#SharjahSaturday - The Death That Made Mahatta Fort

The Handley Page HP42 - in its time, a technological revolution

One of the reasons that Sharjah's Mahatta Fort is a favourite of mine is it has history - we're talking relatively recent, but nonetheless fascinating history that is little less than kaleidoscopic.

The fort was built by Sultan bin Saqr Al Qasimi in 1932 as part of a deal with the British Government to establish a landing strip and facilities in Sharjah to accommodate the Imperial Airways HP42 biplanes flying the 'Empire Route' from Croydon to Australia.

And it was at the centre of an epic drama that threatened to slash the most valuable link in Britain's Eastern Empire.

Now, I could tell you about the Empire Route and how it hopped across Europe to reach Alexandria and then made its way across the desert to Iraq and then Sharjah, accomplishing the journey in just four days. I could tell you about the trench that was laid across the black Jordanian and Iraqi deserts, using chains dragged behind tenders, to guide the planes. I could tell you of the desert fuel dumps, secured using lock and key against the marauding Bedouin of northern Arabia.

I could talk about the fight between the British and Persian governments that drove the necessity for an airport on the Arabian peninsula in the first place - or the desperate search for a suitable location, fighting against the clock to keep the Empire Route alive. I could sit you down and tell you about that search - about how Dibba was first investigated by a despairing Group Captain, who realised that the ground would take longer to prepare than the British had to hand as they lost their landing rights on Hengam Island. The Persians had insisted on putting their claim to the Tunbs Islands on the table before renegotiating the new agreement. The British had walked away rather than drop the Tunbs, which they saw as belonging to the Trucial States. But it left them with the urgent need to find a new landing strip.

Given a cup of cocoa or two, I'd certainly tell you the story of the HP42, a leviathan of its time, which could take up to 38 passengers (18 in the front, 20 in the back - all 1st class) up into the skies, flying at 100 miles per hour. Of how the dazzling advances in technology made the British flying boats redundant and favoured the long-range HP42. Or indeed of how the Rulers of the Trucial States resisted the British push to establish landing rights - of how Ras Al Khaimah put armed guards out to stop the British establishing a refuelling base and how Dubai refused to allow passengers from the flying boats to land.

I could most certainly tell you the story of Sultan bin Saqr Al Qasimi, dispossessed as a young man and exiled to Dubai before his triumphant return to Rule over Sharjah. Of the fight between his powerful father-in-law and the Ruler of Sharjah, Khalid, who had stolen Sultan's inheritance. And I could tell you about the war that erupted for control of Kalba, ruled by a slave called Barut on behalf of his Al Qasimi overlord. Because the Imperial Airways backup strip was laid in Kalba and in order to do this, the British recognised the tiny east coast township as being a Trucial State in its own right. At one time, Kalba was the seventh emirate.

But I'm not going to. You're going to have to buy the book for that. What I AM going to tell you about is how it took the death of a man to close the negotiations that were taking place against the clock as the British faced the breaking of the air route that connected their Empire to the East.

Hugh Biscoe was the British Political Resident in the Gulf, a life-long administrator in the government of Bombay who had little to no experience of the Arab world and who did not himself speak Arabic. Having gained Sultan bin Saqr's approval to establish a landing ground at Sharjah, a coup given that the British were desperate to find an alternative to Hengam before the clock ran out on their agreement with the Persian government, in May 1932 Biscoe found to his astonishment that Sultan bin Saqr had changed his mind and would no longer permit the airfield to be built.

There was no more time. The Empire Route was in danger of being shut down.

The Empire Route. Imagine, it'd take you about 2 weeks to fly all the way - at 100 mph!

Biscoe called in a flight of Westland Wapitis - at the time fearsome, noisy fighting machines that would undoubtedly have struck the fear of God into the hearts of anyone in Arabia - to reinforce his point. He had no time to spare and couldn't afford to mess around. He pressed anyone he could rally to support his cause, including Sultan bin Saqr's domineering father-in-law, to no avail.

Turning the screw even further, Biscoe now brought the British Navy, the traditional tool of British policy enforcement in the Trucial States, to bear. The pressure on Sultan bin Saqr to sign the deal was intense, but so was the local opposition. Biscoe finally resolved to sail to Sharjah and hammer out his deal with the reluctant ruler. On the way, he picked up the Political Agent to Kuwait, Lieutenant-Colonel Harold Dickson. 

