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UAE Tourist Attractions
Al-Dur
The largest pre-Islamic site on the Gulf coast of the UAE,
al-Dur is located several kilometres north of Umm al-Qaiwain
just east of the main highway running from Sharjah to Ras
al-Khaimah. The site is enormous, extending for roughly 4 km
northeast to southwest, and about 1 km inland from the
highway. Al-Dur has been known since the early 1970s when an
Iraqi expedition first conducted excavations at the site. In
the 1980s and 1990s a European expedition (Belgian, British,
Danish, French), followed by a strictly Belgian team
conducted extensive excavations at al-Dur.
Like Mileiha, al-Dur consists not of a single concentrated
area of ruins but is rather a sprawling site in a sandy
environment with numerous private houses, some large and
some small, scattered over a large area adjacent to the
coast. These include small, rectangular, single-room
dwellings, as well as large, multi-roomed structures with
semi-circular buttresses. Both types of house, as indeed all
of architecture at the site, are built of blocks of
beach-rock (Arabic farush) which was locally available in
the shallow lagoons close to the site. Thousands of graves
are interspersed in between the houses at al-Dur.
These
range from simple, rectangular cists to large, stone
structures much like their mudbrick counteparts at Mileiha.
In several cases it is clear that the larger tombs at al-Dur
held the remains of more than one individual, perhaps a
family. Grave goods included drinking sets, Roman glass,
weaponry, pottery, jewellery and ivory objects.
The two largest public monuments on the site are a small
square fort, c. 20 m on a side, with round corner towers
reminiscent of forts built by the Parthians, and a small,
square temple, c. 8 m on a side, in which an inscribed basin
with a dedication to the Semitic solar deity Shams was
found.
Coinage was abundant at al-Dur and included small numbers of
foreign coins as well as hundreds of locally minted pieces
bearing the name of Abi'el. Although we are uncertain what
the ancient name of al-Dur may have been, it is very likely
that it was the site of Omana known to both Pliny and Strabo
as an important market town in the lower Gulf region. The
site's heyday was certainly the first century AD, although
some occupation in the third/fourth centuries AD is also
attested.
Al-Madam
Located south of al-Dhaid in the interior of Sharjah,
al-Madam is an extensive plain with the remains of a major
Iron Age mudbrick settlement, comparable in most respects to
those excavated at Rumeilah and nearby al-Thuqaibah. The
site has been excavated by a joint French-Spanish team from
the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in
Paris and the Autonomous University of Madrid. Al-Madam is
particularly interesting in that it seems to have been
supplied by water via a falaj-system running from the
foothills of the Hajar mountains to what were once the
site's agricultural fields.
Al-Madar
This is the name given to a small site overlooking the
palace of the Crown Prince of Umm al-Qaiwain, HH Sheikh Saud
bin Rashid Al Mualla. First discovered by a French
archaeological team in the early 1980s, al-Madar was
subsequently visited by the European Expedition to Umm al-Qaiwain
in 1986, and partially excavated in 1992 by Prof. Hans-Peter
Uerpmann and a team from the University of Txbingen
(Germany). Al-Madar is a site belonging to the Arabian
bifacial tradition which shows evidence of fishing and
shellfish collecting. It is one of many similar sites
located in the area alongside the lagoon system of Umm al-Qaiwain.
In antiquity it may have been located on an island, when
sea-levels were different, even though it is today about 1
km from the coast.
Al-Qusais
Al-Qusais is today a suburb of Dubai but in antiquity it was
the site of an important settlement and associated cemetery.
Excavations there in the early 1970s and 1980s revealed the
existence of a settlement dating to the second and first
millennium BC Shaft graves dug straight into the sabkha, of
similar date, yielded large numbers of copper or bronze
vessels and weaponry, as well as many soft-stone vessels.
Much of the material from al-Qusais is on display in the
Dubai Museum.
Al-Sufouh
This name has recently been given to a suburb south of
Dubai. In the early 1990s a tomb of typical Umm al-Nar-type
was found here and subsequently excavated, along with parts
of an adjacent settlement, by an Australian team in
conjunction with Dubai Municiaplity. The most striking
feature of the tomb at al- Sufouh was the fact that, just
outside of it, were four pits containing human bone, most of
it burnt. It is possible that this bone, which may or may
not have come from the main tomb itself (i.e. been
re-buried), represents the remains of extensive cremation
episodes.
Some pits held the remains of c. 50 individuals, all
seemingly cremated at the same time. The high temperatures
reached in these cremation episodes (revealed by the
calcined nature of the bone and warping of some of the bones
and artifacts) suggests that the bodies were cremated while
they still contained flesh. In other words, they were not
cremated after a period of exposure had removed the flesh.
Cremation has also been noted at other sites of this period
in the Emirates but it is not certain whether this was
standard practice in the UAE during the Umm al-Nar period,
or whether it was occasioned by particular circumstances
(e.g. a plague) which warranted purification at high
temperatures.
