Annex to the Gulf Art Guide essay contributed by Neil van der Linden
Portrait of a European man in Turkish dress next to Portrait of a Lady, Isfahan, 17th century, Doha Museum of Islamic Art. Photo NeilvdL.
The historical and current relations between the Netherlands and the Gulf region show a range of varied connections and interactions, but in it also a kind of continuity, perhaps in its diversity. In most cases the relations were just coincidental or mostly pragmatic, but in some cases there have been much intenser collaborations that have partly helped shape nascent nations.
What follows here is, in grossly historical order, a selection of topics that left their mark in the region and in the Netherlands, concluding with a survey of persons who are currently active in the field of arts and culture in the Gulf region.
The Netherlands are a small country, on the edge of an open plain bordering on the sea, which can be both its enemy and its lifeline. Holland owes a considerable part of its prosperity to the sea, through fishing, trade with nearby and more distant nations, financing, its skills in controlling the powers of the sea and its position as a transportation and logistics hub, which it has remained to date. In these respects there are some striking similarities between the Netherlands and the Gulf states.
The first documented connections with the region started in the first half of the 16th century. At first the Dutch themselves were not physically present in the region. This was the time when the Netherlands were still a budding seafaring nation, but had already become rich due to textile manufacturing and early trade inside Europe. The Portuguese and the Spanish then were Europe’s most successful maritime nations. The first Dutch involvement on the Gulf coast was when Dutch bankers were financing the Portuguese expansion in the region, during the first half of the 16th century. Dr. Mohamed Hameed Al-Salman from Dilmun University for Science and Technology, Bahrain, describes this process in his article The Arabian Gulf in the Era of Portuguese Dominance: A Study in Historical Sources.
The next moment of Dutch involvement in the Gulf was when they took over the position of leading seafaring nation from the Portuguese and the Spanish.
During the 17th and 18th century the Dutch were a major maritime power and their influence also reached into the Gulf. Basra, Bandar Abbas and Busheir on the Iranian coast were trading ports of interest, there was a trading post on the island of Kharg in the Gulf, which was close to the coast of Iran and at some point there were also Dutch activities in Muscat and Ras Al Khaima. Establishing new trade routes was an interest, especially with Iran, but another aim was to create footholds to safeguard the vulnerable route to Holland’s profitable colony Indonesia. The Dutch historian Prof. Slot describes these developments in The Arabs of the Gulf 1602-1784. The Dutch even fought battles over the island Qeshm with the Qajar Shah’s of Persia, helping to establish Arab rule over there too, initially local and later on Omani rule. More on this in an article from the Iranian Chamber Society; see the external links.
An early Dutch artist to visit the region and leave a lasting testimony of his impression was Cornelis de Bruijn (1652 – 1727), who is famous for his illustrated travel books covering large parts of Asia as well as Egypt. He visited the Gulf region and made some drawings of seascapes, probably all of them covering the Iranian side of the Gulf. Other drawings of scenes from the Gulf have appeared in Dutch travelogues by lesser known travelers.
Perhaps another visual testimony of the Dutch presence in the Gulf region is provided by a painting in the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. The painting originates from Isfahan from the end of the 17th or the beginning of the 18th century and is named Portrait of European gentleman in Turkish dress. The person looks Dutch and there are indications that the person portrayed is a Dutchman. Earl Roger Mandle, former general director of the Qatar Museum Authority, confirmed that this could indeed be the case.
Indonesia
While the British during the second half of the 17th century took over the role of leading maritime nation, the Dutch remained present on the seas. They spent every effort possible to keep the profitable colony of Indonesia under their control. While the British conquered about the half of the world and the French took over a considerable part of the rest, the Dutch were satisfied with Indonesia and some possessions in the Caribbean. Most of their efforts on the oceans were aimed at keeping to sea route to Indonesia open and engage in profitable trade activities along the way. This led to continued efforts to keep footholds along the sea route, so we keep finding Dutch presence along the coasts of the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, including the Gulf, as well as in the Red Sea.
As Indonesia, the Netherlands’ most important colony for centuries, was a predominantly Muslim region, the colonizers felt a need not only to offer diplomatic and administrative services to their colonial subjects when they went on Hajj, but also to keep an eye on the influences the Indonesians would undergo during the Hajj. Meanwhile some Dutch rulers developed also a less plain and more compassionate interest in the comings and goings of the Indonesians. From this there even grew an advanced academic involvement in the world of Islam, with Leiden University becoming one of the world-leading centers of excellence in Islamic studies.