Biscoe had long suspected the British Residency Agent in Sharjah, Isa bin Abdullatif Al Serkal, of machinations against the airport deal. Al Serkal, whose role as British Agent made him one of the most powerful men on the coast, would see his influence wane considerably if the British established a direct presence. Biscoe thought Dickson, a fluent Arabic speaker with enormous experience in Arab affairs, would provide, let us say, a more dependable translation.

In the early hours of the 19th July 1932, the day of his intended arrival in Sharjah, sailing across the Gulf aboard HMS Bideford, Sir Hugh Vincent Biscoe KBE, His Britannic Majesty’s Political Resident in the Arabian Gulf, suffered a heart attack and promptly died.

Dickson barely hesitated. He had Biscoe buried at sea and, no sooner had the body wrapped in its Union Jack slid into the warm waters of the Gulf, but Dickson had cabled London to get permission to finalise the airport deal himself. London was desperate - yes, the more experienced Dickson was to proceed to Sharjah and try to get the deal done as soon as possible. On any terms.

The rest, as they say, is history...

#SharjahSaturday - The Weeks Ahead

Here's your Second Reminder. Next week I'll post more detail about each of our intended locations.

The idea is you can come along and join us at any point and leave at any point. You can come along for the whole ride, or just follow the #SharjahSaturday hashtag on Twitter and pop by when you fancy. Your choice, entirely.

There's a ton more to see and do in and around Sharjah - let alone the emirates' east coast blandishments. But we'll save those for another time, hey?

The Plan 

9am - Jones

Meet at Jones The Grocer, Flag Island. Head to Mahatta Fort.

It was a close run thing at one time - the airport WAS going to be built in Dibba!

10am - Mahatta Fort

Faithfully restored, Sharjah's Mahatta Fort was built by Sultan bin Saqr Al Qasimi in 1932 and leased to the British government as a 'safe house' for overnighting travellers on the British Imperial Airways route from Croydon to Canberra. It houses a collection of the early 'planes flown by 'Gulf Aviation' (Gulf Air to you, mate) as well as a VC10 flight deck you can sit in. For anyone willing to listen, I'll be sharing the 'backstory' to Mahatta - including how it took a good man to die in order to get the agreement to build the fort signed.

Who you lookin' at, punk?

11am - Arabia's Wildlife Centre

Just off the Sharjah/Dhaid highway, you'll find this gem - the Sharjah Natural History Museum, the Islamic Botanical Garden, a petting zoo and Arabia's Wildlife Centre, a zoological park designed so that - in part - the humans are caged and the animals are free outdoors. 

Fen being funky, neeces being cheeky...

1pm

Lunch at Fen Café
So funky it'll make your knee joints ache, Fen is Sharjah's home grown art cafe, a vision in smoothed concrete and chilled out ambience with a good dose of hipster menu and a chocolate cake that sits somewhere above lead on the periodic table.

Al Naboodah was a Sharjah pearl merchant so rich he had houses in Bombay and Paris...

2-3pm
The Heart of Sharjah
We'll take a leisurely wander through the Heart of Sharjah, visiting the Bait Al Naboodah and walking along the Souk Al Shanasiyah to reach Rain Room at around 3-3.30ish. Those folks who actually want to experience the amazing sensation of walking through a rain shower in a dark cavern without actually getting wet will have to book for themselves. Visits are every 15 minutes for groups of no more than 6 and you book online here.

Islamic Civilisation? Check. Museum? Check. Sharjah? Check.

4pm

Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilisation 

A rather wonderful collection of Islamic innovation, history and artefacts housed in what used to be a not terribly successful souq but which is now a thoroughly successful museum!

Sharjah Fort. When I first got here it had been demolished and only one small tower remained...

5pm

Al Hisn Sharjah/Souq Al Arsah/Coffee at Al Bait Hotel

Sharjah Fort was totally and faithfully rebuilt by the current Ruler of Sharjah after its almost total destruction in the late 1960s and has some interesting displays in it, apart from its interest as a big, traditional forty thing. The Souq Al Arsah - a faithful reconstruction of the traditional souk - backs onto the uber-luxurious, Chedi-run Al Bait Hotel, a Dhs 27 million conversion of three traditional old merchants' houses in the centre of Sharjah.