Al-Thuqaibah
This large mudbrick village dates to the Iron Age and is
located near al-Madam, south of Dhaid in the interior of
Sharjah. In plan it resembles both al-Madam and Rumeilah.
The multiplicity of similar villages in the Emirates around
1000-500 BC suggests the existence there of a large,
agriculturally-based population which cultivated cereals,
raised sheep, goat and cattle, and tapped the rich
underground aquifers of the Hajar mountains by means of
falaj irrigation technology. The population of the Emirates
at this time was probably larger than at any point
previously in its history.
Awhala
South of Kalba, and inland from the coast, lies the village
of Awhala. This small settlement, which belongs to the
emirate of Fujairah, sits on the north side of an east-west
oriented wadi which empties out onto the Batinah plain of
northern Oman. Situated on a terrace above the wadi is a
mudbrick fortified house of nineteenth century date which
covers the western corner of an Iron Age fortified
enclosure.
The enclosure wall is a massive 2.3 m in width, preserved in
places to 1.4 m above the modern ground level. The enclosure
wall is no longer extant on its southern side, where it has
been eroded away by the wadi, but the north side is c. 60 m
long and the east side is preserved to a length of over 50
m. An elaborate gateway was preserved near the northeast
corner of the enclosure. Charcoal recovered in an excavation
in the interior of a building within the enclosure wall gave
a date of c. 800 BC. The Iron Age fortified enclosure of
Husn Awhala recalls a similar structure at Wadi Fizh in
northern Oman, and the main walls have the same width as a
stone wall excavated at Kalba.
Ayn al-Faydah
Ayn al-Faydah is the name give to an area of fossil lakebed
sediments located on the alluvial plain to the northwest of
Jebel Hafit in the interior of Abu Dhabi (55'43'20" E,
24'05'25" N). These sediments, c. 3.5 m thick, represent the
remains of a lake which was fed by the seasonal flooding of
wadis to the west of Jebel Hafit. Freshwater snails (Melanoides
tuberculata) from various layers in the lake bed deposits
show that there must have been a semi-permanent or permanent
lake at Ayn al-Faydah at various points in time. Examples of
these have been dated by the radiocarbon method to the fifth
millennium BC, precisely that time of optimal climatic
conditions which coincided with the large number of Arabian
bifacial tradition sites throughout the region. Such
fossilised remains of standing lakes - even semi-permanent
ones - are important indicators of palaeoclimate in the
United Arab Emirates.
Bithna
This small oasis is located in the Wadi Ham, the main route
of access leading from the interior of the UAE to Fujairah
on the East Coast. In addition to a fine example of a local
mudbrick fort dating, most probably, to the nineteenth
century, Bithna is also the site of an important tomb from
the second millennium BC which was investigated by a Swiss
team of archaeologists from Geneva. The tomb at Bithna is
T-shaped and thus resembles somewhat another grave excavated
by a German team at Dhayah in northern Ra’s al-Khaimah. The
Bithna structure was badly disturbed in antiquity and the
human remains recovered were meagre. Pottery and soft-stone
vessels show that the tomb was used from about the middle of
the second millennium BC through the first millennium BC.
Bidya
This small oasis on the Batinah coast is located in northern
Fujairah, between Khor Fakkan and Dibba. Bidya is well-known
to travellers because of its unusual and very old,
twin-domed mosque, generally considered the oldest mosque in
the UAE But the history of Bidya extends much further back
in time. A third millennium round tower, comparable to the
ones excavated at Tell Abraq and Hili 8, marks the existence
of an important site here c. 2500-2000 BC A long,
semi-subterranean grave, very similar to the one excavated
at Qattarah in the Al Ain oasis, is located nearby.
Material from secondary burial within the tomb, including
glazed Parthian pottery similar to that found at Al-Dur and
Mileiha, also occurs. Finally, the poorly preserved remains
of a Portuguese fort have recently been excavated by an
Australian expedition. Bidya is typical of many settlements
in the northern Emirates. It probably thrived on its
position at the mouth of a wadi leading into the interior of
the Hajar mountains, while exploiting its position on the
coast and utilising the abundant nature resources of the
Arabian Sea. Objects from the various excavations conducted
at Bidya over the years are on display in the Fujairah
Museum.
This large mound (c. 100 x 120 m, 6.5 . high) stands on the
edge of the Shimal plain to the north of Ras al-Khaimah
city. Excavations here since 1994 by a British expedition
have revealed a long sequence of occupation extending from
the time of the Sasanians (perhaps third/fourth centuries AD
as in Area F at al-Dur) to the early fourteenth century. In
the intervening periods there are abundant examples of
imported Iraqi (Samarran), Iranian and Far Eastern ceramics
which, taken together, provide an important archaeological
sequence for the northern Emirates over the course of
roughly 1000 years. Amongst the more exotic finds was a
coffee bean, the earliest yet recovered in the UAE. Kush is
likely to represent a town which was the forerunner of the
later emporium of Julfar, closer to the coast.
