Commentary
President Trump’s Gulf tour, complete with
camel parades and sword dancers, rekindled a century-old Western love affair with Arab culture. The dazzling display of Gulf Arab customs that streamed on our smartphones in 2025 stood in stark contrast to an era when such imagery was only available through a National Geographic subscription or a grainy television documentary.
By now, most people have seen the viral video of President Trump’s
welcome ceremony at Qasr Al Watan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) presidential palace. The scene was an intriguing spectacle: girls in flowing white gowns rhythmically flipping their beautiful long hair as the president passed by. Almost overshadowed were the two rows of men behind them swinging swords to the vibrant beat of drum music. “What a beautiful city! I love it!” Trump exclaimed after passing through the display.
The performance, known as Al-Ayyala, captivated viewers, sending them to their keyboards in search of answers. Many likely landed on
UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage website, which describes Al-Ayyala as a traditional performing art of Oman and the UAE. “Al-Ayyala involves chanted poetry, drum music, and dance, and simulates a battle scene,” the site explains. In the UAE, the custom often features “girls wearing traditional dresses standing at the front, tossing their long hair from side to side.” This ceremonial dance is both a celebration of cultural identity and an embodiment of the “values of honor and dignity central to
Bedouin life.”
The president’s visit was filled with stunning displays of white Arabian horses, golden swords, and gilded camels. To history buffs, these images hearkened back to a time when Western culture first became enamored with “
the Orient”—the area then loosely defined as extending from north Africa to east Asia.
In the 19th century, British and French colonial presence in Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, along with treaties with Gulf sheikhdoms like Abu Dhabi and Dubai, provided early insights into Arab cultures. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the advent of photography, and the rise of
World’s Fairs introduced Western audiences to the Orient’s rich traditions. Travel writers like Mark Twain fueled a growing fascination with the region with his book “
The Innocents Abroad“ (1869), and Charles Doughty’s ”
Travels in Arabia Deserta“ (1888) offered vivid accounts of Bedouin life.
This fascination often led to appropriating traditional rituals or dances for entertainment purposes. The Al-Ayyala, also known as the Bedouin “
stick dance,” originally reached American audiences through circus performances like
Barnum and Bailey’s.
As these cultural displays delighted Western audiences, they paved the way for deeper influences, gradually weaving Gulf Arab traditions into Western music, literature, and art.
Composers began to incorporate North African and Middle Eastern rhythms and melodies into their works. Examples include Claude Debussy’s Two Arabesques, Robert Schumann’s Arabeske in C major, Op. 18, and Maurice Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso. These works, while not direct transcriptions of Arab music, reveal the growing influence of its ornate melodies.
In the literary world, “One Thousand and One Nights,” or “The Arabian Nights” surged in popularity due to influential translations like Richard Burton’s unabridged 1885–1888 English version, which captivated readers with its exotic tales and unabashed sensuality. Scheherazade, the fictional storyteller of Arabian Nights, narrates such
famous stories as “The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor” and “Aladdin and the Magic Lamp.”
With the advent of the Great War, Western culture gained a deeper understanding of the East. News coverage of the
Mesopotamian Campaign, where British and Indian forces fought the Ottoman Empire in what is now modern-day Iraq, vividly portrayed the region’s landscapes, peoples, and conflicts. These reports sparked Western curiosity and heightened strategic interest in that part of the world.
Key victories like the
capture of Aqaba in 1917 and the
fall of Damascus in 1918 were covered in detail in American newspapers. Yet it was the encounter between American freelance journalist Lowell Thomas and a British Army officer—a pivotal figure in the Arab Revolt—that sparked a significant surge in interest in Arab culture.
Thanks to Thomas’s syndicated newspaper columns, British officer
T.E. Lawrence, later known as Lawrence of Arabia, gained worldwide fame for his intelligence operations and unconventional guerrilla warfare. (Surprisingly, “
Lawrence of Arabia“ didn’t make it to the big screen until 1962.)
By 1919, Thomas began touring with his multimedia show titled “With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia.” From Madison Square Garden to Covent Garden, his
magic lantern show was a huge success. It contained hundreds of slides and film segments showcasing “archeological sites in the Middle East, such as the pyramids in Egypt, and parts of Arabia previously forbidden to non-Moslems.”
That same year, British writer Edith Maude Hull, inspired by her
trip to Algeria, penned a romantic novel titled “The Sheik.” The plot centered around an Arabian sheik who became infatuated with “an adventurous, modern-thinking Englishwoman” and carries her off to his home in the Saharan desert. The book inspired a movie by the same name, starring arguably the first modern superstar, Italian actor
Valentino. The 1926 sequel, “
The Son of the Sheik,” is considered by many to have been his best work, though it would be his last. He died of an illness later that year.
A century later, the West is still fascinated with Arab culture, not just for preserving ancient customs, but for its skillful fusion of tradition and modernity.
Consider the beauty of the
Burj Khalifa in Dubai; the tallest free-standing structure in the world reigns as “a marvel of modern engineering and architectural brilliance.” And who can forget the
scene in Qatar, where President Trump was escorted by those beautiful red
Tesla Cybertrucks and mounted camels?
With President Trump’s Gulf tour in mind, Americans can only hope and pray that the Arab states of the Persian Gulf will truly get on board with our goal of profitability and prosperity. To this end, they would need to address their human rights abuses, stop supporting terrorist groups, work to disarm Iran and recognize Israeli sovereignty. It’s a tall order—as tall as the Burj Khalifa—but it’s a prerequisite for peace in the 21st century.
The camels, sword dances, and hair-tossing girls weren’t just traditional ceremonies, but expressions from an evolving culture that continues to shape global perceptions. No longer confined to the National Geographic pages of our youth, the Gulf Arab nations came alive, inviting a new generation to explore and understand the richness of Arab heritage. Let’s hope it happens.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
