In 2015, I began working on a study funded by the US government to understand climate changes in the Arab world, specifically in Oman and Morocco. By chance, Qatar was the last stop in part of this study, but it was also the most unusual and exciting.
On the face of it, Qatar's dry, flat desert environment suggests that "nothing here changes", and therefore there are no climatic changes that require study, and researching the history of these changes will be a "waste of time", but some evidence in satellite images prompted me to doubt the validity of this assumption. , but it wasn't accurate enough to confirm anything.
Sea waves and flag
On the last day of the scientific mission, I decided to send a request to the Japanese Space Agency to obtain high-resolution images via the ALOS2 satellite of the suspicious areas in central Qatar for verification, and in the meantime I intended to spend some time on its coast, and there I saw with my own eyes the waves drawing lines on the shore much like a natural painting of the flag of Qatar.
The waves draw lines on the beach, much like a natural painting of the Qatar flag (Al-Jazeera)
I found this confusing, and then when I returned to the United States, I found recent satellite images that had arrived from Japan indicating that significant climate changes had occurred in Qatar. We spent 7 years studying this data and published it in a paper in the ISPRS magazine. ) prestigious earlier this year.
And I kept wondering: To what extent did climatic changes shape the identity of this place?
My conviction has increased that all the features of life in the small peninsula reflect the important climatic changes that it experienced, and that the people of Qatar coexisted with that changing environment, made their identity from it, and were inspired by it as the first inspiration in their science, and it really preoccupied me with understanding the visual identity of this distinguished science.
Here, I seek to provide a new reading of the meanings of symbols and colors in that flag and a new perception of the story of its birth, a reading that was formed over the past years in which I worked with a scientific team to study the Qatari environment, during which I found a close connection between the "flag" in its current form and the data of that environment. And a scientific explanation of its origin more than 100 years ago seems more coherent than what was recorded in British historical documents for the years 1916, 1931 and 1936, in which the interpretation of science symbols conflicts.
With this new reading, we understand the secret of the flag's color, shape, and size that are distinguished from the flags of Arab countries, and the justifications for that similarity with the flag of neighboring Bahrain, and other characteristics of that flag, which was historically associated with Qatari ships more than with land.
"Burgundy and White" on British Records
The historical accounts provided by the British records say that the white color in the flag of Qatar symbolizes peace, and the burgundy color symbolizes the coagulated blood that was shed in the Qatar wars, especially in the last half of the 19th century. As for the nine heads, it symbolizes that Qatar is the ninth of the Trucial States, and that After the conclusion of the British-Qatari Convention in 1916.
The British interpretation of the visual identity of the flag is in line with the prevailing colonial thought at the beginning of the last century, which saw the Arabs from the perspective of conflicts and wars, which the colonial powers themselves had a major role in igniting and extinguishing at other times according to their interests, and therefore, it is natural for document writers - in the absence of a local interpretation - To see the flag as a white cloth stained with blood in line with their stereotypes, so that "burgundy" is the color of the blood of the conflicting peoples or the color of victory in those conflicts, and "white" is the symbol of the peace that their intervention made, and the nine triangles indicate the number of emirates that signed Agreements with them, meaning that their interpretation of the flag revolves mainly around the British role in the region.
In my opinion, the correct approach to understanding the origin of the Qatari flag is to examine the visual identity of the environment of the Qatar peninsula. Often the flags of countries are the result of the natural environment. For example, the flag of Lebanon is inspired by the pine tree, and the flag of the state of California is inspired by the mountain bear.
But, how does this unique shape and color represent Qatar's environment?
Here, we may have to look at the sea and not at the land, as the British documents did. In this context, I make two observations:
The dye used historically in the color of the flag is extracted from coral reefs in the Al Khor region - a picture of the 1936 flag (Al-Jazeera)
The first:
The flag of Qatar is more elongated than the rest of the Arab and even international flags (in terms of the ratio between its length and width), and flags in this way are more suitable for marine use to be more visible with the movement of winds over ships, and the old Qatari ships used to allocate a place for that flag in their part The background, and this again suggests the marine origin of the flag away from the story of wars whose data revolves on land, which is also confirmed by the 1936 document for the marine use of the flag.
Second:
The white color in the flag matches the color of the land on the Qatar Peninsula, which is composed of bright white limestone (limestone), while the burgundy color matches the "coral reef" that surrounds the shores of the Qatar Peninsula, and appears clearly with the movement of the tides In several areas such as "Al-Khor" and "North" and the general shallow waters surrounding the peninsula, and this link between science and the environment is supported by a study published by Qatar National Library, which revealed that the dye used historically in the color of the flag was extracted from coral reefs in the Al-Khor area.
In the culture of the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula, the sea is symbolized in ancient flags by the red color that embodies the coral reefs under the water and 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, and the two colors represent land and sea most likely, not blood and peace, as stated in British documents.
Burgundy is the color of coral reefs when sea water reveals them, and white is the color of land, consisting of snow-white limestone (the island).