Dalma
One of the most important islands off the west coast of Abu
Dhabi, Dalma has been inhabited since the mid-Holocene as
shown by the presence there of stone tools belonging to the
Arabian bifacial tradition. The island sits some 80 km east
of the Qatar peninsula, and measures c. 9 x 5 km, rising to
a maximum elevation of 98 m above sea-level. Dalma is a
volcanic island and today has a population of c. 5000
people. In the late nineteenth century Dalma was the only
island on the Great Pearl Bank with a population year round.
More than 20 archaeological sites have been found on the
island, ranging in time from the late prehistoric era to an
early twentieth century mosque (Sa'id Jum'a al-Qubaysi). The
island's main prehistoric site, DA 11, is located within the
Abu Dhabi Women's Federation enclosure, and has yielded some
of the region's earliest evidence of datepalm cultivation
along with sherds of ‘Ubaid pottery and finely flaked stone
tools. The vast majority of the island's archaeological
sites date to the last few centuries of the Islamic era.
Dhayah
Dhayah is the site of a prehistoric cemetery some 7 km
north-northeast of Shimal in northern Ras al-Khaimah.
Excavations at Dhayah were begun in 1987 by a German
expedition from G?ttingen. Second millennium BC tombs
similar to those excavated at Shimal can be found at Dhayah,
as well as a T-shaped tomb which is generally comparable to
the one at Bithna. The finds from the Dhayah tombs include
two etched carnelian beads, most probably from the Indus
Valley, and a gold pendant of beaten gold consisting of two
animals standing, rump to rump, with a joined tail ending in
two spirals. Similar pendants are known from Qattarah and
Bidya.
Fashghah
Fashghah is located in the Wadi al-Qawr, an important
east-west thoroughfare in the southern enclave of Ras al-Khaimah.
In the early 1980s prehistoric tombs were located here which
were later excavated between 1989 and 1992 by a British
expedition. Fashghah is most notable because it was there
that a hitherto unknown, horseshoe-shaped type of tomb was
first discovered. A virtually identical one has also been
excavated at Qidfa in the emirate of Fujairah. These tombs
date to the late second millennium BC but were re-used in
the Iron Age and in the time of al-Dur and Mileiha (first
century AD) as well. Hundreds of soft-stone vessels of Iron
Age type were recovered in the tomb at Fashgha.
Ghalilah
This small village is located north of Shimal in northern
Ra’s al-Khaimah. Close to the hills at the base of the Hajar
Mountains here are a number of tombs, several of which were
investigated in the 1970s and 1980s by a series of British
expeditions. In particular, a large, roughly ovoid tomb-type
with a central, internal pier has come to be called the 'Ghalilah'
type tomb for it was here that examples were first
investigated. These date to the early-mid second millennium
BC The remains of an Iron Age settlement have also been
identified at Ghalilah, just east of the modern village.
Hili
Within the confines of Fun City in the northern part of Hili
are several tombs which date to the end of the third
millennium BC (c. 2300-2000 BC). Of these, the most
well-investigated is without doubt Tomb A. Excavated by a
French team in cooperation with the local Dept. of Tourism
and Antiquities, Tomb A is a circular construction c. 10.5 m
in diameter, with three internal dividing walls which create
four interior chambers. The remains of well over 200
individuals were recovered in the tomb, along with dozens of
ceramic and soft-stone vessels, including examples of
imported black-on-greyware from southeastern Iran or
Baluchistan. Copper tools and two etched carnelian beads,
originating in the Indus Valley, were also recovered.
The modern suburb of Al Ain known as Hili is famous among
local residents for its beautiful garden. In fact, the
garden and its immediate hinterland are the location of a
large number of Bronze Age and Iron Age sites, dating to
c.2500-400 BC Of these, Hili 8 is perhaps the best
investigated, thanks to a French expedition which began work
there in the late 1970s. Hili 8 consists of a round mudbrick
tower with associated outbuildings. Such towers are typical
of the late third millennium BC in both Oman and the UAE.
Other examples have been excavated at Tell Abraq, Bidya and
Kalba in the Emirates, and at Baat, Maysar and Ras al-Jins
in Oman. Hili 8 has evidence of slight occupation at the
very beginning of the second millennium BC as well.
Thereafter human settlement in the region shifted to other
sites, such as Qattarah and Rumeilah.
Hayl
Hayl is the name given to an abandoned village in the Wadi
al-Hayl about 13 km east of Kalba in the Emirate of Fujairah.
Located in a mountainous location, Hayl is a site which
consists of numerous different buildings and features
scattered about the sides and terraces of the main wadi and
its tributaries.
