Mapping Tribal Uses of Heritage Land- and Seascapes in Ras al-Khaimah, United Arab Emirates

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Mapping Tribal Uses of Heritage Land- andSeascapes in Ras al-Khaimah, United ArabEmirates

Ronald Hawker Department of Art and Design, Zayed University, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

AbstractTaking a rough 10X10 kilometre square section of thedistrict from Ras al-Khaimah town east to the Hajarmountain range, one finds three distinct landscapescontaining a range of extant traditional buildings.What the surviving buildings demonstrate is that evenwith a short distance of only one of the districts ofRas al-Khaimah, there is substantial difference inscale, morphology, and topology. I argue that despitethe lack of a strong public infrastructure for thepreservation of these landscapes, the demographicconditions of the United Arab Emirates today imbuethem with an emotional resonance integral to nationalidentity. Rather than perceiving the buildings withinthem as independent, iconic objects, it is importantthat future preservation accounts for how thebuildings function in both practical and symbolicterms and how they relate to the overall regionalsocio-economic networks - a combination of economic

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and social factors revolving around tribe, geographiclocation, climate and seasonal habitation patterns,and economic status and activity.

Keywords: !!br0ken!!!!br0ken!!Arabian Gulf, heritage landscapes,traditional architecture

1Introduction

Ras al-Khaimah was a district of Trucial ‘Oman and isnow one of the seven United Arab Emirates. In Ras al-Khaimah, productive agricultural lands, greaterproximity between environmental zones, and access toshipping lanes, deep water fisheries near the Persiancoast and the pearl banks of the southern Abu Dhabiembayment led to relatively high density settlement.No oil and therefore slower late twentieth centuryurbanization facilitate mean large stands of extanttraditional architecture still stand throughout theemirate. It is here more than anywhere else in theUnited Arab Emirates that the possibility ofpreserving not only buildings, but their physicalcontext, remains viable.Taking a rough 10X10 kilometre square section of thedistrict from Ras al-Khaimah town east to the Hajarmountain range, one finds three distinct environmentalzones (fig.1). What the surviving houses in thissection demonstrate is that even with a short distanceof only one of the districts of Ras al-Khaimah, thereis substantial difference in scale, morphology, andtopology. Rather than perceiving these asindependent, iconic objects, it is important thatfuture preservation accounts for how the buildingsfunction in both practical and symbolic terms and howthey relate to the overall regional socio-economicnetworks - a combination of economic and socialfactors revolving around tribe, geographic location,

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climate and seasonal habitation patterns, and economicstatus and activity. The challenge for preservation, first, is how tomaintain a sense of the complex factors that givethese different structures social meaning within theconditions of their geographic context. Preservationand its presentation thus need to go beyond object-based architecture to include not only the ways inwhich the surrounding land- and seascapes weremanipulated – the fields, canals, wells, paths, pearlbanks, backwaters, lagoons, anchorages and breakwaters- but also the way in which the built environment wasconfigured within the natural world. Agriculturalvillages and fields, for example, were laid outaccording to the combination of water salinity,quality of earth, and the direction of undergroundaquifers. The falaj system used gravity to feed waterinto the date gardens, directing water run-off fromwinter flooding to large cisterns scatteredstrategically throughout the farming networks. Portswere located in relation to sand banks, water depthfor anchorage, and backwaters that provided protectedtransportation corridors for shallow-draft boats. Thenotion of passive cooling, essential to human survivalin the region, was to harness and work within, nottransform, nature.

