The ACRPS Gulf Studies and Arabian Peninsula Studies Unit hosted Ulrike Freitag, Professor at the Free University of Berlin and Director of the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, to present the unit’s second in a series of monthly lectures. The lecture, titled “Jeddah: An Indian Ocean Port, from the 18th to the 20th Century,” was held on Thursday 6 April 2023, and moderated by Amal Ghazal, Professor of History and Dean of the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.

Freitag began her lecture by arguing that Jeddah is an Indian Ocean port and that the Red Sea is historically part of the Indian Ocean. She based this assertion on a geographical climatological perspective and explained the political and economic ramifications of the geographical climatological situation. Jeddah was a port to which ships from the Indian Ocean arrived and sailed north as the Red Sea was an outlet for goods from Egypt and the Indian Ocean, and transported into the Ottoman Empire, the Mediterranean, Europe, and beyond. It was also an outlet for local goods from Basra and the Hijaz.

However, Freitag noted that Jeddah harbour had some problems, among which is the difficulty to reach it due to the coral reef, and that it had few resources, mainly suffering from the dearth of water. Yet, there were two important reasons why Jeddah preserved its importance in spite of these difficulties. The first is its proximity to Mecca and the pilgrimage and caravan routes leading there. While the introduction of steamships shortened the route, especially to those pilgrims coming from southeast Asia and therefore increased the number of pilgrims from southeast Asia during the course of the 19th century, steamships caused a lot of problems to the trade in Jeddah, because the advent of steamships meant that sailors could bypass the traditional rest stop and sail directly from Aden to Suez.

The second reason why Jeddah was able to hold on to its significance, Freitag elaborated, is the longevity of the Ottoman rule, which saw in Jeddah an interesting Indian Ocean trade port. Further, Ottomans sought to re-take Yemen after they lost losing it in the 17th century, but its restoration was made possible in the 18th century using the Jeddah harbour. From another perspective, the major Ottoman interest was in the connection with the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

Jeddah, according to Freitag, lost its role gradually in the 1830s and 1840s when European ships began navigating in new water routes north of Jeddah. Freitag then talked about the political and economic developments of Jeddah during the period of Ottoman Tanzimat, when the city received its first share of reforms. After the 1840s, Ottoman commanders were sent regularly from Istanbul.

Freitag then referred to the way the Indian Ocean manifested itself in the urban space, leading to a cosmopolitan population in the city. She spoke about the immigrants, which included merchant families. These immigrants were welcomed, and their migration facilitated by local merchants through marrying their daughters to convince new arrivals to stay, despite how contrary this represents to the morals of the Najdi tribes and the interior of the peninsula. They established households and businesses. This was also made easier through the Ottoman nationality law which recognized Muslim immigrants as nationals after five years of residence. These people assimilated easily to the Hijazi cosmopolitan societies.

But not all immigrants were elites, there were sailors, craftsmen, and slaves. Jeddah was therefore one of the main import harbours of African slaves into the Arabian Peninsula, many of whom were traded to the Gulf but also into Jeddah to work for many local families. Many suburbs were also developed in which slaves and immigrants lived. Accommodating these newcomers was a headache for foreign consuls. They were worried that their colonial subjects, notably from India and Indonesia will sympathize with the Ottoman Empire or that political activists will use pilgrimage to stay in Mecca and liaise with the Ottomans.

Freitag concluded her lecture by speaking briefly about the changes linked to the Saudi rule and nation-building in the 20th century, mainly those most specific to Jeddah. The handover of the country to the Saudis led to incremental changes. Ibn Saud eliminated things that used to be normal to the people of Jeddah, such as music, radio, cigarette smoking, coffee shops, etc. She also explained how Jeddah became the economic capital after the real oil boom started for Saudi Arabia after the second World War and revenues rapidly increased. This was accompanied by a conservative modernization, the opening of embassies and foreign companies, and the establishment of new roads and living quarters.

However, in the 1980s, while there was a conservative turn, all embassies moved from Jeddah to Riyadh and the latter became the economic capital of Saudi Arabia. While it was an Islamic conservative period, tribal values also came to be publicized on a national level. Therefore, Jeddah started to be more and more decadent, and people liked to go there for recreational visits.

The lecturer ended by stressing how Jeddah is genuinely related to the Indian Ocean, which can be sensed in the type of clothing and names shared with populations from the whole area.

Participants followed up with questions that led to a discussion about the relationship between Jeddah and Hijaz as two similar or distinct regions, the cultural folklore of Jeddah, Islamic education in Jeddah compared to educational centres in Mecca and Medina, arts in the Indian Ocean cities and their relationship with sea trade, and the presence of different ethnic groups and their influence on the identity.