qatar raises the question of everyone who looks at it, starting with its rectangular shape that extends to its existence and historical association with ships more than with land, passing through its burgundy color that is not found in any other flag, whether Arab or foreign, to its exciting similarity between it and neighboring Bahrain, and finally The many conflicting narratives surrounding all of the above, which make it an interesting mystery to study. We will try to understand it from a different perspective in this article.
According to the historical account recorded in the British records, the flag of Qatar is now known to be white, symbolizing peace, and the maroon color symbolizing the blood that was shed or coagulated in the wars waged by Qatar, especially in the last half of the nineteenth century.
As for the nine heads in the flag of the State of Qatar, it symbolizes that the State of Qatar is the ninth member of the Trucial States in the Arab Gulf states. It was added after the conclusion of the Qatari-British agreement in 1916. This was mentioned in the files of the British Foreign Office in 1931 regarding the design of the flag of the State of Qatar. and its color.
In the same British records, I noticed a letter demanding that the owners of Qatari ships compulsorily raise their flags on board their ships in the deep waters of the Gulf and that they deliberately hide them in those sea areas that large ships pass through in order to piracy them and hide their identities.
This novel embodies several historical and scientific paradoxes, and whoever visited Qatar and lived with its people will not find a trace of the culture of piracy or the glorification of wars. British.
This vision is in line with European colonial thought at the beginning of the last century, which viewed the Arabs from the perspective of conflicts and wars that these colonial powers had a major role in igniting in the Gulf and exploiting them to impose their influence in the region.
It is possible that this negative vision constituted an erroneous vision to describe the visual identity of the flag of Qatar in national documents, as it is natural that the colonialists do not know how to describe this flag except with a description close to their vision of the place, and from here the flag embodies in their view a mere white cloth stained with blood in line with the stereotype. About the cultures that Britain invades, or about the blood of the conflicting peoples and the peace they made between them.
By listing this British interpretation in historical documents, these visual connotations turn to represent new historical facts, so blood represents a symbol of victory in wars, and white represents peace, which is part of the Islamic identity.
The connotations of the Qatar flag can be understood by understanding the visual identity of the environment of the Qatar Peninsula (Al-Jazeera)
One flag and a double interpretation satisfy two different visions, but is this a correct reading of this flag, which is one of the oldest Arab flags?
To understand the origin of the flag of the State of Qatar, we simply have to understand the visual identity of the environment of the Qatar Peninsula, which we explain here how it was the real source of inspiration for the flag, like many cultures around the world.
For example, the flag of Lebanon is inspired by a pine tree, and the flag of the state of California is inspired by a mountain bear, and many other examples.
First, we have to note that the flag of Qatar is the only one that takes an elongated rectangular shape and not a square like the rest of the flags of the region, which is similar to the sizes of the marine flags that are in this way in order to be more visible with the movement of the wind over the ships.
This is confirmed by the fact that all the old Qatari ships, despite their primitiveness, allocate a place for the flag, which was rarely found above buildings in the early part of the century.
Secondly, white represents the color of the land in the Qatar Peninsula, which is composed of white limestone, while the burgundy color may symbolize the sea, specifically the color of the coral reefs that are revealed by the tides in several areas such as the creek, the north, and the shallow waters that generally surround Qatar.
In the culture of the Gulf and the peninsula, the sea is symbolized in ancient flags by the red color that embodies the coral reefs seen by sailors while diving in search of pearls and fishing.
For the same reason, the Red Sea was called by this name, and the old flags of Kuwait, the Emirates and Bahrain were all red and white.
So the two colors represent land and sea most likely, not blood and peace as mentioned in British documents.
If we concede that the flag of Qatar is a sea emblem, then the triangles represent the shape drawn by the waves of the Gulf on the calm shores in the shallow and stable waters of the east of the peninsula such as Qatar and Bahrain (Sinusoidal waves).
The triangular shape is formed due to the breaking of small waves against each other on semi-flat beaches, in a well-known phenomenon in coastal anatomy that my team and I have been studying in Qatar for years through cooperation between the Qatar Foundation, the University of Southern California and NASA.
Therefore, the flags of Qatar and Bahrain are similar to the presence of both in the shallow and stable waters in the Gulf. The two flags may be marine symbols for navigation in the shallow and near-shore waters, which are waters that large ships cannot navigate.
However, the flag of Bahrain is inspired by red from the sea, like the rest of the flags of the historical Gulf countries, while in the flag of Qatar, it symbolizes the sea in the color of coral reefs in the extended tidal areas that surround the Qatar Peninsula, which were the most important fishing areas and surround the Qatar Peninsula more than Bahrain.
Confirming this story, a study published by the Qatar National Library revealed that the color of the dye of the Qatar flag was inspired by these people.
If you look at the flag now, it symbolizes the most important thing that the sailor - that is, the Qatari - searches for in the middle of the sea, which is the shore or the land of safety. In my opinion, this is the correct symbol for the flag that was a guide that guides ships in dangerous waters.
If the Qataris used this flag as a visual signal to guide fishing boats and ships to the shore in the absence of lighthouses 100 years ago, or terrain that guides the sailor to directions near the coast, this may give a different interpretation to what was stated in British documents about the reason for the appearance and disappearance of the flag on Qatari ships while sailing in the Gulf.
The flag was carried near the shore to indicate the direction of land, and it was removed in deep waters so as not to mislead ships that the shore was close, as the areas near the shore could not be sailed by large ships because they were shallow.
Perhaps the absence of this most logical explanation for the flag of the State of Qatar was caused by the British document writers' lack of understanding of the Qatari environment and their vision that the desert has nothing to draw inspiration from any identity other than wars and blood, which is almost the same misunderstanding and distortion that we see today.
So, it is not a spur of the moment, but rather continued for more than a century, hiding behind it the cultural heritage of a people whose identity was inspired by the sea, so they drew their flag on every inch of the shores of the peninsula, as the picture taken shows, and drew the change of its level on its map over more than a thousand years, as we explained in a previous article.
The study of the unique environmental development of Qatar and the coasts of the eastern Arabian Peninsula is still being studied by our scientific team, through which we see part of the unique environmental and climatic history of our planet and how the people of Qatar dealt with natural variables that drew their identity in adapting to them, and this unique environmental development was a symbol of their knowledge, not wars.
Triangular waves on the coast of Qatar (Al-Jazeera)