2Ras al-Khaimah: Background

The different environments and resources available inTrucial ‘Oman were historically organized through thetribe. The majority of the tribes were ethnicallyArab. However, their connections with the interiorsof both Arab and Persian littorals also played animportant role in the regional economy, which in turnimpacted architectural design and town layout.Trucial ‘Oman consisted of several districts, most ofwhich acted as independent emirates. The singleexception in the early twentieth century was the

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Baraimi (Buraimi) oasis, a conglomeration of 10villages divided between the Dhawahir, Na’im, and BaniYas tribes. All but two of the villages were laterabsorbed into Abu Dhabi and ruled by the Al Bu Falah(Nahyan) section of the Bani Yas. The remainingvillages became the Omani town of Buraimi. The otheremirates in Trucial ‘Oman included: Dubai, ruled bythe Maktoum sub-section of the Al Bu Falasah sectionof the Bani Yas; Sharjah, which included the districtsof Sharjah, Shamailiyah, and the later independentemirates of Ras al-Khaimah and Fujairah, and was ruledby the Al Qasimi; the Al ‘Ali town of Umm al-Qaiwain;and the Na’im village of Ajman. Ras al-Khaimah has been ruled by the Al Qasimi familysince at least the 18th century. From 1900 to 1921, itwas a district of Sharjah, but was recognized by theBritish to include Tunb Island, Jazirat al-Hamra, Ramsand Sha’am, Wadi Al-Qaliddi (now known as Wadi Bih),an important east-west transit route between Ras al-Khaimah and the Indian Ocean ports of Dibba andBai’ah, and the Sir and Jiri agricultural tracts. TheAl Qasimi, according to Lorimer, only numbered 8 inRas al-Khaimah town, holding sway over 16,000 peopletotal in the district. The Za’ab tribe in Jaziratal-Hamra was in excess of 2500 people, the Ahl Ras al-Khaimah, Shihuh in Sha’am, and the Tanaiji in Ramsover 2000, and the Maharah and Bani Shamaili at 1250and 1000 respectively. (Lorimer, 1986, pp. 1006-07)The key to Al Qasimi power was the town of Ras al-Khaimah, a pearling port and trade entrepôt linkedwith several interior agricultural districts.

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Figure 1: Satellite Image of 10 kilometer by 10 kilometer section of the emirate of Ras al-Khaimah.

The following sections review the extant historicarchitecture and landscapes and current state ofpreservation from Ras al-Khaimah town east to theHajar mountains, including the coastal lagoon of Rasal-Khaimah with its expanse of mangrove and newlybuilt (in 1907) ‘migrant’ town of Ma’airidh, thealluvial plains of Sir housing what John GordonLorimer described in 1907 as “...a dense grove ofdates...” (Lorimer, 1986, p.1007) numbering in excessof 16,000 date palm trees managed through 9 hamlets(from north to south: Shimil, Ghubb, Hadaibah,‘Araibi, Qawais, Qasaidat, Falaiyah, Hail andFahlain), and the Hajar mountain range tilled through

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terraced farms in, from north to south, Wadis Haqeel,Bih, Malaha, and Naqab. Each of these have not onlydistinctive environments, but also distinctivesettlement patterns and architecture. To conclude, Iargue that despite the lack of a strong publicinfrastructure for the preservation of theselandscapes, including their buildings, the demographicconditions of the United Arab Emirates today imbuethem with an emotional resonance integral to nationalidentity. Approaches alternative to the simplepreservation of individual buildings need to be takento ensure that the meaning and function of theselandscapes are not lost to future generations.

3Ras al-Khaimah Town and Lagoon

Figure 2: 1822 Trigonometric map of Ras al-Khaimahlagoon (from Cook, 1990).

