Qatar Study Tour Day 7

On December 10th we went to the Bin Jalmood House - part of the Msheireb Museums - in Doha, Qatar. The story that is told from the walls of the house have been apart of a long history with slavery. While walking inside the house we were able to be 
in a place of learning, dialogue, and reflection. We learned about the slaves integration in to the family, freedom through manumission grated by ones master, and freedom through Qatar’s abolition of slavery. Kids and adults, all ages and races, would be enslaved and forced into labor. I found a few interesting things: masters were darker than the slaves themselves, there was the killer camel-racing circuit which used toddlers which only got banned roughly 15 years ago, and we even got to see a video about pearl diving in the Gulf. 


Another part of the Msheireb Museums is the Company House. From the late 1930s Qatari men used to gather outside this building to be taken on truck journeys to the desert oil fields of the western part of the country. At the desert they undertook manual work for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. This museum is dedicated to those pioneering Qataris who threw  themselves into bettering the future of their country. After seeing this museum I now have a better understanding of how Qatar became the way it is. 


Seeing these two museums was a real eye opener for me and others on this trip. Lots of us were touched emotionally by the stories we have seen at the Bin Jalmood House, knowing that slavery was happening all over and yet nobody could stop it. One story that stood out the most to me was with a woman called Fatima. She goes into detail about her family being treated inhumanely during their enslavement. 


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