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! :)

Ed-Dur and the Mysteries of the Ancient World

The site of Ed-Dur. Nothing to see here, folks. Move on, move on...

In the heady days of the building boom, back in the early 'noughties', Dubai property company Emaar started developing the coastal area north of Umm Al Quwain, flattening a great swathe of land and building a posh little sales centre on a curve in the road north to Ras Al Khaimah. It had magnificent views out over the mangroves. Across the road was a ramshackle cold store and a tiny mosque. The place is called Al Dour.

The scheme came to little in the end. The building boom turned into a bust and only a couple of hundred houses were actually constructed. They're still there today, a tiny gated community at the end of a wee drive from the main road, hoarding blocking the views either side of you (it always reminds me of the final scenes from Terry Gilliam's surreal and brilliant Brazil) until you emerge into a small carbon copy of Arabian Ranches.

Off the main road connecting these little beige 'dare to dream' wonders and the sales centre, to the right uphill just before you hit the curve as the road snakes past the mangroves to your left, you'll find a little brown sign to the 'Ed-Dur Archaeological Site'. If you drive on the sandy track up there, you'll find yourself looking at a expanse of shrubby desert fenced off from prying eyes and, behind the fence, a few clapboard buildings that look like a tatty little labour camp.

I'd not recommend this one as a day trip, because you'll see no more than I have just described.

And yet beyond that fence lies one of the most remarkable and mysterious sites in the UAE - an early Pre-Islamic city sprawled across some 800 hectares. Blossoming from the 3rd Century BCE onwards, Ed-Dur is closely linked with Mleiha inland - the two settlements are joined by the great wadi that snakes inland from here through the oasis towns of Falaj Al Mualla and Dhaid. Coins found here at Ed-Dur were minted using coin moulds found at Mleiha, animal burials at the two cities follow a similar rite - while human burials speak of rituals associated with Parthian northern Iraq.

Part of the excavated temple complex at Ed-Dur, slowly being washed away...

Ed-Dur was a significant city with links to India, Persia, Mesopotamia, the Levant and Yemen. It was home to a vast variety of mudbrick and other constructions, from fortifications to houses and temples. It is here that we see alabaster sheets used as glass in windows and it is here that we find ceramics from Mesopotamia, Iran and India as well as Roman glass, all dated to the 1st Century BCE. The temple complex unearthed here contained an Aramaic inscription, one of the earliest finds of writing we have from the area (the others are, of course, from Mleiha), thought to have been the name of an early sun god, Shams (Himyarite) or Shamash (Akkadian).

Ed-Dur has been put forward as Pliny’s Omana, ‘a harbour of great importance in Carmania’. Carmania was a Persian province under Alexander the Great which stretched along the coast from Bandar Lengeh to Bandar Jask. Alexander never quite managed to invade Arabia, despite having expressed a clear interest in doing just that - sending his Admiral, Nearchos, to explore the seas from India to Basra. Nearchos never made landfall on the Arabian side of the Gulf and Alexander died before he could add southeastern Arabia to his list of conquests.

Ed-Dur still has many secrets to tell us. Hellenistic era coins found here celebrate 'Abiel', although we have no idea who Abiel was - similar coins have been found in hoards in Bahrain but in a location dating them to some 300 years before the coins at Ed-Dur. These 'Tetra Drachma' were the coins minted at Mleiha - Abiel seems to have lived on in coinage for a great deal longer than in life.

Hellenistic Tetra Drachma found at Ed-Dur

Both Mleiha and Ed-Dur seem to have declined in the first two centuries of what we now call the 'Common Era' and then they likely fell to the invasion of the Sasanians. Ed-Dur was never to recover and provided archaeologists with a remarkable trove of finds (some of which you'll find on display at Umm Al Quwain's eclectic and pleasant little museum). Changes in sea levels and the silting of the coast here have meant that the maritime centre and former port of Ed-Dur is today a good few hundred metres from the sea it used to serve.

Today, the excavated temple and other buildings stand scandalously exposed to the elements, literally washing away with every rainy season that lashes the site. Unprotected and neglected, the entire area of Ed-Dur (imagine an archaeological centre like Mleiha established here - what a marvel!) is fenced off, a sad testament to the overlooked heritage of the Emirates.

So next time you're hoying off to the Barracuda, look out for the brown sign before the corner by the sales centre and spare a thought for the still-hidden mysteries of the ancient city of Ed-Dur...

Visit the Mleiha Archaeological Centre

The stunning Mleiha Archaeological Centre - the only such centre in the Emirates, sadly...

I was rabbiting on about the amazing archaeological site of Faya-1 and the emergence of anatomically modern humankind (Homo Sapiens, as you ask) from Africa to populate the world yesterday and so I thought it appropriate to tell you how and why you can go there and take the kids, granny, your visiting parents or the school with you. You could do it today, actually - just bundle 'em all in the car and nip out there for a wander around and a funky lunch at the glorious café there!