3:1 Ras al-Khaimah Town

Ras al-Khaimah town is located the sheltered westernside of a peninsula at the mouth of a lagoon. Thelagoon network was subject of a British trigonometricsurvey in 1822, providing a clear picture of the water

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depths, tides and land features before urbandevelopment (fig.2). The lagoon contained two islets,the uninhabited Ad Gurnrah and inhabited Maharah with250 to 300 residents living in palm frond huts. Athird village roughly the same size as Maharah,Meidthea, was located on the eastern shore of theentrance. The south-eastern corner of the lagooncontained marsh flats, likely filled with mangrove,and the entire eastern third of the lagoon went dry atlow tide. (Cook, 1990: 287) Arab sailing vessels,even the larger cargo ships, were typically shallowdraft. Instead of being anchored in European fashion,they would have been beached or propped up withmangrove beams on the eastern mud flats at low tide.(Villiers, 2006: 43) British and deeper draft boatsanchored in 5 fathoms of water nearly 7 kilometresoffshore to the west. (Villiers, 2006: 43) The Al Qasimi hisn, or residential fort, in Ras al-Khaimah was located on the southern limit of the townfacing towards the sheltered interior backwaters ofthe lagoon. The large rectangular complex consists offortified external walls, a gun tower in the south-eastern corner, and internal residential blocks, twostories in height, arranged around the periphery ofthe interior courtyard. The previous incarnation ofthe structure was destroyed during the Britishpunitive expedition of 1809 and reconstructed between1809 and 1819 and then expanded throughout thenineteenth century, with a windtower added to thenorth residential block early in the twentiethcentury. (Kennet, 1995, p.98) The windtower form isassociated with southern Iran and migrations ofPersian merchants from the districts of Bastak,Lingeh, and Shibkuh, all divisions of the old Persianprovince of Laristan and now part of the modernprovince of Hormozgon. Restorations headed by NationalMuseum of Ras al-Khaimah resident archaeologistChristian Velde has revealed decorative painting insome of the interior rooms on the eastern wall. The

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building thus operated both functionally as adefensive structure and symbolically as emblematic ofthe Al Qasimi family’s strength and authority in acomplicated and heterogeneous tribal landscape.Occupied all year long, its scale, position, materialsand decoration all blend together to assert thisidentity. It also incorporates the key elementimported from southern Iran – the windtower – into thedesign of its residential quarters therebyestablishing a connection with the mercantile eliteand providing comfort in the hot summer months(fig.3).

Figure 3: The windtower residential block in Ras al-Khaimah town’s Al Qasimi hisn.The fort and a nearby suq are the only historicbuildings in Ras al-Khaimah town that have beenpreserved or restored. The fort now functions as theNational Museum of Ras al-Khaimah and the suq is beingused as a heritage market. Many houses are still inuse with many insensitive private restoration jobsmost often using new materials to bolster the oldbeach stone and coral structures or to expand theresidential space. Some of the courtyard houses are

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so choked with garbage, they are impossible todocument in their current state.

3:2: Ma’airidh

Figure 4: The remnants of the Serkal house inMa’airidh.The Serkal house (fig.4) is one of a limited number ofextant traditional houses in Ma’airidh, originally aseparate community from Ras al-Khaimah town andlocated at the site of the village identified by theBritish in 1822 as Meidthea. Lorimer mentionsspecifically that the residents in this quarter were“Persians from Rams” (Lorimer, 1986, p.107). TheSerkal family provided local agents for the Britishexclusively from 1850 to 1936, Arabicizing “Sarkar,”the Hindi term for government representative, fortheir family name, although they are of the Mutairdivision of the Al ‘Ali tribe (Al Serkal, 2010).Local agents were hired by the British agentsappointed to administer the British protectorates inthe Gulf and report to the Bombay Residency. Thelocal agents were responsible for judiciary mattersrelating to British citizens consisting mainly ofIndian Banian merchants, typically from the Bhattia

