Strands of narrative woven through the stories told for generations suggest considerations of value in relating to one’s landscape and understanding place through nonrational processes. O’Neill et al. suggests that one of the ways we value things is “simply in virtue of their displaying some cluster of properties”; and “historical or process-based” in which they are appreciated “not merely as a cluster of properties but as particular individuals individuated by a temporal history and spatial location”. The many values people find in nature are of the latter kind. “History matters … in our evaluations of environments,” (McShane, 2012). In “The Trouble with Wilderness” Cronon examines the way the traditional wilderness concept emerged in America and how it reflects older Western perceptions of the separation between humanity and nature. Cronon argues that, “it (the wilderness) is quite profoundly a human creation – indeed, the creation of very particular human cultures at very particular moments in human history.” (Cronon, 1995). Cronon sees the wilderness concept as mirror-like and reflecting the “unexamined longings and desires” of Americans, and thus adding to the problematic relationship with the non-human world (Cronon, 1995). The human-constructed narratives associated with the wilderness became the essence of American preservationism tendencies. The Qatari sentiments towards al-Zubarah slightly parallels that of the contemporary American relationship to the wilderness. While the wilderness is simultaneously considered ontologically separate from civilization and humanity, and a place to escape from the overbearing of civilization, al-Zubarah is the gate to glimpsing into the pre-modern life of Qatari ancestors. The cultural landscape of the al-Zubarah is storied: they are the embodiment of the narratives of the human and non-human lives that have shaped them. In this blog, I compare the role played by wilderness in the American cultural imaginary and the role played by Al-Zubarah as a historical site in the Qatari cultural imaginary to show that the meanings that humans project onto the landscape are structured into valuable narratives and the protection of the land is the prerequisite to protecting these narratives.
Preserving the landscape protects the imagined cultural identity and the narratives of values we cognitively construct. Most interpretations of the landscapes identities are passed on through memory, which constitutes the basis of a tradition. Tradition is what remains over time, representing a central theme for the narrative identity. It is clear how the national narrative of US history renders wilderness an especially valuable role in American societies, conceptualizing it as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. This generates the national urge to preserve the wilderness’s ontological separation from the humankind, thus, the minimal human intervention in nature is imperative to maintaining its native ecological state. In a similar manner, the Qatari incentive to protect al-zubarah’s historical stories and outstanding cultural integrity resulted in the national project Qatar Islamic Archaeology and Heritage Project (qiah). In a region where archeologists often deal in millennia, QIAH revealed the story of a place that went from sand to riches and back to sand in just a bit more than a century. A story reconnecting Qataris with their ambitious ancestors did not just indulge in extensive cultural and economic connections locally and inter-regionally (including relations directly or indirectly to inland Arabia, Oman, China, India, Iran, Iraq, East Africa, and Europe) but suffered the retributions of the nearby dominance-driven neighbors. Al-Zubarah illustrates a life prior to modern Doha where the northwest coast, once a prominent centre of population on the peninsula, became a landscape peppered with abandoned villages in addition to the large ruins field of Al-Zubarah. In this context, appreciation of a landscape does not overlook the story forming its basis and constituting its narratives. In other words, viewing and admiring are subjective behaviours which come to life from the narratives elaborated by the inhabitants. The meaningful stories we attribute to the wilderness-mainly fueled by American sentiments- and the al-Zubarah produced similar national narratives of protecting those sceneries from man interventions in the form of resources’ extractions and destructive knowledge-driven discoveries, respectively. Landscape identity is therefore a cultural identity which is not only recognizable by its appearance but, above all, by its narratives.