Faya-1 is part of the remarkable spread of human history you'll find preserved and, uniquely, celebrated at the Mleiha Archaeological Centre in Sharjah. It's a bit of a schlep - about an hour's drive from Dubai, but it's brilliantly worthwhile - nowhere else in the Arabian Gulf will you see such a spread of human history in such a small area. And the Mleiha Archaeological Centre is, while glorious in its own small way, sadly just as unique.

The settlement, city, site of Mleiha is as central to the human history of the Emirates as it is central to the whole country. It's the motherlode, pure and simple.

Not only do we have the finds at Faya-1 to date the emergence of humans from Africa to populate the world, but we have a gloriously preserved 4,500 year-old Umm Al Nar tomb on display at the Centre. Here you'll also find evidence of human occupation - and inhumation - at Jebel Buhais, just down the road. Jebel Buhais, a huge necropolis, stretches from the Neolithic to the Iron Age in its scope - although, oddly, lacks any evidence of Umm Al Nar occupation. It's an enormously important site which has been yielding new clues about the history of the Emirates since 1974, when an Iraqi team first started exploring the area. Buhais stands as the earliest radiometrically dated inland burial site in the Emirates. Beat that!

Mleiha not only contains a museum and a guide to the many sites spread around the area - from Faya-1 and Buhais through to the Iron Age and Pre-Islamic forts and settlements of Mleiha, but it has a funky café (beetroot hummus in Mleiha? Check! Super coffee and hipster cakes? Check!) and offers a series of adventures from dune buggy tours through to nighttime desert barbecues and camping experiences. Opened in 2016, master-planned by Shurooq - Sharjah's development authority , the place has been nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site - and quite rightly so, too.

Nearby, you'll find the achingly contemporary, chiq and just generally cool Al Faya Lodge, which offers reasonably priced and totes chilled (See this? Huh? Down with the kids or WHAT?) overnight accommodation. Or you can simply plan to trek out to Mleiha and do lunch there before heading to the east coast of the Emirates and the many beach hotels therein - just in time for check-in.

I reckon you'll want to read up on it first, so you can answer the kids' questions. What you'll need is a dramatic, accessible and fun human history of the Emirates that tells the story as the amazing epic that it truly is.*

2/2/2020. You'll just have to wait... ;)

*NO, that WASN'T a book plug! It WASN'T! It was a responsibly sourced reference to a future resource. That's all! Now, move on, people...

Out of Africa: the Emergence of Anatomically Modern Humans

The site at Faya-1

It's a little appreciated fact, but on the edge of the desert interior of Sharjah lies a site which marks the beginning of the human history of the Emirates - Faya-1. It is here that archaeologists found, at the bottom of a number of well defined strata, evidence of the passage of humans through the area between 130,000 and 125,000 years ago - the emergence of anatomically modern humans from Africa. This is where I have started the story of Children of the Seven Sands because, well, it's the start of everything.

We now know, from a combination of two emerging threads of evidence, that this passage was part of a wider dispersal - humanity left its home in Africa through a northern route (via Egypt, Suez and the Levant) and a southern route (via Djibouti, Aden and the Gulf). Those two threads are woven from our ever-richer understanding of archaeology and our exploration of DNA research to unravel the mysteries of who we are and where we came from.

Last week, one particularly controversial piece of DNA research dropped, which traces Homo Sapiens Sapiens (that's us, folks) to an enormous primordial lake in modern-day Botswana some 200,000 years ago. It's controversial because other researchers postulate an earlier origin for humanity and argue the study was based on a limited study of the mitochondrial genome. While the data is considered useful as part of the wider picture, some academics reckon it's wrong to view the Botswana study's evidence presented in a standalone fashion. That viewpoint was even expressed by researchers at the German University of Tübingen, the university whose archaeologists found Faya-1 in the first place.

What we do know - and today widely accept - is that climactic change drove the movement of those people to populate the continent of Africa before, some 70,000 years later, they started to travel further afield via the land bridge of Egypt and that of the Bab Al Mandab Straits between Africa and Yemen which, at that time, would have been a shallow and narrow crossing. Global sea levels back then were much lower thanks to glaciation, see?

Another view of Faya-1. You wonder how they knew to dig here...

Our early adventurers would have travelled along the east coast of what is now Yemen and Oman before, presumably, finding their way through the Hajar Mountains to the west coast through one of the three crossings - there are basically three great wadis that intersect the mountain range - Wadi Jizi, Wadi Hatta and Wadi Ham.

At Jebel Faya, just south of the Sharjah town of Mleiha, our early explorers found a natural formation that provided shelter as well as a source of precious water, collected in aquifers which wash up against the rocky outcrop of Faya, which divides the gravelly plain below the mountains from the deep desert beyond to the sea.

You can visit Faya-1 today and stand up on a platform to contemplate this lonely, strange place where our distant ancestors - and those of all humankind - paused to knap their flint tools. You'll find it well marked when you visit the Mleiha Archaeological Centre and you can read the story of Faya-1 - and the remarkable slice of our common history that is buried at the foot of Jebel Faya - at the Centre.