ONE NIGHT STAY AT DOHA (QATAR) WITH CITY TOUR
On our return from Antarctica, we had a full day time in Doha (Qatar), we arrived in the morning and our flight was at night. So we had a city tour even though I had been to Doha previously for our business.
The Qatar Peninsula came under the sway of several great powers over the centuries. The Portuguese ruled from 1517 to 1538, when they lost to the Ottomans. In the 1760s, In the 1700s, Arab migrants settled along the coast of Qatar to begin pearl diving. Qatar and Bahrain went to war. Britain intervened, recognizing Qatar as a separate entity from Bahrain in a settlement treaty. This was the first step in establishing a Qatari state, which took place on December 18, 1878. Qatar fell under Ottoman Turkish rule in 1871. As the Ottoman Empire collapsed during the course of World War I, Qatar became a British protectorate. Britain, from November 3, 1916, would run Qatar’s foreign relations in return for protecting the Gulf state from all other powers. In 1935, the Sheikh got treaty protection against internal threats.
Just four years later, oil was discovered in Qatar, but it would not play a major role in the economy until after World War II. Britain’s hold on the Gulf, as well as its interest in empire, began to fade with the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947.
In 1968, Qatar joined a group of nine small Gulf nations, the nucleus of which would become the United Arab Emirates. However, Qatar soon resigned from the coalition due to territorial disputes and became independent on its own on September 3, 1971.
Qatar soon developed into an oil-rich and regionally influential country. Its military supported Saudi units against the Iraqi Army during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and Qatar even hosted Canadian coalition troops on its soil.
In 1995, Qatar underwent a bloodless coup when Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani ousted his father from power and began to modernize the country. He established the Al Jazeera television network in 1996, allowed the construction of a Roman Catholic church, and has encouraged women’s suffrage. In a sure sign of Qatar’s closer ties with the west, the emir also allowed the United States to base its Central Command on the peninsula during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 2013, the emir handed over power to his son, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
Leadership and vision allowed the UAE to push ahead with ambitious building and social projects. In the space of just half a century, Dubai exploded in growth, building modern wonders such as the Burj Al Arab and Burj Khalifa, which are now very closely associated with the metropolis.