The visual element plays a significant role in recognizing the landscape and its narratives. Without such references little would be understood about the landscape: much would be seen, but little would be fully appreciated. In the specific composition of the characters of the landscape components, the identity of a landscape is defined. Al Zubarah has layers, different levels of construction that highlight dramatically shifting fortunes, like a Gulf version of the 19th-century gold rush towns in the us—a place of rapid change and fast money producing a life of prosperity and economic development. Stumps of long-dead date palms revealing an enriched port with seasonal fresh product. White pearl scattered all over the site depicts how pearling dominated the thoughts and way of life of nearly all the coastal inhabitants of the Gulf for centuries. Analyzing the different construction layers of al-Zubarah eroded walls reveals that some of the buildings in the surrounding areas had been stripped and abandoned in the years before the Omani attack, the final blow that led people to completely abandon an archaeological fortune. All these visual characteristics of al-Zubarah accumulated to produce different stories of the life of Qataris in the past. The national narrative had embraced these stories, leading us to conceive of the landscape as an important part of Qatari heritage. It is also part of a cultural process-reactivating the unique aspects (stories) that have either been obscured or simply never fully enhanced- that gives the current Qatari generation a sense of tradition. Paying attention to the visual elements of the cultural landscape and understanding the narratives behind them turns an a-historical and artificial nature into something valuable.
Our constructed imaginations of the al-Zubarah, aided by its historical visual characteristics displays strong expression of aesthetic preservationism. Aesthetic preservationism holds that through the sensitive perception characteristic of aesthetic attention and the discovery of beauty, majesty, and so on, we may develop care and respect for nature. In this way, a kind of aesthetic awareness potentially feeds into ethical attitudes and forms of environmental action. For example, “aesthetic protectionism” argues that natural beauty can serve as an important motivation for protecting the environment, as long as we can provide sufficient justification—some kind of objectivity—for our aesthetic judgments of nature. Looking firstly at the case of the wilderness, as you stroll the wilderness, your senses are triggered as you are wandering through a forest of giant sequoia trees. As you see the red-brown color, touch the thick texture of the bark, and enormous girth of the trunk, you are having an aesthetic experience. However, emphasizing on the senses alone cannot sufficiently describe why we have the urge to preserve wild nature. The aesthetic experience is also perceptual and can thicken with a range of components or layers. Thoughts, narratives, knowledge, and emotion may all become equally integrated into the experience. While the mesmerizing form of the pearl enclaves buried under the al-Zubarah buildings had captured our attention at first glance, when we pay close attention to history, it is said to be a true testimony of an urban trading and pearl- diving tradition which has sustained a large part of the coastal town from the Islamic period. And while our memories are triggered by the typical old, traditional Middle Eastern towns when we look at the organic layout of the Zubarah, it reminds us of a certain historical fact that there was a central authority responsible for the town’s design and construction. In this sense, our senses are our important in our drive towards preserving the aesthetic of the Zubarah, but it is not the most essential component as other elements such as imaginations, historical and cultural narratives as well as perceptual notions come into play.
Despite of the focus on how our human-constructed narratives shape our preservation efforts towards the wilderness and al-Zubarah, it takes our attention away from the real issues. Environmentalism generated a romanticized narrative that discourages alienation from nature, driving us towards a constant urge of preserving nature. Whether it is for preserving our constructed narratives of nature or preserving its aesthetic experiences, this dangerously obscure the greater that leads us to produce intensive preservation efforts in the first place. In the al-Zubarah case, the state of conservation of the fort has become more difficult, reflecting the inherent weaknesses of the archaeological remains in a hostile maritime and desert climate that have been intensified by anthropogenic processes. In a pragmatic sense, true problem lies in our lifestyle… in our industry, our pollution, and our sprawling urbanity which affects entire systems of natural and cultural landscapes. Cronon is arguing that we need to figure out how to live with nature ethically, sustainably, and honorably. This is also applicable in the al-Zubarah case. I am not arguing for integrating the fort into our cities or moving humans out of cities to live in al-Zubarah but trace the real problem of why conservation measures in nature became more intensive.
Bibliography:
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- Rosendahl, S., Nymann, H., Kinzel, M., & Walmsley, A. (Eds.) (2013). Qatar Islamic Archaeology and Heritage Project: End of Season Report : Spring 2013. Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen and Qatar Museums Authority.
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