UAE History: From Ancient Settlements to Modern Nation

Early Human Habitation in the UAE

The earliest known human habitation in the UAE dates from 5500 BCE.
Trade in copper from the Hajar Mountains started around 3000 BCE.
By the 1st century AD, overland caravan traffic between Syria and cities in southern Iraq began.
There was seaborne travel to the important port of Omana (present-day Umm al-Qaiwain) and then to India. These routes were an alternative to the Red Sea route used by the Romans.
Pearls had been exploited in the area for millennia, but at this time the trade reached new heights.
Seafaring was also a mainstay, and major fairs were held at Dibba, bringing in merchants from as far as China.

The arrival of envoys from the Islamic prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) in 630 heralded the conversion of the region to Islam.
After Muhammad, one of the major battles of the Ridda Wars was fought at Dibba, resulting in the defeat of the non-Muslims and the triumph of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula.
In 637, Julfar (today Ra’s al-Khaimah) was used as a staging post for the conquest of Iran.
Julfar became a wealthy port and pearling center from which dhows travelled throughout the Indian Ocean, especially to the neighboring land of Sindh and its cities of Thatta and Debal.

Inland, the arc of villages at Liwa were the focus of economic and social activity for the Bani Yas from before the sixteenth century.
In the 1790s, the town of Abu Dhabi had become such an important pearling center that the political leader of all the Bani Yas groups, the sheikh of the Al Bu Falah (Al Nahyan family), moved there from Liwa.
In the 19th century, members of the Al Bu Falasah, a branch of the Bani Yas, settled by the creek in Dubai and established Maktoum rule in that emirate.
Following the defeat of the Qawasim, the British signed a series of agreements with the sheikhs of the individual emirates, later expanded with treaties on preserving a maritime truce, resulting in the area becoming known as ‘The Trucial States’.
During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, pearling provided both income and employment to the people of the Arabian Gulf coast.
The First World War impacted severely on the pearl fishery, but it was the economic depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s, coupled with the Japanese invention of the cultured pearl, that damaged it a great deal.

The industry eventually faded away just after the Second World War, when the newly independent Government of India imposed heavy taxation on pearls imported from the Gulf.
In the 1930s, the first oil company teams arrived to carry out preliminary surveys.

The first cargo of crude was exported from Abu Dhabi in 1962.
As oil production increased, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who was chosen as Ruler of Abu Dhabi on August 6, 1966, undertook a massive program of construction of schools, housing, hospitals, and roads.
When Dubai’s oil exports commenced in 1969, Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, de facto Ruler of Dubai since 1939, was also able to use oil revenues to improve the quality of life of his people.

With the encouragement of the then Ruler, Sheikh Shakhbut, and his younger brother, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the first season of excavations took place in February and March 1959, discovering a previously unknown culture, now known as the Umm an-Nar civilization.
This first season of excavations was followed by several further years of work by the Danish team, both at Umm an-Nar and at Al Ain, in Abu Dhabi’s Eastern Region, laying the foundations of Emirates’ archaeology.
When the Danes began their work at Umm an-Nar in 1959, little was known of the UAE’s history.
It was believed that, apart from well-known coastal settlements like Julfar, in Ra’s al-Khaimah, and Dibba and Khor Fakkan, on the east coast, the country had played little part in the history of human civilization in the Gulf region.
Extensive excavations were undertaken both by local archaeological teams and by foreign academic missions.
The land of the Emirates has a history of human settlement that stretches back at least 200,000 years.
It has played an important part in developments as varied as the migration of early Man out of Africa into Asia.
The emergence of the pearling industry, the supply of copper to the great empires of Mesopotamia 5000 years ago, and the creation of international maritime trading routes that extended as far away as China as much as 2000 years ago.