Sheikh Ahmed bin Ali bin Abdulla bin Qassim Al-Thani: A New Perspective on Domestic and Foreign Relations

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the history of Qatar in the period 1960-1971 and the short period after the independence until the coup of 1972 in order to demonstrate that Qatar is not new to mediation as asserted by many authors. Another aim was to find out the similarities in Qatar's foreign relation in 1960-1971 and in the last decades as well as the characteristics of the Emirs in those periods. Highlighting the similarities and examining how the legacy of Sheikh Ahmed has influenced the recent achievement of Qatar it has also been a way to demonstrate the mediator role of Qatar in the past. The results of this research confirmed that Qatar played a very active mediator role in the period 1960-1972 in international, regional and inter-tribal cases and its foreign relation was very similar to the one of the recent years. The legacy of Sheikh Ahmed does not regard only the foreign relation strategy and mediation tools, but also the characteristics of the Emir that played a strong role in the success of the country and explains how the achievements of today are also due to the retrieval of the foreign relation adopted by Sheikh Ahmed in the period 1960-1972. Other than this main conclusion, the thesis brought light to the many mistakenly recounted events in literature. The qualitative method was used to analyze the information collected from primary and secondary sources. For the purpose of the thesis a number of secondary sources such as journals, articles and books both in Arabic and English were examined. Primary sources derives from letters and records as well as interviews carried out in Arabic and then translated in English to members of the Al Thani family from Al Ali and Al Hamad Branches, others dignitaries in charge at that time and the head of the Algerian National Archive, Abdulmajid Chikhi. The limitation of the thesis consists ini the possible bias of the author, being the granddaughter of Sheikh Ahmed bin Ali, the difficulty to find relevant and reliable literature about the period in focus and the difficulty of being granted interviews on the topic due to the reticence of people to talk about those years, the time constrain and the Holy month of Ramadan. The recommendation that result from the thesis is that there is still plenty to be done as many events are not clear and reported inconsistently in the literature, so more in-depth research and analysis is necessary.