7pm

Wave goodbyes/head for Ajman

Something for the Weekend? The Green Planet

Neece holding cockroach at Green Planet. This is the expensive way to do it. 

For the same experience at zero cost, pop the nearest drain head and scoop your hand in. 

No, no, please it's nothing. You're welcome...

Okay, let me be quite clear about this - this one's pricey, but it's worth it. To be fair, we're a bit spoiled on the general cost of a thing to do with the kids front - look at parks and attractions in the UK and you're straight into second mortgage territory right there. So if this sets you back Dhs 840 for a family of four, that's sort of fine, right?

The Green Planet by Meraas (they're a property developer or, if you prefer, lifestyle-shaping dream enabler) is a largish  but otherwise relatively unprepossessing building to the north of Satwa, near enough to the Coka Cola Arena. Inside is a tropical rainforest. And it's pretty cool as indoor rainforests go.

Now, before you get all sniffy about fake rainforests, let me just remind you that one of the most amazing tourist attractions in Cornwall, UK, is the Eden Project, a series of biomes contained in double-skinned, climate-controlled domes. And, like the Eden Project, Green Planet is a great platform for teaching kids about the world and some of its most brilliant nature.

There are 3,000 species of thing in Green Planet, from cockroaches you can handle (or, in my case, not handle the sight of, let alone touch) to sloths you can sloth at. There's a bat cave and a bit of outback and loads of little tactile experiences and things to do, see, handle, touch and generally gawp at. The whole journey starts at the top of the rainforest canopy (Green Planet is built around a massive 'tree') and then wends its way down past waterfalls and tree houses, rope bridges and walkways. There are monkeys and parrots, dazzling birds and slithery snakes, fish (including - cue dramatic sounds - piranhas) and insects everywhere.

We went with the neeces and a magnificent, royally entertaining time was had by all. Ellen wants to be a vet, so she was holding snakes and letting cockroaches run over her hand and doing all manner of other animally stuff that normal people would flip out over and that kids can, well, do.

If you want to make a real day out of it, maybe do lunch somewhere in City Walk and then nip over to the Dubai Frame for an afternoon treat...

Ten Wildlife Reserves to Visit in the Emirates

Wildlife. Rawr.

Many, many years ago I interviewed a lady called Marijke Joengbloed. She was the archetypal Expat Expert - a woman who had landed in Al Ain sometime in the dusty, distant past and who had turned her curiosity about the Emirates' natural history into becoming something of a centre of expertise. Like many before her, because Marijke cared about this stuff - and nobody else did - she became the de facto expert on the UAE's flora and fauna - as others became experts on the history, archaeology and ethnography of the place. The only people who seemed to care were the amateurs - the 'experts' had no expertise to offer. They'd never even been here.

Of course, the Bedouin knew every track in the sand, every shrub and tree, but nobody was asking them and now it's too late (I'm currently reading Aida Kanafani's 'Aesthetics and Ritual in the United Arab Emirates' from 1979, which you'll be hard pressed to find a copy of anywhere - it's a fascinating snapshot of life before, well, now).

The Emirates was, literally, uncharted territory - even when I arrived here, blinking, in the late 1980s.

Marijke was a big lady in every way and when I interviewed her back in the '90s, she was cradling a little pink baby hedgehog in her arm, nursing it with a pipette of milk. I discovered that there are actually three species of hedgehog in the Emirates - I had been amazed to find there was even one. I posted about it - and her role in the establishment of Arabia's Wildlife Centre in Sharjah - over here.

These days, we not only have a wealth of knowledge about the biodiversity and wildlife of the Emirates, we have active conservation projects in place. Some of these are eminently visitable and many make for great weekend explorations.

Of them all, the centre that Marijke established remains the most brilliant and diverse place to visit, with an Islamic Garden, Natural History Museum, a petting zoo for the kids and the centre itself. It's so good, we're going there on #SharjahSaturday...

Marmoom and Al Qudra Lakes are a great winter visit, with walks around the man-made lakes rewarded with all sorts of wildlife - including a huge amount of birds. There are a range of recreational facilities around here (with funky eats provided by the traileropolis of Last Exit) and, of course, the desert luxury of the Bab Al Shams hotel is just around the corner. Although there's no visitor centre at the Ras Al Khor Nature Reserve, there's a viewing point where you can look out for the plentiful flamingoes and other birds - but if you want a bird-spotter's paradise, head north of Sharjah to the award-winning and thoroughly delightful Wasit Wetland Centre, where you can whistle at Fulvous Whistling Ducks among others.