An authoritative scholar first on Indonesian Muslim customary law (Adat), and gradually more and more on Islamic law in general, was the Leiden academic Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1857-1936). He converted to Islam, traveled to Jeddah and made the Hajj to Mecca and Medina, partly in the company of Indonesian pilgrims. In this he was most certainly still serving his Dutch employers, but, as it goes, he became more and more absorbed by the topic, being both an excellent academic researcher and perhaps a most devout believer. Moreover he was an enthusiastic photographer. His pictures taken during his Hajj have become world famous.
The need for taking care of the Indonesian pilgrims to Mecca and Medina led to a permanent Dutch consulate in Jeddah. For several decades this was the only foreign representative office along with the British offices in the nascent Kingdom. In his book The Kingdom Robert Lacey describes how the Dutch consul Daan van der Meulen famously met the young King Abdulaziz and reports about their exchange of thoughts. Significantly, at some point Van der Meulen was reported back home to his supervisors in The Hague that Dutch worries about a plan to establish a Wahhabi Sultanate in Indonesia spiritually sponsored by hardliner factions from the Kingdom were baseless, on the contrary praising King Abdulaziz for his moderate and balanced political views and strategies. More on this issue can be found in the article The Dutch plans against resistance: “Stop the Caliphate”.
Mister Van der Meulen set out his views during a gathering of the Indonesian Organization in 1938. He said, according to the newspaper Het Vaderland: “De Hajj to Mecca, under the present conditions, with a king of Al Saud who fights against pan-Islamist and communist actions, en who is open about his appreciation of our rule in Indonesia, is no longer a threat to our rule”. (..) Only because of this bond [between the Islamic State Al Khilafa and the Muslims of Indonesia] the Hajj had been considered a fundamental issue. And without that bond the Hajj was no longer an issue. That is why The Netherlands too was more than pleased when in 1924 the Islamic State Al Khilafah was destroyed by its fellow colonialists, Great-Britain and France.”
The Saudi Hollandi Bank
The Saudi Hollandi Bank is the oldest bank of Saudi Arabia. It was founded in 1926 by the Netherlands Trading Society, the Nederlandsche Handels-Maatschappij, a predecessor of the ABN-AMRO. It was set up as a provision for the Indonesian Muslims on their way to Mecca and Medina, but it would become a tool for the nascent nation to do international business. In that same year as a young prince the later King Faisal, at the age of 21, visited the Netherlands to meet at the headquarters of the Nederlandsche Handels-Maatschappij in Amsterdam. Two years later the Dutch bank assisted in launching the Saudi Riyal, the Kingdom’s first independent currency. The bank became an important intermediate for overcoming the discrepancies between the Western-system banks and the Islamic system that forbids interest on money lending (and replaces it by a shares system, sukuk). For a long while the Saudi Hollandi Bank was the central bank of Saudi Arabia, where the national gold reserves were stored.
In 1969, the ABN Bank, the successor of the Nederlandsche Handels-Maatschappij, was one of the first foreign banks to implement the Saudization initiatives initiated by the Saudi-Arabian Monetary Agency and it became the model for other foreign banks in the Kingdom. In 1977 the Saudi Holland Bank was reshaped as a joint-venture company. In 1994, it was the first foreign bank to become a majority Saudi owned bank, with the ABN-AMRO still a 40% shareholder. It remains a major player in the Saudi banking world. For instance in 2005 the bank led a consortium of 8 banks in financing the Jamarat Bridge in Mecca totaling SAR 1.5 Billion
Other business interests
The half Dutch, half British Royal Dutch Shell, now simply known as Shell, has a long-standing presence on the Arab peninsula. Although in the Saudi Kingdom first the American companies were let in, Shell was an early partner too.
Other major Dutch companies were active in the Gulf in the fields of marine engineering and construction, such as Hollandia-Kloos (owned by the family of former Dutch prime-minster Ruud Lubbers), Ogem and Rijn-Schelde-Verolme. In 1977 the Dutch Philips company was part in a historic telephone network deal, the largest in telecommunications ever struck until at least for a decade after, as part of a consortium with the Saudi Prince Muhammad ibn Fahad’s private company, for a new telephone and telecommunications system in the Kingdom; the deal enabling Crown Prince Fahad to break continuous Saudi dependence on American technology – to the dismay of the American companies ITT and AT&T and even the US president.
