Idea#470 – Visiting the archeological site of Al Zubarah in Qatar
Al Zubarah (in arabic : الزبارة), Northwest side of Qatar, in subdivision of Ash Shamal is an old and abandoned city. The coastal city, surrounded with its surrounding wall(speaker), prospered during a short period of about fifty years at the end of the XVIIIth and at the beginning of the XIXth century.
Founded byt he Utub, traders from Kuwait, its activity is linked to the trade of valuable raw materials, in particular the export of pearls. At the top of his prosperity, Al Zubarah maintained commercial links with the Indian Ocean, Arabia and the West of Asia. Al Zubarah joins in a long line of strengthened and prosperous trade cities which were established along the coast of Persian Gulf, a part of which is today in Qatar, from the beginning of Islamic period around the IXth century, and which established a symbiotic relation with establishments of the hinterland. To the son of the centuries, these trade cities were probably rival some of the others in the trade which they practised in Indian Ocean.
Al Zubarah was largely destroyed in 1811 and finally abandoned at the beginning of the XXth century, the stone of the buildings and the mortar collapsed and were gradually covered with a protective layer of sand coming from the desert. A small part of the city was excavated. The site presents the rests of the city, with its palaces, its mosques, its streets, its houses to patios and its fishermen’s huts, its port and its double defensive fortified wall and cemeteries. The site is registered on the UNESCO world heritage list.
Where is it ?
Al Zubarah, Qatar