A small fort or husn perched on an isolated rock outcrop has
been carbon dated to between 1470 and 1700 AD Its loopholes
and firing slots show that it was intended as a defensive
lookout position. Hundreds of petroglyphs, or pictures
engraved (usually by pecking) on stone, litter the terraces
on either side of the wadi. Many of these depict animals,
some isolated anthropomorphic figures, and still others
horses and riders. Judging by similarities between the
figures depicted at Hayl and those found on seals and
pendants from sites such as Tell Abraq, it seems certain
that the oldest of the Hayl petroglyphs must date back into
the early 1st or 2nd millennium BC.
More recent remains include the extensive ruins of houses,
field walls, a cemetery and a fortified house identified as
the palace of Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamdan al-Sharqi. The
palace was built at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Sheikh Abdullah came from a minor branch of the Fujairah
ruling family who lived near Dibba, in northern Fujairah.
The palace and surrounding structures are under the
protection of the Fujairah Museum.
Husn Madhab
Husn Madhab is the name given to a small fortified enclosure
perched on top of a spur of the Hajar mountains immediately
to the west of Fujairah. It takes its name from the Wadi
Madhab at the entrance to which it stands guard. The husn,
Arabic for a small fort, is made of unmasoned stone and
consists largely of a wall running along the contour of the
rock outcrop together with the remains of several rooms. A
Swiss team of archaeologists investigated Husn Madhab in the
early 1990s and concluded on the basis of surface finds
(mainly pottery) that, although the site seems to have been
used in the medieval era, it was originally constructed in
the Iron Age, perhaps around 1000-500 BC A similar enclosure
stands on a rock outcrop high above the tombs at Jebel
Buhays.
Several kilometres up the Wadi Madhab, nestled up against
the side of the rock valley, are the remains of copper
refining dating to approximately the ninth-eleventh
centuries AD These consist of half a dozen horseshoe-shaped
smelting ovens in which locally mined copper was refined.
The smelting ovens of Wadi Madhab are virtually identical to
some recently published examples in the Wadi Safafir of
Oman.
Hulaylah
This 8 km long island of sand to the north of Ras al-Khaimah
city and to the south of Rams is separated from the mainland
by a narrow lagoon, called the Khor Khuwair, which is
passable on foot at low-tide. Virtually the entire length of
the island shows sign of human occupation, mainly in the
form of pottery scatters and, under the sand, of burning
where hearths and palm-frond houses ('arish) once stood.
The earliest material from Jazirat al-Hulaylah dates to the
time of the Sasanians and continues, intermittently, up to
the eighteenth century AD Imported pottery from Iran, Iraq
and the Far East can be compared with finds from other
Islamic sites in the UAE such as Kush, Jumeirah and Julfar.
Indeed, Jazirat al-Hulaylah may have been one of the
forerunners of the Julfar known to the Portuguese as al-Mataf.
This affluent suburb to the south of Dubai city is the
location of an important archaeological site dating to the
early Islamic period. Large houses built of beach rock (farush)
covered with lime plaster have been excavated at Jumeirah by
a team from the Dubai Museum. Based on a study of the
pottery found at the site, Jumeirah seems to date to the
first two or three centuries of the Islamic era. Thus, it is
in part contemporary with the sequence at Kush in northern
Ras al-Khaimah, and with Jazirat al-Hulaylah. Jumeirah is,
however, the only complete settlement with well-preserved
architecture yet excavated from this important period. A
selection of the finds from Jumeirah can be seen in the
Dubai Museum.
Jebel Buhays
This prominent rock outcrop to the south of Mileiha and al-Dhaid
is the site of numerous graves dating to the Iron Age and
second millennium BC (so-called Wadi Suq period) which have
been excavated since 1995 by Dr. Sabbah A. Jasim, director
of the Sharjah Archaeological Museum. In addition, on the
terrace to the east of Jebel Buhays, is an important burial
ground used by some of the UAE’s first inhabitants.
Dating to c. 5000-4000 BC, the site has yielded the remains
of dozens of several hundred individuals and is being
excavated by a team from the University of Txbingen
(Germany) under the direction of Prof. Hans-Peter and Dr.
Margarethe Uerpmann. The ancient inhabitants of Jebel Buhays
hunted gazelle, oryx, wild ass and camel, and raised cattle,
goat and sheep. They used stone tools belong to the Arabian
bifacial tradition.
Jebel Emalah
A prominent rock outcrop located between Mileiha and
al-Madam on the main north-south highway in the interior of
Sharjah, Jebel Emalah has a small number of prehistoric
graves clustered along its eastern slope. Excavations there
in 1993 and 1994 by an Australian team revealed the
existence of large, prehistoric graves, similar to those at
Jebel Hafit, dating to c. 3000 BC. These had been re-used
repeatedly through time, as objects datable to the third and
first millennium BC, and the sixth-seventh centuries AD,
clearly demonstrated. The latest burials, that of a man
holding an iron spear, and a camel burial, date to the very
end of the pre-Islamic era or the first century of Islam. A
fossil lake bed to the east of Jebel Emalah is reminiscent
of Ayn al-Faydah near Jebel Hafit as well.
