A Brief History of Dubai

With lovely beaches of powdery white sand, an azure sea which is crystal clear and warm, and where the sun shines out of a clear blue sky day after day, it is the ideal place for a holiday. The origins of Dubai are lost in the mists of time.

Evidence of settlement on the Arabian Gulf date back to the Stone Age but it was not until the 16th century that the town of Dubai appears in recorded history as a place largely dependent on pearl fishing, with ordinary fishing. It was about this time that it was colonised by Portugal until expelled by the British whose initial interest in the Gulf area was maritime security to protect India. This was transformed with the discovery of oil in the gulf.

Oil came to Dubai only in 1966 and allowed the ruler Sheikh Rashid, a member of the famous Al Maktoum family to begin the development that turned what had been a fishing village onto a great trading city - fashionable, modern and cosmopolitan - and one of the components of the only federal state in the Arab world - the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The official spoken language is Arabic but English is widely spoken and understood.