And if we agree that the flag of Qatar is a marine emblem, then the triangles it contains when the burgundy meets white represent the shape drawn by the waves of the Gulf on the calm beaches in the shallow waters around Qatar and Bahrain (Sine Waves).
This triangular shape is formed due to the refraction of small waves against each other on semi-flat beaches due to the presence of a current parallel to the coast, in a well-known phenomenon in coastal anatomy, which I have been studying with my scientific team in Qatar for years through cooperation between Qatar Foundation, the University of Southern California and NASA. This study was the beginning of my questioning about the secret of this flag that is drawn by every wave on the coasts of Qatar, if I meditate carefully.
Note Qatar and Bahrain .. the secret of similarity
In light of the foregoing, it is natural that the flags of Qatar and Bahrain are similar, as the two countries are located in the shallow water area in which the waves are low in the middle of the western Gulf, and the “two flags” may then be two marine symbols used to refer to navigation in those shallow and calm waters near the shore. It is water that large ships cannot navigate, as it poses a threat to its safety because of the possibility of its lower part colliding with the bottom rich in coral reefs.
The triangular shape is formed due to the refraction of small waves against each other on semi-flat beaches due to the presence of a current parallel to the coast and in the absence of vertical waves
This explains the symbolism of choosing the shape of the triangle over the other geometric shapes found in the two flags, and the hypothesis does not contradict the symbolism of its number in the flag of Qatar (9), which symbolizes the number of the Trucial States, and its number in the flag of Bahrain (5) refers to the pillars of Islam, but it explains why the triangles were chosen Not the stars, for example, or any other symbol.
And the flag in this way and from a purely marine perspective symbolizes the most important thing that the "Qatari sailor" searches for when he is in the middle of the sea, which is the beach or "safety land". Triangular waves, and therefore the burgundy color appears more extended than the white color to express the breadth and extension of the sea.
It is most likely that this marine flag was used mainly as a guide that guides ships to land. In the absence of large beacons to guide ships to primitive ports or to the coast 100 years ago and more in this region and in the absence of prominent terrain that guides them to land, raising this flag meant the way or approaching land.
Flags and ships
I noticed a note that was included in a British letter in those old records demanding that Qatari ships commit to raising their flags in the deep waters of the Gulf, indicating that their captains were deliberately hiding the flags in those areas through which large ships pass in order to piracy them, hiding their identities.
And if we take into account that the accusation of piracy was the most prominent British justification for controlling the coasts of the Arabian Gulf through agreements known as the Trucial States, then this narrative remains questionable, in addition to being inconsistent with the nature of life and maritime activity in this region, i.e. Qatar, so what drives my fishermen Precious pearls to ship piracy in a semi-closed sea in which everyone knows the other?!
This may give us a new interpretation of what was stated - without explanation - in those British documents about the reason for the flag's appearance at times and its disappearance at other times over Qatari ships sailing in the Gulf. So it is a marine emblem with indications of maritime navigation, and its concealment was not intended for piracy.
Using the flag in the background of the ships to guide it visually to return to the beach
(the island)
Coral reefs and mystery map
For centuries, coral reefs and shallow waters played an active role in protecting the shores of Qatar from greed, a protection that reached the extent of their disappearance from most historical maps, as those maps were drawn by travelers sailing parallel to the beaches and documenting what they discovered, and since navigation was impossible amid coral reefs and in shallow waters They were unable to see the mainland, due to the absence of any terrain that would enable them to see it from a distance, and therefore they could not draw the Qatar Peninsula, while those maps contained, for example, an accurate description of the features of the Iranian coasts, because they met deep waters that they could navigate in, and the presence of mountains that were easy to see from the approaching waters. for the coast.
Only the Qatari and Bahraini sailors with their small boats and their knowledge of the deeper sea passages could reach the land, and without their guiding flags it was not possible to safely reach the shore, and perhaps this is what prevented them from giving an explanation for their flag as mentioned in the 1936 document, because it was part of a marine navigation system that protected them of invaders storming their coasts.
Perhaps the absence of this most logical explanation for the flag of the State of Qatar was caused by the absence of written Qatari documents about the maritime navigation routes that were inherited orally from generation to generation, and did not reach strangers, as well as forces of a colonial nature, and thus the only explanation available to the writers of British documents remained. That is based on their stereotypical vision of the region, which does not see in the desert anything but conflicting tribes, wars and blood, and it is a misunderstanding that continues to this day.
So, we are facing a century or more of misunderstanding of Qatari and Gulf culture in general, in which the environmental heritage of a people whose identity was inspired by their understanding of the sea was absent, so the waves drew their flag on every inch of the peninsula’s shores, as the picture shows. The change in its water level drew its map over more than a thousand years. As we explained in a previous article.
The unique environmental development of Qatar and its coasts is still being studied by our scientific team, and it revealed to me how much the people of Qatar had a great deal of innate awareness and the ability to adapt to unique natural variables that drew their identity, and knowledge - not wars - was a symbol of their knowledge.