Jebel Hafit
This name has been given to an anticline of mainly Tertiary
rocks formed as a result of a Cretaceous period, mid-oceanic
Tethys ridge near the Gulf of Oman. Jebel Hafit is oriented
almost exactly north-south, just south of Al Ain in the
interior of Abu Dhabi. A prominent feature of the landscape
today (up which motorists can drive thanks to a road built
by Sheikh Zayed), Jebel Hafit would have been just as
prominent for the region's prehistoric population.
Circular graves dating to c. 3000 BC are dotted along the
eastern slope of Jebel Hafit. These consist of massive
cairns of unmasoned stone piled up around a keyhole-shaped
chamber. Similar graves of even larger dimensions are known
at Jebel Emalah in the interior of Sharjah. Because such
graves were first identified and excavated at Jebel Hafit,
they have come to be known as 'Hafit-type' graves. Most of
the graves at Jebel Hafit were robbed in antiquity, but
those excavated by successive Danish, Iraqi and French
expeditions give evidence of having held more than one
person, perhaps up to five or six, and thus represent the
first of a long line of collective burials in the UAE.
Julfar
The forerunner of the modern city of Ras al-Khaimah, Julfar
is mentioned by Arabic geographers and historians in
connection with the initial Islamic conquest of the northern
Emirates, and subsequently in descriptions of political
events during the Umayyad, 'Abbasid and Buwayhid periods.
Sources say that it was inhabited by the Azd during the
eighth and ninth centuries AD, and that the houses of the
Azd were built of wood.
The sources are uniform in considering Julfar a port and
harbour, but there is no conclusive archaeological evidence
as yet of where the ruins of early Julfar lie. Some scholars
believe they may be represented by the site of Kush, where
there is occupation dating to this period, or at Jazirat al-Hulaya.
Certainly there are no remains of such an early date at al-Mataf,
closer to the coast, where British, French and Japanese
archaeologists excavated throughout the late 1980s and early
1990s.
Al Idrisi's remark, dating to the twelfth century, that sand
bar formation inhibited navigation around Julfar might
indeed suggest that the location of the harbour of this name
indeed shifted over time. Al-Mataf, located close to modern
Ras al-Khaimah, seems to have been founded in the fourteenth
century and is probably the site mentioned in numerous
Portuguese, Dutch, and English sources of the subsequent
three centuries. It was certainly a thriving port and
emporium in 1517 when the Portuguese arrived in the Gulf,
although by this time under the power of the kingdom of
Hormuz. Julfar's most famous son was without doubt the
renowned mariner Ibn Majid.
The Portuguese subsequently built a fort at Julfar, which is
depicted in several Portuguese manuscripts. By the second
half of the eighteenth century, however, the centre of
activity had shifted to the site of modern Ras al-Khaimah
city.
Jumeirah
Jumeirah Archaeological Site 'sixth century AD' once a
caravan station along a trade route linking Iraq to northern
Oman.
Kalba
One of the most important settlements on the Batinah coast
of the UAE, Kalba is also the location of an important
mangrove stand (Khor Kalba). The prehistory of Kalba has
been investigated in recent years by a team from the
Institute of Archaeology in London, working at a mound in
the Kalba gardens to the west of the main town. Here a large
settlement dating back to the Umm al-Nar period and settled
well into the first millennium BC is being excavated. The
site at Kalba is comparable in many respects to Tell Abraq
and provides a long sequence of human occupation for the
East Coast of the UAE, just as Tell Abraq does for the Gulf
coast. A massive Iron Age wall at Kalba is almost identical
in dimensions and construction to the Iron Age fortification
enclosure wall at Awhala in southern Fujairah.
Early in the sixteenth century the Portuguese, expanding
their empire in the Indian Ocean, built a series of forts
along the southeastern coast of Arabia, including one at
Kalba. In his Viaggio dell'Indie Orientali (Venice, 1590)
the Venetian jeweller Gasparo Balbi mentions a place on the
Arabian coast called 'Chelb' which is probably Kalba. Kalba
was visited by a Dutch ship called the Meerkat in 1666. In
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Kalba was tributary
to Sharjah, but in 1937 it was recognised as a Trucial
sheikhdom by the British government.
Khatt
This extensive oasis in northern Ra’s al-Khaimah is famed
for its hot spring which today constitute one of the area's
main tourist attractions. Yet in the past the area was
popular as well, as shown by the large number of
archaeological sites of all periods which dot the district.
No fewer than 163 sites were recorded around Khatt during a
survey conducted in October, 1992. These ranged from sites
with stone tools in the Arabian bifacial tradition to
nineteenth century mudbrick fortification towers. While a
large number of prehistoric tombs were identified,
relatively few settlements were found.
