Al Ain
Al Ain is a city in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and the seat of the administrative division of the Al Ain Region. The city is bordered to the east by the Omani town of Al-Buraimi. Al Ain is the largest inland city in the Emirates, the fourth-largest city, and the second-largest in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. The freeways connecting Al Ain, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai form a geographic triangle in the country, each city being roughly from the others.
Climate and geography
Al Ain is known as the "Garden City" of Abu Dhabi, the UAE or the Gulf, due to its greenery, particularly with regard to the city's oases, parks, tree-lined avenues and decorative roundabouts, with strict height controls on new buildings, to no more than seven floors. According to one author, the oases around Al Ain and Al-Hasa in Saudi Arabia are the most important in the region of the Gulf.The city is located approximately east of the capital Abu Dhabi, and about south of Dubai. The eastern region covers an area of approximately. Oman lies to the east, Dubai and Sharjah to the north, Abu Dhabi to the west and the Empty Quarter desert and Saudi Arabia to the south. The topography of Al Ain is unique and varies as one travels to the east. The ecologically important Jebel Hafeet, an outlier of the main Hajar range, is considered one of the monuments of Al Ain, lying just to the south of the city. Rising to in elevation, Jebel Hafeet is one of the highest mountains in the country, and has a number of ridges which stretch to the inner part of the city, two of which are Jabal Al Naqfah, and the Western ridge. Sand dunes of varying texture that are tinged red with iron oxide lie to the north and east of Al Ain.
The city has a hot desert climate, featuring long, extremely hot summers and warm winters. In Al-Ain, the mean annual rainfall is and the average relative humidity is 60%. Low humidity in Al-Ain, particularly during the summers, makes it a popular destination for many people during this time of the year. Boer classified the UAE climate as hyper-arid and divided it into four climatic regions: the coastal zone along the Persian Gulf, the mountain areas northeast of UAE, the gravel plains around Al Ain, and the central and southern sand desert. More rainfall and lower temperature occur in the northeast than in the southern and western regions. The monthly average rainfall around Al-Ain was from the period 1970 to 1992.
To the south of the city, near Oman, there is the man-made Lake Zakher, which resulted from the release of waste water from desalination plants. Also in this region, to the east of Jebel Hafeet, lies the area of Mezyad, which has a border crossing with Oman, and is where the historic Mezyad Fort is located.
Demographics
With a population of 846,787, it has the highest percentage of Emirati nationals in the country, though the majority of its residents are expatriates, particularly from the Indian subcontinent. Many people are from Bangladesh and Pakistan. There is also a significant number of Afghans in the city.Economy
Al Ain is an important services centre for a wide area extending into Oman. There are three major shopping centres, Al Ain Mall, Al Jimi Mall, Al Hili Mall and Al Bawadi Mall as well as traditional souqs for fruit and vegetables and livestock, the road which leads to Mezyad. Industry is growing on a small scale, and includes the Coca-Cola bottling plant and the Al Ain Portland Cement Works. The water in Al-Ain is of good quality. Service industries such as car sales, mechanics and other artisans are located in the area known as Sanaiya and Pattan Market. Social and governmental infrastructure include the Higher Colleges of Technology, well-equipped medical facilities including the teaching hospital at Tawam, Al Ain International Airport, and military training areas. Al Ain also has world's largest dates processing and marketing company, Al Foah Company LLC. The place is also famous for Al Ain Dairy Farm located just outside Al Ain.History and prehistory
The region of Al Ain and Buraimi, together known as the Buraimi Oasis, is of cultural and historical importance. For example, the area witnessed events relevant to the history of Islam during the Rashidun, Umayyad and Abbasid eras, similar to Dibba and Ras Al-Khaimah. It was at this place Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the founder of the United Arab Emirates, had spent considerable time of his life. Though it is often said that he was born in Abu Dhabi, some others were of the opinion that he was born in Al-Ain. Al-Ain could also be the place for the oldest mosque in the country, which is in the premises of the Sheikh Khalifa Mosque.Part of the historically important Western Hajar region, the area of Al Ain has been inhabited for nearly 8,000 years, with archaeological sites showing human settlement at places like Rumailah, Hili and Jabel Ḥafeet. The early Hafit culture built "beehive" tombs for their dead and engaged in hunting and gathering in the area. The oases provided water for early farms until the modern age. In the 1950s, Sheikh Zayed discovered the tombs, and brought this to the attention of a Danish team, leading to an excavation at the tombs in 1959. In 1971, Al Ain Museum was built to house items from this area. In the 2000s, the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture & Heritage lobbied for its recognition as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, and in 2011, Al Ain became the first World Heritage Site in the UAE to be recognized by UNESCO.
