Bin Jelmood House and the African Diaspora in the Middle East

Bin Jelmood House, part of the Msheireb heritage complex of museums in Doha, Qatar opened in October 2015. This museum is dedicated to the history of slavery, part to its wider global dimensions starting in the ancient world and part to its regional history (especially the 19^th and 20^th centuries). The museum includes narratives of runaway slaves in the 20^th century, collected by the British India Office to facilitate their manumission. These British archival records have also been digitized as part of the Qatar Digital Library (www.qdl.qa). This paper attempts an analysis of the building of Bin Jelmood House and the reported reaction of descendants of slaves and slave-owners to its building and contrasts the Bin Jelmood experience with contemporary efforts at organization by Arabian residents of African descent. This analysis endeavors to shed light on the question “Is there an African diaspora in the Middle East?” by finding out whether there is more, less or any evidence of diaspora self-identification in efforts to represent itself in public spaces. This includes looking at whether Afro-Arabian people might be participating in a kind of public history – genealogical research. Newspaper reports, social media posts, available data analytics from the qdl.qa site and interviews with experts consulted for the Bin Jelmood House project and participants in burgeoning Afro-Arabian advocacy groups are be the basis of this paper.