The most important early settlement was a site called Nud
Ziba, which has painted pottery from c. 2000 BC comparable
to that found at Tell Abraq, while later settlement was
clustered immediately west of the modern date plantations.
The apparent absence of settlement in the area is probably
due to the fact that cultivation over the course of 5000
years has destroyed ancient settlements, whereas tombs,
normally built of stone, were more enduring. Khatt has given
its name to a particular type of large, oval tomb of second
millennium BC date which was first observed in the area.
Khor Fakkan
One of the most important harbours on the east coast of the
UAE, Khor Fakkan has a long history of human settlement.
Excavations by a team from the Sharjah Archaeological Museum
have identified 34 graves and a settlement belonging to the
early-mid second millennium BC. These are clustered on rock
outcrops overlooking the habour.
In 1580 the Venetian jeweller Gasparo Balbi noted 'Chorf' in
a list of places on the east coast of the UAE, and this is
almost certainly Khor Fakkan. The Portuguese built a fort at
Khor Fakkan. By 1666 this was a ruin, for it figures in the
log book of the Dutch vessel known as the Meerkat where we
read: 'Gorfacan is a place on a small bay which has about
200 small houses all built from date branches, near the
beach. It had on the Northern side a triangular Portuguese
fortress, of which the desolate ruin can still be seen.
On the Southern coast of the bay in a corner there is
another fortress on a hill but there is no garrison nor
artillery on it, and it is also in ruins. This place has a
beautiful valley with a multitude of date palms and some
figtrees and there also grow melons, watermelons and myrrh
(!). Under the trees there are several wells which are used
for irrigation. It is good and fresh water'.
One reason for the ruinous state of the forts at Khor Fakkan
may have been that the Persian navy, under the command of
Sheikh Muhammad Suhari (an Omani from Sohar), invaded the
East Coast of what is now the Emirates in 1623 and, facing a
Portuguese counter-attack, withdrew to the Portuguese forts,
including that of Khor Fakkan. When the Persians were
expelled, the Portuguese commander Ruy Freire urged the
people of Khor Fakkan to remain loyal to the Portuguese
crown, and established a Portuguese customs office as well.
In 1737, however, long after the Portuguese had been
expelled from Arabia, the Persians again invaded Khor
Fakkan, with the help of the Dutch, during their
intervention in the Omani civil war. In 1765 Khor Fakkan
belonged to a sheikh of the Qawasim, according to the German
traveller Carsten Niebuhr, just as it does to this day.
Mantiqa al-Sirra
This site, located in the dunes to the east of Madinat Zayed
in the interior of Abu Dhabi, includes the remains of a
rectangular mudbrick enclosure, c. 46 x 80 m, with a 12
metres square tower in the northeast corner. The walls of
the building are preserved to a height of about one metre
and gun ports are still visible. Within living memory two
cannons still stood at the fortress, although these have now
been removed to Liwa. Late Islamic pottery can be found on
the surface of the site.
Although it is far from certain, the fortress at Mantiqa
al-Sirra may be the one mentioned in the History of the
Imams and Seyyids of Oman as the fort of Ezh-Zhafrah where,
in 1633, Nasir bin Qahtan Al Hilali, an opponent of the
Ya'aruba Imam of Oman, Nasr bin Murshid, joined forces with
members of the Bani Yas.
Mowaihat
The site of Mowaihat is located on the oustkirts of Ajman.
In 1986, while laying a new sewage pipe, workers from the
Municipality discovered a circular Umm al-Nar-type tomb, c.
8.25 m in diameter. A rescue excavation was conducted which
recovered numerous examples of soft-stone and painted Umm
al-Nar ceramic vessels, as well as over 3000 beads, two
stamp seals, a number of copper implements, and the skeletal
remains of several dozen individuals. At the time of its
discovery, the Mowaihat tomb represented the first
indication of Umm al-Nar period occupation in the Northern
Emirates. Subsequent work has now identified major sites of
this period on the Gulf coast at al-Sufouh, Tell Abraq and
Shimal. The material from Mowaihat forms the bulk of the
archaeological finds on display in the Ajman Museum.
Muweilah
This Iron Age village is located in the sandy belt of
Sharjah between the gravel plains of the interior of the UAE
and the low-lying coast. It is just a few kilometres south
of Sharjah International Airport and represents a mudbrick
village of the sort found at al-Madam, Rumeilah,
al-Thuqaibah and Qarn Bint Saud. Muweilah was brought to the
attention of authorities at the Sharjah Archaeological
Museum by a local inhabitant who picked up pottery at the
site and has been excavated by an Australian team since
1995.