During the sixties and seventies when business really started to boom, a key mediatory role in Dutch-Arab peninsula relations was played by a Dutch-Palestinian businessman, Mahmoud Rabbani, originally a refugee from Haifa, via Lebanon, whose mother had been able to send him to the Netherlands to study. He became consul to the Netherlands for Jordan and Kuwait. He played an important role during the 1973 international oil crisis following the October war, when the Arab states decided to single out the US and the Netherlands for a boycott. As Rabbani stated later in an interview, the straw that broke the camel’s back was when the then Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Max van der Stoel had called upon Syria, after it retook the Golan Heights occupied by Israel in 1967, to ‘return’ the area to Israel. It was Rabbani just as well who took a lead in restoring relations. In those years his television appearance in a satirical television program Farce Majeure, a Dutch equivalent of Monty Python, made him a popular media personality. His son Selim continues a role as intermediate in business affairs.
In recent years engineering and construction companies Ballast Nedam, Boskalis, Royal Haskoning and Van Oord were active. Dutch companies and engineers are particularly wanted for their proficiency in reclaiming land, dredging, building harbors and industrial terminals.
The bursting economic bubble that started September 2008 on and which severely affected the Gulf region, also hit Dutch companies working in the region. The most conspicuous case was the at least temporarily halt of the The World islands land reclaim project in front of the coast of Dubai, in which Dutch dredging companies were involved. The spectacular light towers for Dubai’s The World artificial archipelago and a wheel shaped hotel in Dubai by Royal Haskonig were put on hold, perhaps forever, and the same is certainly the case for the complete Waterfront City designed by Rem Koolhaas that was unveiled March 2008, just a few month before the onset of the economical crisis.
However, Rem Koolhaas opened an office in Qatar and has designed the Qatar National Library among other projects.
As of today, Shell is Oman’s largest partner for exploring the country’s relatively newly found oil resources. In the Northeast of Qatar Shell runs the largest gas to liquid carbohydrate transformer in the world, in a joint venture with the Qatari national oil company Qatar Petroleum. Shell invested six billion dollars in this project, as part of several gas projects. As part of the agreement, Shell participates in some of the cultural and educational projects in Qatar. For example Shell is a sponsoring partner of the National Museum.
In 2011 Rotterdam Port Authority signed an agreement with Qatar Petroleum’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, as a result of a three years cooperation, about shipping technology and port logistics expertise regarding the transport of liquid gas from Qatar, of which Qatar is the largest producer in the world, while Rotterdam is among the world’s main storage facilities for liquid gas and Europe’s largest storage facility and refinery of petrochemical products. The Dutch Queen Beatrix was present in Qatar when the agreement was signed.
Meanwhile, the Dutch TNO, one of Europe’s largest companies in the field of technology development and consultancy in energy, health, safety, mobility, construction and information, recently opened a research centre in Qatar’s Science and Technology Park. TNO’s current main focus in the Middle East is the oil and gas sector but it aims to expand into other core markets like water treatment, solar, ICT and medical. The government of Oman sponsors the chair of Islamic Studies at Leyden University. In exchange Dutch universities are opening a Dutch academic institute in Muscat.
Personal professional relations
During recent years, several actors in the cultural field from Dutch origin were active in the Gulf region. Here is a survey in arbitrary order:
- Dutch collector Aarnout Helb, expert on new Saudi art, opened the first museum outside Saudi-Arabia permanently dedicated to new Saudi arts, the Greenbox Museum in Amsterdam.
- In 2003, commissioned by the Emir of Qatar, Dutch jazz pianist and composer Michiel Borstlap composed an opera on texts in English and Arabic, ‘Avicenna’, which was performed in Doha.
- Jean-Paul Engelen is director of the public-arts programme is a Dutchman and a main adviser of Sheikha Mayassa (daughter of the Emir of Qatar and by now the main patron of the arts in Qatar).
- Rianne Norbart, former spokeswoman of the Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam, is the Senior Communications and Fundraising Manager at the Cultural Department of the Abu Dhabi Tourism Development and Investment Company, soon to be rebranded as Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority.
- Michael Huijser, former general director of the Zuiderzeemuseum in Holland, was general director at the Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi.
- Ahlam Gharbouani and Khalid Imzeran, two young Dutch entrepreneurs of Dutch-Moroccan background, and founders of Interfact, are consultants for companies who do business in the UAE, and of Layaal, a cultural festival in Abu Dhabi.