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and Lohana merchant Hindu castes of Thatta in Sindhwho imported cloth and funded the pearl fisheries(Vivekanand, 2008, pp.49-58) and the Khojahs,Ismai’ili Shiite Muslims usually from the Cutchdistrict of Gujarat, another important export centrefor textiles (Lorimer, 1986, p.1034; Burn, 1931, pp.75-84). The agents also watched over the commercialor security interests of British shipping. Inaddition, they acted as liaisons between the Britishagents and local rulers and were consequently drawnfrom the ranks of the Gulf’s mercantile elite. Thenearest local agent to Ma’airidh was stationed inSharjah, where the family residence, Bait al-Serkal,has now been restored. (Damluji, 2006, p.285) The Al‘Ali tribe was ethnically Arab and centred in Umm AlQaiwain on the coast of Trucial ‘Oman, but also had anoasis date farming district in the interior of Trucial‘Oman as well as a fortified quarter in Duvvan on thecoast of Lingeh, and the fortified ports of Charak,Tavuneh, and Duvvan in Shibkuh and Lingeh. Al ‘Alipopulation numbers rank it as a large tribe on boththe Trucial Coast and in the Shibkuh district. The Serkal house in Ma’airidh itself originallyconsisted of a large courtyard with separate masonryresidential blocks for individual nuclear familieswithin a single lineage group arranged around theperiphery. The maternal head of the lineage groupoccupied the double-story block in the eastern corner.The large courtyard contained domesticated animals,specifically sheep and goats, and one of theresidential blocks on the northwest side functioned asa storehouse. The northwest side was originallyparallel to the intertidal waters of the lagoon andaccessible by shallow draft boats which could unloadcargo ferried in from the larger draft cargo shipsanchored 2 ½ to 3 miles northwest of Ras al-Khaimahtown or in the backwater of the creek that layparallel to the coast, opening on the south at Ras al-Khaimah and in the north at Rams (Great Britain,

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Hydrographic Department, 1989). This backwater was akey component of the local economy, providing asheltered transportation route between two of theregion’s major ports and providing a variety of fishand other marine resources, including faviid coralused in building construction, gastropods used forfood, and sea grasses that hosted marine animals suchas dugong and sea turtle. While Lorimer makes nomention of shops in Ras al-Khaimah town, themunicipality has recently restored an early twentiethcentury suq located on the sheltered western side ofthe Ras al-Khaimah peninsula, just north of the Qasimifort. Additional old masonry stalls are visible alongthe original coastline of the old city. The Serkalfamily would have provided goods to these markets aswell as servicing the agricultural communitiesdirectly in the Sir agricultural district immediatelyeast of Ma’airidh. The area surrounding the Serkalhouse has now been drained and paved, destroying theoriginal raison d’être for the building’s form andlocation. All the historic buildings in Ma’airidh are in decay,with the exception of a private house recentlyrestored by its owner. A single defensive towerenclosed by a wire mesh fence in the new fruit andvegetable suq has been restored by archaeologists withthe National Museum of Ras al-Khaimah.

4: Sir

Extant date gardens were walled and arranged asindividual plots following the general direction ofthe subterranean aquifers. The associated communitieswere thus highly dispersed through clusters of dategarden plots. To the south, where the gardeners usedthe falaj system, a long subterranean canal running froma water source at the foot of the mountains along thedirection of the aquifer to surface in the gardens,the network of canals defined avenues between the

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plots. Clusters were organized along tribal lines,with separate tribes maintaining their ownfortifications and individual families constructingsmall mosques. The system in Sir was similar,although the primary water was acquired through aseries of wells, also protected by tribalfortifications. Shimil on the northern end of theplain belonged to the Bani Shamaili. Ghubb andFalaiyah housed a mix of tribes. Hadaibah, ‘Araibi,Qawais, and Qasaidat belonged to the Bayadir. Hailwas an lowland village of Bani Shatair Shihuh andFahlain was occupied by the Naqbiyin (Lorimer, 1986).Members of the ruling family from Sharjah owned gardenplots before the introduction of mechanical irrigationand constructed masonry summer houses for theirseasonal migrations from the hot and humid coast tothe better conditions of the date gardens (Al Mualla,2011). These seasonal movements were scheduledaccording to observation of the stars. In the late1940s, water pumps were introduced and aflaj wereinstalled to carry water pumped from the old wells(fig.5). Additional lots within the gardens were soldand by the early 1950s many were owned by additionalhigh status families from the emirates to the south,including the Al Maktoum from Dubai (Burdett, 1998,pp.410-418).