Muweilah is important because of the fact that fire
destroyed what appears to be an extensive building complex,
preserving a large quantity of artifacts in their original
settting. Hundreds of grinding stones, some bearing
microscopic traces of barley and wheat starch; extensive
casting spillage from the manufacture of copper objects; and
masses of pottery, give us a good picture of what life was
like in an Iron Age village in the ancient Emirates. In
addition, Muweilah has yielded the UAE's earliest example of
writing, a piece of pottery with three letters - bml - which
probably represents a Semitic name like Bimhal, Bamael or
Abima'el. Based on a number of C14 dates, the settlement at
Muweilah was probably founded c. 850-800 BC and destroyed by
fire around 600 BC.
Mileiha
Located c. 20 km south of al-Dhaid and 50 km from the
Sharjah coast, Mileiha is today a small village along the
main north-south highway traversing the interior of the
northern Emirates. On either side of the road, however,
extending up to one kilometre away from the highway, lie the
remains of an important settlement occupied during the later
pre-Islamic era (c. third century BC - third century AD).
The site was first investigated in the early 1970s by an
Iraqi expedition, and then again in the 1980s and 1990s by a
French team. Most recently, a local team from the Sharjah
Archaeological Museum has been working at the site.
In spite of the large number of sites in the Emirates which
date to the Iron Age (c. 1200-300 BC) Mileiha is virtually
the only settlement known which dates to the immediately
post-Iron Age period. The site consists of a large number of
individual houses and craft areas where iron, bone, and
stoneworking was carried out, interspersed with cemetery
areas. In addition, directly under the highway is a small,
square fort with rectangular corner towers which contained
fragments of several coin moulds for the issues of a king
named Abi'el.
Since coinage of this type was being made in the fort, it is
likely that this represents the political centre of the
ancient settlement. The tombs at Mileiha included large,
'tower tombs' consisting of a subterranean brick chamber
surmounted by a tall, brick tower decorated with stepped
stone decorative blocks. Most graves of this type were
robbed in antiquity, but shallower, pit burials excavated by
the Sharjah museum have been found to contain rich horse
trappings. Both horse and camel burials have been excavated
at Mileiha, the horses decorated with heavy gold medallions
and roundels backed with iron.
Mileiha's occupation in the last centuries BC is
demonstrated by a number of finds, including imported Attic
black-glazed pottery from Greece; beehive-shaped, South
Arabian alabaster jars with lion handles; and stamped
Rhodian amphora handles. But there is also an abundance of
later material comparable to that known at al-Dur which
demonstrates that the site continued to be occupied at least
into the first century AD.
Nud Ziba
Nud Ziba is the most substantial prehistoric mound in the
area of Khatt, northern Ras al-Khaimah. Discovered in 1968,
it has been visited repeatedly by archaeologists but never
excavated, largely because of the fact that it is in the
midst of agricultural fields and excavation would disturb
the owner of the land on which the site is located. The main
mound is about 85 m wide and stands c. 1.5-2 m above the
surrounding plain. Late third and early second millennium
ceramics, comparable to finds made at Tell Abraq, have been
picked up from a section cut into by a bulldozer, along with
a single socketed copper or bronze spearhead. Iron Age
pottery is also known from the site. The bulldozer cut into
Nud Ziba has exposed part of a mudbrick building with burnt
floors. There is no doubt that excavation at the site would
be very rewarding.
Qarn Bint Saud
This large rock outcrop measures some 800 x 200 m and stands
c. 60 m tall. It is located c. 15 km to the north of the Al
Ain oasis offers a fantastic view of the desert surrounding
it. Like a scaled down Jebel Hafit, Qarn Bint Saud has
always been visible from a distance and seems to have
attracted the pre-modern inhabitants of the region in all
periods. Graves of the type found at Jebel Hafit and Jebel
Emalah, dating to c. 3000 BC, stand at the base of Qarn Bint
Saud, while graves of the second millennium BC, contemporary
with those at Qattarah and Ghalilah, stand on its
flat-topped summit, as do graves of the 1st millennium
contemporary with Awhala or Muweilah. Several kilometres
west of Qarn Bint Saud, nestled in the dunes to the west of
the rock outcrop, is a mudbrick village, inundated by sand,
like the ones at Rumeilah, al-Madam and al-Thuqaibah.
Qattarah
In the early 1970s a Shimal-type long tomb was excavated by
an Iraqi team at Qattarah, a neighbourhood in Al Ain in the
interior of Abu Dhabi. The tomb at Qattarah was one of the
very first tombs of 2nd millennium BC date excavated in the
Emirates. The material from this excavation is stored and,
to some extent, displayed in the Al Ain Museum. Among the
most notable finds is a gold ornament consisting of a
double-headed, single-bodied animal. Similar finds are known
from the sites of Dhayah in northern Ras al-Khaimah and
Bidya in northern Fujairah. These were probably worn as a
large medallion in a necklace.