Bronze Age burial sites often re-used materials from earlier burials. For instance, the Wadi Suq communal tomb at Qattara Oasis is thought to have been constructed from stones recovered from previous Umm Al Nar burials.File:Qattara dagger.jpg|thumb|An Iron Age dagger, dated to 1,000 BCE, from Qattara oasis, Al Ain. Displayed at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, on loan from Al Ain Museum
Finds at Qattara include Wadi Suq era chlorite jugs and bowls and late Bronze Age short swords and daggers. Artefacts recovered also include carnelian jewellery, often associated by UAE historians with trading links to the Indus Valley. A find of particular interest from Qattara is a Bronze Age pendant discovered in the 1970s depicting a double-bodied or entwined pair of horned animals. Made from electrum, an alloy of silver and gold, the motif is found repeated in a number of Bronze Age sites in the UAE. Iron Age finds in and around Al Ain include aflaj in Bidaa bint Saud, Al Ain and Buraimi which have been placed several centuries prior to the qanats of the Achaemenid Empire, which had previously been credited with the innovation.
Al Ain was originally within the area of influence of the Dhawahir, a Bedouin tribe who settled Dhahirah before Buraimi. A later wave of settlers, the Na'im, have long had an uneasy relationship with the Dhawahir and the two tribes were frequently in dispute. Numbering 4,500, the Dhawahir consists of three subsections: the Daramikah, who populated Hili, Mutared and Qattara; the Jawabir in Al Ain and the Bani Saad who lived in Jimi. Staying in the villages for the summer date season, in winter the community would move throughout the Trucial States.
A number of interests jostled for influence over the tribes of Buraimi, including the Sultan of Muscat, the Wahhabis and the Sheikhs of the Trucial States, particularly the Bani Yas of Abu Dhabi, who acquired large tracts of land, principally from the Dhawahir. This suzerainty over Al Ain was cemented by Sheikh Zayed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, known as 'Zayed the Great', a strong and charismatic leader who took the Dhawahir's main settlement 'Ain Dhawahir when the tribe rebelled against him in 1877. He built a fort, one of a number of fortifications established by the various interests vying for control over the oasis, to underline his dominion over the oasis and established a wali, appointing a member of the Dhawahir as his headman.
Wilfred Thesiger visited Al Ain in the late 1940s, during his travels across the Empty Quarter. He met Sheikh Zayed and stayed with him at Al Muwaiji Fort. An ongoing dispute between Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Oman led to the Buraimi Dispute, a series of incidents which saw a Saudi armed force enter the oasis. Forces from the Trucial Oman Scouts, as well as the army of Muscat-Oman, arrived to recapture the oasis. With British intervention, the Saudi forces surrendered, leaving the oasis back in the hands of Abu Dhabi and Oman.
In 1971, Queen Elizabeth II visited the Hilton Hotel in the area, during her tour of the Persian Gulf. Following independence in 1971, Al Ain experienced rapid growth and investment as part of the emirate of Abu Dhabi, quickly becoming larger and more successful than Oman's Al-Buraimi. In 1972, Oman and Abu Dhabi agreed on the final borders to divide Buraimi and Al Ain. Until Sheikh Zayed's death in 2004, Al Ain's municipal code forbade construction of buildings over four stories, with the exceptions of the Hilton, Danat Al Ain Resort, and Rotana hotels. Until 2006, Buraimi and Al Ain shared an open border. This border was closed in November 2006, and passport controls were imposed.
Oases and ''Aflaj''
The city's wāḥāt are known for their underground irrigation system that brings water from boreholes to water farms and palm trees. Falaj irrigation is an ancient system dating back thousands of years, and is used widely in Oman, the UAE, China, Iran and other countries. There are seven oases here. The largest is Al Ain Oasis, near Old Sarooj, and the smallest is Al-Jahili Oasis. The rest are Al Qattara, Al-Muʿtaredh, Al-Jimi, Al-Muwaiji, and Hili.Examples of aflaj include Falaj Hazza, which is named after Sheikh Zayed's elder brother, Hazza bin Sultan Al Nahyan, and has a district in Al Ain named after it.