Heading inland, you can make for the desert village of Nazwa and the Al Ghaf Conservation Reserve, intended to preserve important desert populations of the UAE's national tree, the Ghaf (or prosopis cineraria to you, mate). Again, no visitor centres here (although some lovely drives) but close by you'll find Badayer, the homeplace of the Dune Formerly Known As Big Red and home to numerous dune buggy rental joints as well as the brand new (and achingly cool) Badayer Oasis, a 21-room hotel with 10 tents built on a desert theme, developed by Sharjah's Shurooq. If achingly funky desert hotels is your thing, I'd heartily recommend taking a look at Al Maha, which is at the centre of the extensive Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve, itself home to herds of gazelles and Arabian oryx. I have to note, we haven't been back since it was managed by Emirates - it's now a Marriott, but the property itself is utterly gorgeous, with each tented 'chalet' equipped with its own infinity pool overlooking the desert. Quite, quite magical.

Exploring the mountains, you can spend some time walking around (or driving around) the fertile wadis of Wadi Helo, a protected nature reserve you'll likely pass through on your way to visiting the Al Hefaiyah Mountain Conservation Centre. Here you'll find over 30 species of Arabian wildlife, including that tartiest of all big cats, the endangered (in the UAE likely extinct in the wild) Arabian Leopard. Just over the road from Al Hefaiyah, you'll find the Kalba Birds of Prey Centre which features a fierce collection of avian predators who'd all rip your eyes out as soon as look at you. They do stuff like flying demonstrations here. While you're in Kalba, you might like to stay at Shurooq's glamping retreat near to the Kalba Nature Reserve. If you do and you fancy something to get up to next day, you'd do worse than visit the UNESCO listed biosphere reserve at Wadi Wurayah, inland of Bidya in Fujairah - although I have to confess last time I went it wasn't open to the public, the Radisson Blu website suggests very strongly that is no longer the case. Just in case it is, and to be sure to be sure of my ten reserves, you can go south and take a hike around the Al Wathba Wetland Reserve in Abu Dhabi.

There are actually loads of wildlife reserves and parks dotted around the UAE and they all provide a pleasant wander in these cool winter months...

Is the Emirates the Safest Place on Earth?

Seen in Mirdif City Centre...

Now, I'm the first to admit that I've drunk the Kool Aid. I reckon that most expats in their first couple of years are ambivalent about this place, those that make it to five years are generally going to be pretty much in favour of it all. Get to ten years, buy a villa in the Ranches or whatever expat ghetto suits you best, and you're probably raving about how marvellous it all is - despite your Shiny perhaps being a tiny little bit less sparkly than you were promised. It's a Shiny, after all, and that's shiny enough for most people.

We perhaps tend to forget sometimes how, far from Shiny, home was grimy. Rain, tax, tea, in that order. That's why we're here, no?

I admire those that came out here with a game plan. Two years, five years, once you've got that deposit on a flat in Richmond or a sixteen bedroom mansion in Leicester or whatever it was that you wanted to get done, you've done it and gone back. That's great, but it was never for us. We just liked the place and we meandered - we never had an objective, as such. A vague idea that we'd go home one day, perhaps, but that was as concrete as anything got.

I remember saying to Sarah just after we arrived that we'd been £1,000 in debt every month in the UK and now that we'd been in the Emirates a while, we'd bought the household things we needed (and could never afford back home) and had a thousand quid in hand. If we did a year here and went home a thousand quid better off, we'd have done a year in the sun and have £2,000 more than when we arrived. That, I said, would be just as true if we did 25 years and went home two thousand quid better off. And it is, at that.

I'm very well aware that there are those who don't - for whom the Emirates hasn't been as kind or who have just found themselves out of step with the whole place. There are people who have found themselves trapped in a job they've hated, been bilked by a dodgy employer or who have just generally hated it and everything it stands for. There are those who have left here and re-cast their old home in the sun as a horrible, empty place (funnily enough, many who have done that seemed happy enough when they were here).

But, clearly, over 25 years later something's keeping us here - we like it, very much so in fact. Is that a bad thing?

