AL ZUBARAH ARCHEOSITE

Inside the archaeological area of the city of Al-Zubarah, there are remains of installations intended to produce the date syrup widely consumed in the region. One can see parallel channels 10 cm deep, connected to each other by a perpendicular channel near the entrance, which funnels into a tank buried in the corner. During the manufacturing process, palm leaves were placed on the channels, creating a flat and flexible base. The dates were then placed in palm leaf bags stacked up to two meters high. The weight of the bags would crush the dates in the lower bags and the thick juice would flow down the canals and end up in the buried collecting pot.

Nearby is a typically Arabian and well-preserved fort, as built in 1938 by Sheikh Abdullah bin Qassim Al-Thani, ancestor of the present ruling family, on the ruins of an older castle. On the first floor are iwans, small porticoes overlooking the courtyard through square arcades. In the courtyard itself, one can see a four-pillared canopy covering a 15-meter-deep well, which supplied the soldiers with water. The second floor of the fort consists of a wide walkway serving some rooms integrated into the corner towers. The walls of these rooms, as well as the promenade, have loopholes. Wooden ladders allowed the men to climb to the roof and watch the surroundings from a circular view. The walls, whose thickness insulates from the heat and keeps the buildings cool, were built by superimposing blocks of coral rock and limestone, joining them with mortar and finally covering them with gypsum plaster. Often decorated with geometric patterns, this plaster protected the walls from natural elements such as wind and humidity. The roof has four layers. The first is a series of danchal, wooden beams often protected by bitumen. The second is a layer of basgijl, strips of woven bamboo. The third layer is a tightly woven web of mangrove branches and the roof is finished with a layer of compressed mud, which protects the buildings from the sweltering sun during the hot season. One of the most interesting features of this technique is the construction of frames that use danchal wood assembled with rope, to increase the adhesion of the mud mortar and plaster.
The area of "the city of Al-Zubarah and its cultural landscape" is an outstanding example of socio-economic transformation and shows that Qatar was a major player in the Gulf, with trade with China, West Africa, Iraq, Persia and the West. Furthermore, the ancient city of Al-Zubarah shows how an Arab civilization acted with urban settlements. The forma urbis testifies to a remarkable capacity for urban planning according to the checkerboard pattern dear to the Greek architect Hippodamos of Miletus, a plan in which the streets intersect at right angles, as in Le Havre, Bogota, New York and Sapporo, all cities laid out according to the Hippodamian formula. (Editor's note: nobody recalls here that the Ionian master had also established a project of constitution providing the civil rights of the lower classes).