Wells on the Qatar Promontory

How to explore this map: This map has only one layer. It represents locations of wells on the Qatar Promontory in the early twentieth century. The points on the map represent the location of the wells and the color of the point indicates the quality of water as indicated by John Gordon Lorimer’s Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia. in the early twentieth century. You can hover over each of the points to get more information about the location of the wells, their depth and construction.

Context: This map’s dataset is based on the “Qatar” entry in Lorimer’s Gazetteer. The author of the entry wrote the following: “The bulk of the information contained in this principal article on Qatar and in the minor articles subordinate thereto, was obtained expressly for this Gazetteer during the years 1904-07; previously little was known regarding the promontory.” The entry is rich in information about water and for that reason we have chosen to feature it.

Geolocation: The text of the entries were annotated in Recogito(with the GeoNames ID found in the dataset)

Notes on data decisions: The dataset contains the number of wells, the type of well (masonry or unlined), the depth in fathoms as well as the quality of water (good, fairly good,indifferent, brackish, bad, unspecified).

Further mapping: We would suggest following up on the idea of wells

In Bahrain

In the larger geographical area of Lorimer’s Gazetteer

Unidentified locations: In building this dataset, we were unable to locate 18 places (spellings are from Lorimer)

  • Araiq-ash-Shamāli
  • Busaiyir Bin-Jīmāz
  • Busaiyir-az-Zor
  • Umm Dhā’an
  • Jadidah
  • Jirthāmah
  • Judai
  • Khanaifsīl
  • Umm Khayaisah
  • Lūthailah
  • Malaihah
  • ‘Ain Bin-Muhanna
  • Qaiāfah
  • Rakaiyāt
  • Sarrīyah
  • Sinqais
  • Qalaibāt-al-Qatāwah
  • Hadāyāt

If you can locate these places on a map, or know what the place is called today, write us at opengulfNYUAD@gmail.com. Thanks in advance! We will acknowledge your local knowledge.

License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/” Creative Commons 4.0 BY-NC-SA International<

Suggested Citation: OpenGulf Project (2020). Protection of the Pearling Industry Map. https://opengulf.github.io/wells.html. Accessed xxxx.yy.zz. 10.5281/zenodo.3955081

Last update: 06 February 2024