Al Zubarah Archaeological Site, Qatar's walled pearling town on the UNESCO World Heritage List

Background

Al Zubarah Archaeological Site was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2013 under criteria (iii), (iv) and (v). It is a walled coastal town on the Persian Gulf that flourished as a pearling and trading centre in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, founded by Utub merchants from Kuwait. At its height it traded high-value goods, above all pearls, with the Indian Ocean, Arabia and Western Asia. Al Zubarah was mostly destroyed in 1811 and finally abandoned in the early twentieth century, and only a small part of it was resettled in the late nineteenth century. UNESCO describes it as the only remaining complete urban plan of an Arabian pearl-merchant town. A short distance away stand the remains of the fort of Qal'at Murair, which shows how the desert's water supplies were managed. The inscribed property covers 415.66 hectares with a buffer zone of 7,196.4 hectares, and only a small part of the site has been excavated.