Rumeilah
Named after a district of Al Ain in the interior of Abu
Dhabi, Rumeilah was the first Iron Age settlement excavated
on a large scale in the United Arab Emirates. Work was
conducted there between 1981 and 1983 by a French team from
the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in
Paris. The site consists of a series of mudbrick buildings,
some of which are so well preserved that their roofs are
still intact. These had been literally buried by sand. They
contained large quantities of pottery, grinding stones and
metal tools, as well as stamp seals, beads and several
pieces of bronze weaponry. Rumeilah was occupied between c.
1000 and 300 BC and is very similar in most respects to the
contemporary Iron Age sites of al-Madam, al-Thuqaibah, Qarn
Bint Saud and Hili 2.
Shams
The Semitic deity whose name means literally 'sun' is
attested throughout the Arabian peninsula. In the Emirates
an impressive temple to Shams was excavated at al-Dur by a
Belgian team. The identification of the temple with this
deity has been secured by the discovery of a limestone basin
with a poorly preserved Aramaic inscription including the
name Shams. In addition, coins found at Mileiha and al-Dur
include several which bear the name Shams written in South
Arabian letters, or with a simple monogram in the form of
the initial letter shin, Sh-, generally taken as an
abbreviation for the full name. This has raised the
possibility that the seated figure of Zeus shown on the
reverse of this coinage was assimilated by the local Arabian
tribes with their own solar god Shams.
Shams occurs as a theophoric element in personal names all
over the Arabian peninsula. Thus, it is interesting to note
that a bronze bowl found by the French team at Mileiha has
the name Mara’shams engraved on it in South Arabian letters.
This strengthens the suggestion that Shams was one of the
chief deities worshipped in the Emirates during the late
pre-Islamic era.
Sharm
Sharm is the name of a village in northern Fujairah, located
just off the main coastal highway to the south of Dibba. A
second millennium BC tomb of Shimal type was discovered here
by a Swiss expedition in 1987, and subsequently excavated by
an Australian team in 1997. The tomb is 17.2 m long and 2.5
m wide. It most closely resembles the contemporary tombs at
Qattarah, in the Al Ain oasis, and Shimal. Analysis of the
human bone recovered shows that there were at least 71
individuals buried in the tomb at Sharm. The archaeological
finds, however, range in date from the mid-second millennium
BC to the first centuries AD, contemporary with al-Dur and
Mileiha. Thus, it is likely that the skeletal remains
represent an amalgam of persons buried over a period
approaching some 2000 years. Dozens of soft-stone vessels
and vessel fragments, as well as thousands of broken pieces
of pottery (but no complete vessels), copper or bronze
implements, and beads, were recovered in the tomb at Sharm.
These are now stored in the Fujairah Museum, where some of
them are on display.
Shimal
Shimal is the name of a Shihuh village nestled in the lee of
the Hajar Mountains just north of Ra’s al-Khaimah city and
south of Rams. It is also the site of several hundred
pre-Islamic tombs and a settlement of mid-second to early
first millennium BC date which was excavated in the
mid-1980s by a team from the University of G?ttingen in
Germany. Shimal is an important archaeological site for it
was here that, for the first time, significant quantitites
of pottery, soft-stone vessels, bronze or copper weaponry,
and beads typical of the period c. 2000-1300 BC (the
so-called 'Wadi Suq' period), were found in the Northern
Emirates. The tombs at Shimal are all built of locally
available stone. They are generally visible because their
upper courses of stone usually protrude above the surface,
even if several courses lie buried beneath alluvial gravel
washed down from the mountains. Occasionally an ancient tomb
may have been buried completely by such debris. This is true
of a tomb of Umm al-Nar-type which was discovered
accidentally during road works. The site has given its name
to a type of long, narrow tomb with an entrance in one side.
A small hill-top fort of the Islamic era, known as Husn
al-Shimal, stands perched on a rock outcrop and affords a
good view of the entire area.
Tell Abraq
This large settlement on the border of Umm al-Qaiwain and
Sharjah was excavated by a team of Australian archaeologists
between 1989 and 1998. It is dominated by a large
fortification tower, 40 m in diameter, which dates to the
late Umm al-Nar period. Ten metres to the west of it is a
circular tomb, c. 6 m in diameter, in which the remains of
nearly 350 individuals have been recovered. Settlement
debris shows that occupation of the site was continuous from
c. 2200 to 300 BC Located today several kilometres south of
the shoreline, Tell Abraq was almost certainly a coastal
site in antiquity, as suggested by the large embayment
immediately to the north of the main mound which is today
flooded by winter rains. Throughout its occupation Tell
Abraq was very much in touch with the outside world, as
artifacts originating in the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, Iran
and Afghanistan attest. One of the most striking aspects of
metals use at the site is the high incidence of tin-bronze
found in all levels of occupation. The large mudbrick
platform which capped the site c. 1300 BC is built of bricks
which show the same dimensions as those used in brick
platforms found at sites such as Nad-i Ali in Afghanistan
and Tepe Yahya in southeastern Iran.
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