One of the very many things I like about here is the sense of personal security. I've got used to keeping my wallet in my back pocket, to leaving the car open as I nip into the shop - to having loose change in the little pot thing by the handbrake (I'm reliably informed I wouldn't have a side window if I did that in the UK - I still find that hard to believe, but you tend to listen to the locals).

Walking past charity collection boxes in the malls stuffed with notes and noticing that a) they're not chained down and b) they're still there two seconds later, one is occasionally reminded that the crime rate here is so low as to be almost negligible. Sarah's safe out walking alone or with a friend, day or night. You forget that until you have to wise up when you're on holiday back in Europe. Until you hear the horror stories.

The photo above was taken in a jewellery shop in Mirdif City Centre. Even being as used as we are to the safety and security of here, we found it was an amusing 'where else in the world?' moment...

Into The Light - Remembering the 2005 Amman Bombings

The names of the 57 victims of the 2005 Amman bombing remembered 

We have got into the habit of collecting a poster from all the places we visit and there's a very big, very white wall in our villa which is hung with many of these. It's full now, so we've started using the floor. So Bohemian, dahling.

Two of special significance (I've mentioned 'em before) come from an exhibition held in Amman to protest the 2005 Amman Bombings. One of the sponsors of the show was the PR company wot I used to work for, Spot On PR, which was one of very many reasons I was deeply proud of said company.

Our Jordan office was in the Zara Centre, connected to the Grand Hyatt Amman - one of the three hotels targeted by Al Qaeda/Daesh in the attack. We had organised a large number of, often very large scale, events there over the years and we knew the staff of the hotel very well indeed. A great number of them were cut down by the bomb, a 'dirty bomb' packed with nails and ball bearings, which ricocheted around the stone-walled lobby lounge in an evil fusillade of high speed projectiles that tore through flesh and smashed glass and furniture.

A friend was at the front desk in the lobby at the time of the blast, thankfully for her it was set in a dogleg away from the main lobby and she watched the glass walled entrance of the hotel shatter as the concussion wave and deadly hail of projectiles passed her by. She was entirely unharmed by the whole thing.

The bomb scythed through them, an awful parabola of concussing violence, bodies flung against the screaming living, glass flying and tearing cloth, biting flesh. The bar in pieces, bottles smashed. Drink streamed down the broken wood.

The force hit me, shards flying in the air, tossed me back against the wall. I saw Aisha’s hair thrown up in a surreal halo as she jerked backwards and hit the bar with a sickening force that distorted her fine features.

Faux beams falling, a woman crawling towards me as I staggered to my feet, deafened. An awful silence, mouths open, soundless screaming. A man walking, his hands to his ears and blood running down his face like rain, the falling drops spattering on the dusty floor in a steady flow like a broken gutter. I felt wetness on my cheek, saw the blood on my fingers. Aisha. Aish.

A woman lay on the floor, her head thrown back and her eyes impossibly wide, her hair fanned out on the wooden boards, her hips jerking obscenely, nostrils flared. The iron tang of blood.

Dust, coughing, thick dust. Ring a ring of roses. I turned, alone. Small fires as the drapes burned up, smoke and dust, choking me. Silence as I turned, gaping, torn flesh around me, open wounds, tangled limbs and open mouths, dresses torn and dead eyes blurring as I turned around, brown flesh, white flesh, red flesh. Brown, white, red. Children playing and mother calling us in from the sun for tea. A pocket full of posies. Whirling madness. Choking smoke and stillness, except for a single dark figure, spinning in the middle of the deadly tableau.

Aisha. Aisha. Aisha.

I’m somewhere white and beautiful, the breeze caressing my skin and she calls out, answering me as I come to a standstill, screaming her name as I double up in pain.

The olive trees are her courtiers, the olive princess.

I actually first wrote Olives - A Violent Romance in 2004*, and the idea of a bombing in an Amman hotel back then was inconceivable. Despite being in a very tough neighbourhood indeed, Amman had been a peaceful haven for decades. When the actual bombings happened, I never thought of my fictional bombing for a second - it was later, much later, that I went back to that manuscript and saw the bomb I had imagined and made the connection to the one that actually took place.

When I checked into the Grand Hyatt on my trip to attend the show, the week after the bombings, I was one of sixteen guests in the 311-room hotel. The lobby had been completely blocked off with plasterboard. Behind it was wreckage and dark bloodstains - the cleanup and reconstruction hadn't even started. There was a gift-wrapped book waiting for me in my room and I thought it was a 'Thanks for being a brave little guest' present. It wasn't - it was to mark my 40th stay in the hotel. I hadn't been counting, but the Grand Hyatt team had.

