From left: Qatari diver Saad Ismail Al Jassem shows customers the weight he used to use for diving inside his shop at Souq Waqif; A jar full of natural pearls. Each bead retails for around QR2000.
As we walked down the crowded alleys of Qatar’s oldest souq - Souq Waqif - jewellery stores decked out in pearl necklaces, bracelets and rings surrounded us.
The pearl industry was significant in Qatar before oil and gas were discovered in the region, as many Qataris relied on the physically taxing profession of pearl diving to put food on the table for their families.
Divers would embark on their journeys for months on end, usually taking off on cramped ships with many other divers and their helpers. Their endeavour to find oysters began at sunrise and ended at sunset. This extensive period of continuous diving, along with their minimal intake of food - at most a few dates and Arabic coffee before sunrise - took an extreme toll on the diver’s physical well-being.
Saad Ismail Al Jassem, 88, a Qatari diver, bodybuilder, entertainer, and poet, says the once physically demanding occupation of pearl diving has been overtaken by pearl farms, alleviating the physical strain off divers.
Al Jassem, who has been diving for pearls since the age of 18, has watched for generations as many gave up the exhausting profession of diving for other sources of income, which potentially brings the culturally rooted career to a halt.
Al Jassem and other pearl shopkeepers in the souq’s alley say that cultured pearls, which are human-induced pearls, are imported from farms in China, Japan, India and south-east Asian countries like Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia, allowing divers to give up the demanding occupation.
Cultured pearls are made in farms by inserting an irritant, or stimulant, into an oyster and then harvesting the pearl produced. According to Al Jassem, some oysters may produce one or two pearls, while others can produce up to 30 pearls.
On the other side, natural pearls are extremely rare to find and require a diver to be persistent and determined. This explains their significant price in comparison to cultured pearls - a bracelet made from cultured pearls retails within the range of QR30 to QR50, while one bead of a natural pearl necklace retails for QR100,000.
“If I dive for 5 years, and only find one pearl in that time, it will be enough for me to survive and provide for my family for the next 5 years,” says Al Jassem.
A three-layer cultured pearl necklace at Al Jassem’s pearl shop, Pahlwan Saad Ismail Al Jassem The Old Pearl Diver, retails for QR250. He says that if the same necklace was made of natural pearls, it would average a minimum of QR250,000.
“It’s a difference between the sky and ground,” says Al Jassem.
Aside from the price, the scarcity of natural pearls makes it almost impossible to attain enough pearls to craft a full necklace.
“If all pearls being sold in the souq were natural, then it wouldn’t be possible to have this many pearl necklaces, earrings and bracelets being made and sold,” says a shopkeeper at Blue Gems Jewelry while pointing to a wall displaying glamorous pearl necklaces at the store.
The shopkeeper highlights that cultured pearls are not artificial or plastic, instead, they are real pearls “made with the help of human hand”.
Physically distinguishing between cultural and natural pearls is almost impossible, says Al Jassem. Both types of pearls possess the same texture and colour, making them have an identical feel. He says that it is only possible to observe the difference between them using an X-ray machine because it reveals the inner nucleus of the pearl.
“An X-ray scan verifies if a pearl is natural, cultured or plastic,” says Al Jassem.
With the emergence of many different sources of income in Qatar, pearl diving has been replaced and is only done today to preserve Qatari culture instead of to provide a living.
Yet, according to Al Jassem, the pearl industry will always remain highly valuable because, unlike silver and gold, the value of pearls has remained the same for centuries.