|
Traditionally, the migratory habits of Qatar's Bedouin tribes have required that the history of the country be held by tribal elders and passed along to the youth at night around campfires, when the talk turns to nearby wadis and rawdas, essential to shelter the tribe and its goat and camel herds. A written history springs from the confines of a more sedentary lifestyle&endash;that of the farmer or shopkeeper&endash;those whose view of the world is a furtive glance from behind a plow or vegetable cart.
The
traditional Bedouin life is, alas, ending with petroleum
pipelines crisscrossing the country and weekend desert
dwellers piloting their Range Rovers with reckless abandon
across virgin desertscapes, forgetting for the moment middle
age spread, the cost of orthodontics, and Saturday's meeting
with the director.
Springing from the need by Qatar's Centre for Geographic Information Systems (CGIS) to include precise geographic names and locations in its national database, CGIS has embarked on a comprehensive, countrywide research program to determine exact placenames by tracing their origins through on-site visits, meetings with municipal officials, interviewing aging Bedouin herdsmen, and attending communal majlis.
Due to foreign mispronunciation and compounded by phonetic misspelling, original placename errors became fact when recorded on early maps.
Findings by the Geographic Names teams have been nothing short of amazing. It was discovered, for example, that the country's major port city, Umm Said was originally known as Mesaieed.
Mesaieed is a derivative form of the word 'massad,' which refers to a soil type where the shrub known as 'seid' grows. Seid once commonly grew in the area around Mesaieed.
Over the years, the original name was unintentionally transformed into Umm Said, which means 'Mother of Happy.' An interesting folklore story grew around this.
Long
ago, a slave and his master lived in what is now known as
Mesaieed. Because the slave was habitually good-natured,
saieed, which in Arabic means "happy" came to mind whenever
the master saw him. Due to his circumstances, however, the
master decided that a diminutive form of the word would be
more appropriate for the slave and so named him, Mesaieed.
It is interesting to note that the diminutive prefix is a
dialectic form of Arabic known only in the Gulf.
Fortunately, due to Qatar's strong desire to maintain its heritage, this error has been rectified and Mesaieed is again the official name of the port.
There are many similar examples of errors that had crept into common usage, which have completely altered the meaning of the original name. The adventures of the teams who have traversed the country to remedy these mistakes have been sometimes comic, sometimes dangerous, but always interesting.
Data collection for the Geographic Names Project was begun in January 1996 and is due to be completed in December of this year. The results will be used to correct existing maps and other geographically referenced materials. A multimedia CD, indicating geographic names and their derivatives with hyper-text links to related maps and photographs will be available in 1997 to the general public for a nominal charge.
|
|
|
| |