I added my stays in other hotels and started keeping track myself. Now, when I land in Jordan and the airport pick-up asks the inevitable, 'Is this your first time in Jordan, Seer?' I can happily tell them, 'No, it's my 74th.'

It does tend to rather take the wind out of their sails, bless 'em...

*Oh, God. 19 years ago!

#SharjahSaturday

Al Hisn Sharjah

Here it is, folks, the news you've all been waiting for. We're going to find out what's happening in the Cultured Emirate - Sharjah!!!

#SharjahSaturday started on Twitter as a result of my infamous rant about the fact that the Emirates is packed with things to do, places to go, stuff to see and an amazingly rich culture, heritage and diversity of locations. I'm still finding new stuff after over 32 years here and simply can't understand anyone sitting on their hands (particularly, not that I'm nagging, you understand, in Dubai) and moaning that there's nothing to do here - or that there's no depth, no culture, no bla bla bla.

So here's the skinny. On Saturday the 7th December, we're going to go to Sharjah (I'm cheating, I'll already be there) and we're going to spend the day together having fun. And then in the evening, decent folk can go home or perhaps find a restaurant for dinner while the naughty kids are going to go to Ajman and play. Not too hard, it's a school night, but enough to see some of what's there.

As anyone wot remembers the joys of GeekFest will recall, I have an instinctive horror of organisation. So #SharjahSaturday is UNorganised. You're welcome to come along for the whole thing, drop in at one or another of the destinations or just pop by and say 'Hi', as you please. The idea is that if you follow the hashtag, #SharjahSaturday you can see where we've got to and what we're doing.

The idea's to get a taste for what's there, so we're not necessarily hanging around and wringing the last ounce out of each location - we're finding them, taking a wander around and moving on! If people like, I'll play tour guide and share some of the history and pageantry of Sharjah's more than colouful past - and if not, I'll happily shut up!

Please note, in the nicest possible way, it doesn't matter to me if 6 or 60 turn up so don't go feeling obligated to confirm or whatever. If it works out for you on the day, it'll be lovely to see you. If not, you can follow the hashtag and have a vicarious day out!!!

Do feel free to bring the kids, BTW...

The Plan 

9am

Meet at Jones The Grocer, Flag Island.

Here we gather, do coffee and stuff before heading at around 9.45 to Mahatta Fort, via Al Hisn Sharjah.

10am

Mahatta Fort

This delightful little museum celebrates the first airport in the Emirates, built in 1932 by the Ruler of Sharjah to house travellers on the Empire Route from Croydon to Australia on enormous Handley Page HP42 biplanes - 18 of them on a full flight! At about 10.30 we're going to head for Arabia's Wildlife Centre.

11am

Arabia's Wildlife Centre

Just off the Sharjah/Dhaid highway, you'll find this gem - the Sharjah Natural History Museum, the Islamic Garden, a petting zoo and Arabia's Wildlife Centre, a zoo designed so that - in part - the humans are caged and the animals are free outdoors. I met its designer once and she, a fervent environmentalist, was delighted by that. At around 12.30 we'll head back into town, passing by the Discovery Centre and Sharjah Car Museum.

1pm

Lunch at Fen Café
So funky it'll make your knee joints ache, Fen is Sharjah's home grown art cafe, a vision in smoothed concrete and chilled out ambience with a good dose of hipster menu and a chocolate cake that sits somewhere above lead on the periodic table.

2-3pm
Heart of Sharjah
We'll take a wander through the Heart of Sharjah, the Bait Al Naboodah and the Souk Al Shanasiyah to reach Rain Room at around 3-3.30ish. Those folks who actually want to experience the amazing sensation of walking through a rain shower in a dark cavern without actually getting wet will have to book for themselves. Visits are every 15 minutes for groups of no more than 6 and you book online here.

4pm
Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilisation 
A rather wonderful collection of Islamic innovation, history and artefacts housed in what used to be a not terribly successful souq but which is now a thoroughly successful museum!