- Nat Muller, Dutch curator and Middle-East art expert, was curator of the Abraaj prize exhibition during the 2012 Dubai Art Fair and is a regular guest of forums in the region. Nat Muller also participated in the BBC’s Doha debates on the topic of censorship of the arts.
- Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFares, typographer, Dutch-Lebanese, is founder of the Khatt Foundation, center for Arabic Typography, and was teacher at American University Beirut and American University Dubai. She works between Europe and the Middle East as a typography and design consultant on projects of cultural relevance. She is the mastermind and curator of the Khatt Foundation’s Typographic Matchmaking Projects (versions 1.0 & 2.0).
- The Dutch ARCHIS architecture and urban design magazine was one of the early contributors to the two Al Manakh books and published the first edition. Al Manakh is probably the most complete compendium of articles about (urban) planning in the Gulf.
Cover of Al Manakh, first volume.
- Architect Rem Koolhaas was a main contributor to both volumes of Al Manakh. The same goes for Ole Bouman, architectural journalist and theoretician, former chief-editor of the ARCHIS magazine and former head of the Netherlands Architecture Institute Rotterdam. Both Koolhaas and Bouman have collaborated closely with Dubai-based Pink Tank, which co-edited the Al Manakh books.
- Koen Olthuis, architect of floating buildings, designed a floating mosque for Dubai.
- Reindert Falkenburg, art historian from Leiden University, is head of the humaniora department of New York University Abu Dhabi.
- The Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, then under general director Ernst Veen, hosted a large exhibition on treasures and arts and crafts of Oman end of 2009/beginning of 2010. Staff of the Nieuwe Kerk organization gave masterclasses in curating and exhibition management in Muscat.
- The Dutch photography curator Hester Keijser organized exhibitions for The Empty Quarter Gallery in Dubai until recently.
- Coinciding with the visit of HM Queen Beatrix to Qatar the Doha Museum of Islamic Art hosted a Rembrandt exhibition.
- Of all the major Dutch orchestra’s the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra has performed in the Gulf, in the Abu Dhabi Classics series, October 2010. Due to the demise of the ADACH the whole Abu Dhabi Classics series has been discontinued.
- Design Days Dubai 2012 had a clear Dutch presence with among others Priveekollektie, Li Edelkoort, Huda Abifares and Droog Design.
For some Middle-East artists the Netherlands became a safe-haven or at least a place to develop. Some of them now have special ties with the Gulf region. Nedim Kufi, a renowned Iraqi-Dutch artist, was winner of one of the 2011 Emirates Airlines awards. His work is part of the collection of Salwa Zeidan Gallery in Abu Dhabi.
Halim Al Karim, another Iraqi artist who came as a refugee to the Netherlands, studied at the Amsterdam Rietveld Academy. Currently he living in the US and his work is part of Saatchi’s catalog. He is also on the Dubai XVA gallery‘s roster.
Leading Syrian artist Hrair Sarkissian has a connection with the Netherlansd as he has a BFA in Photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Sarkissian is one of the winners of the 2013 Abraaj Capital Art Prize.
The upcoming young Bahraini multimedia artist Hasan Hujairi in 2011 did a collaboration with the STEIM electronic arts academy in Amsterdam.
Intishal Al Timimi, an Iraqi Dutch film expert is member of the artistic team at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. The festival also supports new films and Al Timimi has helped support the documentary In my mother’s arms by Mohammed Al Daradji, a young Iraqi Dutch filmmaker.
Ludmila Cvikova, Czech film expert who got her MA at the University of Amsterdam, became international programmer at the Doha Film Institute after more than a decade of programming for the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where she selected films from around the globe including Eastern Europe and the Middle East, as well as working with Rotterdam’s CineMart and the Hubert Bals Fund.
Mo Reda is an artist of Dutch-Kuwaiti origin who was artist in residence at the Al Riwaq Art Space in Bahrain, where he curated the Alwan 338 project.
Dutch journaist Jan Keulen was the first
director at the Doha Centre for Media Freedom, with Joris Van Duijne working at Free Voice Doha.
If football is part of culture, and at least in a Norbert Elias sense and not only his sense it is, it is interesting to notice that after having vested interests in FB Barcelona, Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester City and other, in some cases up to then even irrelevant European football clubs, the Al Faisal company, related to Faisal Al Thani, a cousin of the Emir of Qatar, is considering to buy the relatively inconspicuous football club Fortuna Sittard.
Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and his wife Princess Maxima at the opening of the Oman exhibtion in the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam 2009. Photo by De Nieuwe Kerk