ANCIENT LAND

Archaeological studies in recent decades have unveiled much of the rich fabric of pre- and early history that lay under the desert sands. Much more remains to be discovered, but it is clear that from the Late Stone Age (5500 BC) onwards there is evidence of human occupation which is both extensive and of local and regional importance.

CONVERSION TO ISLAM

The arrival of envoys from the Prophet Muhammad in 630 AD led to the conversion of the region to Islam. By 637 AD, Moslem armies were using Julfar as a staging post for the conquest of Iran. Julfar continued to be a port and pearling centre of considerable importance. From here, continuing a 5000-year-old tradition, great wooden dhows ranged throughout the Indian Ocean, trading as far away as Kenya, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and China. By the thirteenth century, what is now the UAE was closely linked with the Kingdom of Hormuz based on Jarun Island in the Straits of Hormuz.

ARRIVAL OF THE PORTUGUESE

This relationship was upset in 1498 following the Portuguese circumnavigation of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco da Gama. The Portuguese arrival in the Gulf had bloody consequences for the Arab populations of Julfar and ports like Dibba, Bidiya, Khor Fakkan and Kalba. A string of forts established in these towns, often described as ‘Portuguese’, are in fact better considered strongholds of local Arab sheikhs, allies of the Portuguese. The Portuguese author Duarte Barbosa, writing in 1517, noted that the people of Julfar were ‘persons of worth, great navigators and wholesale dealers’.

BANI YAS AND THE QAWASIM

While European powers like Portugal, and Holland competed for regional supremacy, a local power, the Qawasim, gathered strength and posed a serious challenge to the British, then emerging as the dominant power in the Indian Ocean. In the first two decades of the nineteenth century a series of clashes between the two sides ended in the virtual destruction of the Qasimi fleet and the consolidation of British influence in the Gulf.

TRUCIAL STATES

Following the defeat of the Qawasim, the British signed a series of agreements with the sheikhs of the individual emirates that, later augmented with treaties on preserving a maritime truce, resulted in the area becoming known as ‘The Trucial States’. One of the greatest figures of the period was Sheikh Zayed bin Khalifa of Abu Dhabi, who ruled that emirate for over 50 years from 1855 to 1909, earning the title ‘Zayed the Great’.

HARD TIMES

The First World War and the world economic depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s, and the Second World War dealt a hard blow. The population was resourceful and hardy, but there is no denying the difficulties that they faced.

THE DISCOVERY OF OIL

In the early 1930s the first oil company teams arrived to carry out preliminary surface geological surveys. Commercially viable deposits were, however, not discovered until the late 1950s, and it was not until 1962 that the first cargo of crude oil was exported from Abu Dhabi.

FEDERATION

In early 1968, when the British announced their intention of withdrawing from the Arabian Gulf by the end of 1971, Sheikh Zayed acted rapidly to establish closer ties with the other emirates.

Following a period of negotiation however, agreement was reached between the rulers of six of the emirates (Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Umm al-Qaiwain, Fujairah and Ajman) and the Federation to be known as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was formally established on 2 December 1971. The seventh emirate, Ra’s al-Khaimah, formally acceded to the new Federation on 10 February 1972.

Sheikh Zayed was elected by his fellow rulers as the first President of the UAE,

SHEIKH ZAYED BIN SULTAN AL NAHYAN

The prosperity, harmony and modern development that characterizes the UAE, led today by President HH Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, also the Ruler of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, and his fellow members of the Supreme Council of Rulers of the seven emirates, is due to a very great extent to the role played by Sheikh Zayed, both prior to the formation of the Federation and in the nearly 33 years that followed until his death in November 2004.

One foundation of his philosophy as a leader and statesman was that the resources of the country should be fully used for the benefit of the people. He saw them as a tool to facilitate the development of what he believed to be the real wealth of the country – its people, and, in particular, the younger generation.

Another key feature of Sheikh Zayed’s strategy of government was the encouragement of initiatives designed to conserve the traditional culture of the people, in order to familiarise the younger generation with the ways of their ancestors. In his view, it was of crucial importance that the lessons and heritage of the past were remembered.

Sheikh Zayed was a firm and dedicated opponent of those who sought to pervert the message of Islam to justify harsh dogmas, intolerance and terrorism. In Sheikh Zayed’s view such an approach was not merely a perversion of the message but is in direct contradiction of it. Extremism, he believed, has no place in Islam.