5pm
Al Hisn Sharjah/Souq Al Arsah/Coffee at Al Bait Hotel
Sharjah Fort was totally and faithfully rebuilt by the current Ruler of Sharjah after its almost total destruction in the late 1960s. The Souq Al Arsah backs the uber-luxurious, Chedi-run Al Bait Hotel, a Dhs 27 million conversion of three traditional old merchants' houses in the centre of Sharjah into a hotel that is so gorgeous it makes Pat Mustard look unattractive.


7pm
Wave goodbyes/head for Ajman

Sounds like fun? Join us at Jones at 9am on Saturday the 7th December, then!

Something for the Weekend? A Friday Brunch in Sharjah!

The 'Heart of Sharjah'

Friday brunches have become something of a tradition in the Emirates although I have to confess, it's a delight we usually avoid these days - the Paul Smith shirts and Coast dresses sloshing about with a surfeit of cheap hooch and plates of sweaty salmon, prawns and houmus is really not our thing.

An alternative, which I'd highly recommend, is brunch at Sharjah's Radisson Blu - it's alcohol-free, which is a plus point for anyone who'd rather avoid the stuff on a Friday afternoon (or who just generally avoids the stuff) and it comes with a pass to the pool and beach thrown in so you can turn up (no traffic on a Friday, folks!), brunch to your heart's content and then flop down to the poolside and crash on a sunbed while the kids try to kill each other in the pools. There are three of these, by the way, as well as a beach.

If you're up for it, an overnight there right now will cost Dhs 279 a room which is hardly going to break the bank. The brunch package is Dhs 120 for adults and Dhs 60 for kids, which is basically your Friday sorted right there. The restaurant is surrounded by the UAE's original hotel indoor garden, waterfalls, koi carp and all and the food's excellent.

You're also all set to explore the Souk Al Shanasiyah at the Heart of Sharjah, the Al Naboodah house and the city's divers other museums (the museum of Islamic Civilisation is a short walk away), art galleries and attractions (the urban garden is lovely, Fen Café makes one of the world's most shockingly good chocolate cakes) as well as booking a 15 minute slot at Rain Room, taking a tour around Sharjah Aquarium or maybe tootling across town to explore the Wasit Wetland Centre. There are plenty more things to do/explore, too, including loads for kids - the rides and things at Al Montaza Park, the Discovery Centre and the Car Museum come immediately to mind, but there's plenty more where they came from.

You're basically looking at a whole weekend break with loads to see and do for a couple for the price of one of those Dubai 'bubbly brunches' for one. I mean, what's not to love?

The Dutch East India Company's Place in the History of the Emirates

We went to stay with friends over the summer - they had lived here in the Emirates but returned to Holland, being Dutch as they is. Andre and Sonja live in Brouwershaven, in Zeeland. It's a funny little place, at one time an important mercantile (and, as the name attests, brewing) centre but now a sleepy, pleasant sort of small town with a marina and assorted leisure facilities and camp sites. Because it was once a bustling port, it has a church sized out of all proportion to the town's current scale, a huge cathedral-like construction. And inside it, on the floor, I found this gravestone from the 1700s, carved with a Dutch East India Company (VOC) ship.

In our time wandering around the Netherlands, I kept coming up against references to the Company and Holland's colonial past. I found brass cannon inscribed in Arabic and maps of the Gulf drawn by early Dutch cartographers. In Amsterdam we spent a happy hour or so wandering around a reconstructed VOC ship. It seemed as if everywhere I went, there was a reminder of the VOC and its links with the Gulf - and the story of how European powers smashed the great Arab monopoly of eastern trade that forms such an important part of the Emirates' past.

While it's most closely associated these days with South Africa and Indonesia, the VOC was actually very much involved in commerce with India and the Arabian Gulf - the VOC comes from the company's Dutch name, Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie. Dutch is an insane language that I confess to finding as unpronounceable as I am shamed at how the Dutch all speak impeccable English.

In the late 1500s, the Dutch went to war against Spain and its ally Portugal. This triggered a series of Dutch moves against Portugal's very successful eastern trade network over the next century and saw Portugal's trading stations throughout the east fall into Dutch hands. Although the focus of Dutch expansionism was the 'Far East', the VOC nevertheless established 'factories' in the Gulf, particularly at Gombroon (Bandar Abbas), Bandar Kong and, further up the Gulf, Kharg Island.

You'll see a lot of references to these 'factories' - established at various times by the Portuguese, French, Dutch and English. They're not manufacturing plants, but trading posts. And each successive eastwards wave of European expansion (or, if you prefer, Empire) would see all sorts of skulduggery practiced in order to suppress rival influence and trade - from the co-option and coercion of local leaders and populaces to outright warfare against colonial rivals and locals alike.

