Zubarah Fort

Zubarah Fort, also known as Fort Zubara, Zubara Fort, Al Zubara Fort, or Az Zubara Fort, is a historic Qatari military fortress built under the oversight of Sheikh Abdullah bin Qassim Al Thani in 1938.HistoryThe Zubarah Fort was originally built by Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani in 1938 to serve as a Coast Guard station, although some utter that it was built to serve as a police station. It was later renovated into a museum to display diverse exhibits and artworks, most especially for contemporarily topical archaeological findings.GeographyThe Zubarah Fort is situated in the antique yet chronological town of Zubarah, which in turn is located on the northwestern coast of the Qatar peninsula in the Al Shamal municipality, and is about 105 km from the Capital of Qatar.ZubarahZubarah (الزبارة "Zubarah"), also known as Al Zubarah or Az Zubarah, the town where the Zubarah Fort is situated in, is a deserted town located on the northwestern coast of the Qatari Peninsula, in the municipality of Al Shamal, which in turn, is about 105 km from Doha, the capital city and state of Qatar (The geography of both Zubarah and Zubarah Fort are the same since the latter is located in Zubarah). Zubarah covers an area of approximately 400 hectares and about 60 hectares inside the outer town wall, thus Zubarah being the largest archaeological site in the whole Qatari Peninsula.It was once a thriving pearl fishing and trading port positioned midway between the Strait of Hormuz and the west arm of the Persian Gulf. It is one of the largest and best preserved examples of an 18th-19th century merchant town in the Persian Gulf region. The entire layout and urban fabric of a settlement dating to this formative period in the region has been preserved as no other similar place in the Gulf. Al Zubarah provides an important insight into urban life, spatial organization, and the social and economic history of the Persian Gulf before the discovery of oil and gas in the 20th century.