The Unspoken Narratives of the Empty Quarter

Citation: Mhmood, Fatma. 2021. The Unspoken Narratives of the Empty Quarter. Master's thesis, Harvard Graduate School of Design.

The desert, commonly understood as a barren and infertile landscape, is
not empty. This thesis reads the desert landscape as an archive full of social,
economic, and political narratives using the Empty Quarter as a case study.
The Empty Quarter, in Arabic Rub al-Khali, stretches across the southern part
of the Arabian Peninsula including Oman, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates,
and Yemen. The thesis draws from multiple sources including archival materials,
historic maps, artworks, field observation, myths and tribal poetry to build a better understanding of the Empty Quarter’s ecosystem. Theoretically, it engages with broader discussions on arid lands, environmental and social imaginaries, postcolonial and urban theories.