Electronic resources: India Office files to go online

Half a million pages of India Office records that shed detailed light on 200 years of British activities in the Gulf are to be digitised and made freely available online.

The British Library announced that the Gulf state of Qatar is providing the £8.7m needed for the project, which will also see some 25,000 pages of medieval Arabic manuscripts – covering science, geometry, astronomy and medicine – put online for the first time.

Among the India Office records – dating from the mid-18th century to just after the second world war – will be reports by some of the more controversial figures, such as Lewis Pelly, the political resident in the Gulf, who was disliked and thought of as damaging by some; and praised by others for his enthusiasm, intelligence and spirit of adventure.

Also, there will be extraordinarily detailed maps and charts from JG Lorimer's Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, which was compiled in the early 20th century and represented a crucial reference tool for any Briton working in the region.

In those days, it was all about maintaining British advantage at all costs. Today, the library wants the whole world to have access.

That also goes for the medieval manuscripts, which will include a 13th century Arabic translation of a Pythagorean theorem and Ibn Butlan's The Almanac of Health, written in 1213, which is hugely important because it was translated into Latin and became a textbook in Europe's medical schools.

The library believes the manuscripts will shed light on just how important the Arab world was in terms of global scientific development, and how innovative and ground-breaking some of the discoveries and ideas were.

All the manuscripts and documents have previously only been available by visiting the library's London reading rooms in person. Curator Penny Brook said: "There is still an awful lot to find out from this material, particularly about the Gulf region, which has not been written about as much as other parts of the Middle East.

"There is a real opportunity for people to get in there and do some fresh research. It gives a much more nuanced and interesting picture of that area and Britain's relationship with it."