In the last decade, numerous social media accounts have emerged with the mission of documenting and disseminating the history of the United Arab Emirates. Some accounts have amassed a following of hundreds of thousands of history buffs, while others have evolved into formal research endeavors. These accounts are run by independent researchers, belonging to the Millennial generation, often utilizing multiple social media platforms. The accounts cover various topics, including genealogy, religious heritage, and photography. The popular history they produce is community oriented and appeals to people who want to learn about their family’s or tribe’s history or view rare photographs of their neighborhood or city. The scholars behind the accounts produce original research by conducting interviews and collecting primary sources. People flock to these accounts not only for their extensive curated content but also to join a growing community of amateur researchers and explore opportunities for collaboration.
The established history of the UAE tends to focus on the period after the formal unification of the emirates in 1971. In the absence of a concerted institutional effort, these accounts have helped fill the gap in people’s knowledge of the pre-state era, rendering a more nuanced history. They do this by collecting oral accounts of contemporaries of the period and studying overlooked primary sources.
In April 2022, during a discussion of the Ministry of Culture’s policies on the floor of the UAE’s Parliament, Kifah Al Zaabi, a member of the UAE’s Federal National Council, spoke about these accounts. She said, “We find many outstanding accounts focused on Emirati heritage, poetry, and identity.” And she called on the ministry to find ways to support them in promoting Emirati heritage. The Ministry of Culture has since launched the National Grant Program for Culture and Creativity, which offers grants annually to support creatives and bolster cultural production in the UAE. Among the objectives of the program is to “promote and preserve the UAE’s national identity and heritage.” The inaugural recipients received their grants in 2023.
Several prominent accounts are producing captivating content and drawing an enthusiastic audience eager to learn and contribute to the effort of producing a fuller picture of Emirati history and heritage.
Emirates Date
The Instagram account Emirates Date is run by an anonymous researcher who is currently pursuing a doctorate in the United Kingdom. It was launched in 2014 and boasts 351,000 followers. It focuses on collecting and studying photographs, videos, and publications. The researcher started it in part to challenge “the belief that UAE history began only 53 years ago” with the union of 1971. The researcher stressed a commitment to collaboration: “We publish our content and the content of our colleagues as well, and we support them.”
Al Mawrooth Initiative
Self-trained Emirati researcher Saeed al-Suwaidi, who holds a bachelor’s degree in media studies, launched Al Mawrooth Initiative on X, formerly Twitter, and Instagram. The X account, launched in September 2012, has 20,000 followers, while the more visually oriented Instagram account, launched later, has 73,000. The X account’s bio articulates the mission: “An initiative concerned with documenting the oral heritage in the UAE,” and it notes it is not affiliated with any government agency. The initiative focuses primarily on documenting family trees in Abu Dhabi and Dubai in the 19th and first half of the 20th century.
Saeed began his project by interviewing elders and relatives around him, and he expanded the circle as the years went by. He explained his method: “I read history documented by the British, link it to oral narratives and vice versa.” Concerned about accessibility, Saeed launched the initiative to “avoid concealing information and keeping it locked away in drawers.” His social media pages have been archived by a group of university students who are currently working on publishing the content in a book and on a website.
Hussain Albadi
Hussain Albadi describes himself as a “field researcher.” He has been studying UAE history since the late 1980s. He focuses primarily on his Instagram account, with 47,000 followers, and has a limited presence on other platforms, such as YouTube.
Hussain began his endeavor after witnessing the passing of many members of older generations who had visited his father. “In losing the elders, we lost knowledge of our history,” he said. He first interviewed elders in his neighborhood, and the network grew from there. After more than 35 years of research and collecting, he now owns a large collection of documents, manuscripts, and photographs. Hussain also lends a helping hand to junior scholars and students who struggle to navigate the state’s official archives. “Unfortunately, the archives have a lot, but the employees do not know what they have. They are just employees, not researchers,” he elaborated. Reflecting on the state of the field and its future, he said, “The biggest problem is the bias by some researchers in the fields of history and heritage, who talk about a specific subgroup and forget about others, thus producing a biased, superficial, and fragmented history, and I am against that.”
Falah Initiative
The Falah Initiative was established by Thani al-Muhairi in 2017 at the Tabah Foundation, a nonprofit organization established in Abu Dhabi in 2005, to document religious heritage in the region. It has accounts on Instagram, X, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube. The initiative covers eastern Arabia and southern Iran, with a focus on the early modern and modern periods. Thani studied Islamic law and is now pursuing graduate studies in philosophy and sociology at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi. He began the initiative by interviewing elders, especially clerics. He was encouraged by friends to share his research on social media to reach a larger audience. The initiative has thus far published research on over 102 clerics from the region, including more than 10 women. Thani said, “Sometimes the grandchildren do not know that their grandparent was a scholar, so we shed light on them, their writings, and their connections to scholars in the Islamic world.”
One goal of the initiative is to revive the tradition of the mawlid (malid in the Emirati dialect), the celebration of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday. Thani said, “The malid is becoming extinct. We have gathered young people who are interested in the malid and gathered elderly people who have lived through it and know it. We have collected the malid poems and preserved them to be performed at a weekly gathering in Abu Dhabi.” The initiative has faced backlash for its work on the mawlid and accusations of heresy. To address this, the initiative produced an informational pamphlet. The initiative also directs people to fatwas explaining that its role is to preserve the tradition rather than delve into debates around its validity in Islam.
Thani said he is in constant communication with Saeed al-Suwaidi and often calls to ask about a cleric or historical figure’s ancestry. Thani said other researchers also direct religious heritage inquiries to him. He emphasized the collaborative, communal spirit of this network. He also mentioned how his social media followers have enriched this research operation by helping locate sources and engaging in fruitful discussions in direct messages. While the initiative has no formal partnerships with other organizations, Thani said he utilizes both state and private archives in the UAE and beyond. However, he laments, “Sometimes institutional work ruins research. The independent researcher is free and not too constrained.”
Like other researchers, Thani wants to shed myths about pre-1971 UAE, such as “the belief that we are a people with no history, poor and needy until oil came. Before the pearl crisis and the World War, we were fine. We had property and farms. We had scholars. We had forts, education, and spirituality.” Another point of contention Thani discussed is the romanticization and disparaging of the region’s desert environment. He said, “They put a photograph of the UAE with only desert. Our idea of civilization is different from that of the West. Civilization for us does not necessarily mean buildings. For the Arabs of old, constructing meaning was far more important than constructing buildings. They had moral buildings and palaces of morals – heritage, community, and generosity.”
Harnessing Social Media for Heritage
Harnessing the educational power of social media is beneficial to the Gulf, a region with a large youth population and heavy social media use. Advances in the study of history in academia typically remain within a small circle of scholars, while the national curriculum can be outdated and difficult to reform. The work of independent researchers can be an effective means to bring new scholarship to the masses. While lacking the breadth and accessibility of mandatory K-12 education, it is nevertheless a compelling medium independent from bureaucratic institutions.