Having weakened the Portuguese stranglehold on the great Arab trade networks of (and monopoly of trade with) the east, the Dutch then went to war with the British in the late 1600s. The result was a flourishing of the British East India Company at Dutch expense - much as the VOC had flourished at Portuguese expense. Over the next century, the Dutch would see their influence and trading links with the East wane as the sun rose over the British Empire.

Which is why, as we enter the late 1700s, it was the Brits in the Gulf and their government in Bombay who found themselves arrayed against the local maritime force - the fearsome Huwala and Qawasim. Which is, as they say, another story...

Droning On: UAE Drone Law and the Pleasures of Flight

Jebel Mleiha

Squelching through a muddy field packed with incurious sheep to once again recover the stupid toy drone I was trying to fly, I finally resolved to go for this all or nothing. It was almost impossible to control the daft wee thing and even the vaguest puff of wind would send it away beyond the trees before I could land it. Fed up with wandering around the countryside trying to find my little plastic Chinese gadget time after time, and with a vague notion of imaging the archaeological sites of the UAE from the air, I decided to buy a DJI Mavic - a serious drone.

Now this was no small decision. We are talking about a very expensive piece of kit indeed, here. But the more I read about it, the more I resolved to take the plunge. One short Christmas later, I had me a Mavic Pro. I'll try not to rant and rave about it too much but the Mavic unquestionably stands as the most brilliantly integrated item of technology I have ever owned or used. We're talking a highly manoeuvrable 30 kph utterly stable 4K steadycam on a gimble, if you don't mind.

Sheba's Palace - a Pre-Islamic Fort in Shimal, RAK

The Mavic does what it's supposed to and is very, very good at stopping idiots like me from breaking it. Believe me, I have tried to do for it in every murderous way imaginable. The Mavic just flashes its LEDs at me and refuses to do the thing that the stupid with the controller is asking it to do. Fly it out of range? It comes home automatically. Run out of battery while 400 feet up over a mountainside? It flies home while it still has enough power in reserve. Drive it at full speed into a wall? It just goes 'Umm, no.' Smash it with enough RF to burn out a Dalek? It auto-returns and lands safely all by itself.

Wadi Suq era burial - Shimal, RAK

Clearly, before parting company with such a terrifying amount of money, I had looked up how to certify a drone in the Emirates. The UAE drone legislation is basically very sensible indeed (it's linked here) and you are asked merely to fill in an online form with your and the drone's details (linked here) and hey presto, you're registered. The UAE drone/UAV law covers mostly basic, common sense usage of a drone. The use of camera drones is permitted in the UAE, but with the usual caveats that apply to the Emirates' attitudes to personal privacy and space. Photography near military sites, ports, hotels or family areas is most definitely a nono - with or without a drone. It has ever been thus.

Murabbaa, or watchtower, Falaj Al Mualla

There's an app 'My Drone Hub', which you can download and this has an interactive map of fly/no fly zones. These have a tendency to change (quite a lot of the east coast seaboard recently became 'no fly'), so it's worth looking up your location before you fly. The Mavic, of course, has a better idea of where it is supposed to fly/not fly than I do in any case, being a great deal smarter than its owner.

Yes, I realise this sets the bar quite low, thank you.

Unexcavated area at Mleiha

Basically, as with other UAE drone regulation stuff, the fly/no fly zones broadly make sense. There's an almost blanket ban of Abu Dhabi, and the Omani border no fly zone has been widened (the Omanis aren't terribly 'drone friendly'), which has put areas such as Jebel Hafit and Thuqeibah beyond reach, which is sad. But many other areas of interest (to me, at least) remain accessible.

Shamash Temple, Ed-Dur, UAQ

So now I can get aerial images of my various sites (forts,  burials, wadis, oases, the lot) and have a lot of fun flying around in the process. It's worth every (sigh) penny, believe me. I'm aiming to go back to the UK on leave, so I took the 20 question multiple choice test that has just been introduced there and registered as a UK operator, too. I got one question wrong (you have to get 16/20 to pass, so it wasn't such a bad flub) - which was about drone etiquette in the snow. I haven't, I must confess, had much experience of that - well, at least not yet...

A little bit of Ireland! :)