Al Zubarah

1 · POSITION

Al Zubarah, on Qatar’s northwest coast about a hundred kilometres from Doha, is the best-preserved pearling and trading town of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the Gulf, inscribed by UNESCO on 22 June 2013. The register holds it as a fossilised merchant town: its courtyard houses, streets, harbour and walls can still be read in plan. [1, 2]

2 · A TOWN OF THE PEARL

The town’s remains date from the 1760s, and its main life ran until 1811. At its height it may have held between six and nine thousand people, and its economy depended on the pearl-diving season of the long summer months; it was also a trading port. A great wall enclosed the town and its bay in an arc of two and a half kilometres from shore to shore, with towers at intervals, and a square fort on the beach guarded the harbour. [1, 2]

3 · BURNED AND ABANDONED

After several attacks, the town was burned in 1811 by forces loyal to the Sultan of Muscat, and it was abandoned by the early twentieth century. The Al Zubarah fort that stands today was built in 1938 on the orders of Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani to guard the northwest coast. [1, 2]

4 · THE TOWN AND ITS HINTERLAND

The site covers sixty hectares and stretches two and a half kilometres from the fort to the sea. Inland, Qal’at Murair — which the register holds under its own code — was part of a system of fortification controlling the town’s wells and grazing grounds. The coast lived on the sea; its water came from behind it. [1, 2]

5 · ⚑ CANDOUR

⚑ Checked on 22 October 2026. The town was settled in the 1760s; an early Islamic village stood nearby, which is the likely source of the register’s earlier date. A claim of an earlier town rested on documents later exposed as forgeries. The note is corrected. [1–3]