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Figure 5: Dead date garden and dry falaj and cistern,Fahlain.

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Figure 6: A summer house from the Sir plain.

Figure 7: Restored mosque, basin and well of the AlQasimi farmstead, FalayyahFigure 6 is based on documentation of a summer house(a darin in Dostal’s typology: Dostal, 1983) completedby the resident archaeologists of the National Museumof Ras al-Khaimah in the date gardens of Shimil

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(Hilal, Velde and Moellering, 2008, pp.145-147). Thehouses, constructed of courses of wadi stone andmortar, were oriented east-west and cooled through airvents constructed into the walls. Typically, thewomen of the family would occupy the house during thesummer as the location was less humid that the winterhouses on the coast, while family slaves and servantserected temporary palm frond structures around themasonry house. The second story acted as theresidence and shuttered doors and windows could beopened to maximize air flow. Hot summer south-easterly winds carrying dust from the desert to thesouth were filtered by the leaves of the surroundingdate trees, which were in turn irrigated by wells.With advent of pumped water, agriculture expanded andnew communities moved in to the agriculturaldistricts. British correspondence from the 1940smentions specifically immigrant farmers from the southof Iran who might expand the agricultural productsraised (Burdett, 1998, pp.410-418). Their presence inthe date gardens is signalled by a series of smallpressed sand block or breeze block houses withunidirectional wind towers open to the prevailingwinds from the west (fig.8). These are unusualbuildings in the architectural lexicon of the UnitedArab Emirates and represent the continuous migrationof populations from southern Iran during much of thetwentieth century.A number of extant buildings survive, just. Afortified house in Hadaibah and a farmstead belongingto the ruling Al Qasimi family in Falaiyah (fig.7)have been restored. Both are enclosed by locked wiremesh fences to prevent vandalism. A second fortifiedhouse in ‘Araibi belonging to the Al Qasimi which upuntil recently functioned as a summer majlis, ormeeting place, has been restored, although a labourcamp is still attached to it.

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Figure 8: Unidirectional windtower house, Ghubb

5: Mountain Wadis

The mountains forming the eastern barrier of thismicro-region were inhabited by the Shihuh tribes, whofollowed a seasonal rotation of practices, farmingwheat and barley in terraced fields in the mountainsin the winter, working date gardens on the alluvialplains and running fishing and pearling boats in thesummer. More detailed student research indicatesLorimer’s weakness in assessing the population andsubgroups of any of the tribes away from the coast.Halima Al Shehi, a fourth year student in theDepartment of Art and Design at Zayed University inDubai, is currently documenting the location of pre-industrial architecture at the mouth of Wadi Sha’am.This has included both hiking the surrounding area,photographing and locating the houses on Google Earthsatellite imagery, and interviews with elder membersof her family. She has more precisely identified the

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sub-tribes of the Shihuh and their geographiclocation. Lorimer identified the two main divisionsof the Shihuh, the Bani Shatair and the Bani Hadiyah,noting that the former occupied the mountains and someadjacent coastal areas of the west coast of thepeninsula and the latter the east (Lorimer, 1986, p..Al Shehi has identified the location of three BaniHadiyah subsections in Wadi Sha’am and then brokendown each of the Bani Shatair subtribes and locatedtheir approximate tribal territory from Wadi Sha’amsouth to the southern point of Khor Khuwair (Al Shehi,2008). Anthropologists William and Fidelity Lancasterdescribes the Shihuh as a tribal society whereresources were administered through the kin networksof the sub-tribes (Lancaster and Lancaster, 1999).Individuals worked seasonally in all three of Ras al-Khaimah’s environmental zones, but the residences andlandscapes exclusively associated with the Shihuh canbe found in the terraced farms at the mouths of thewadis of the Hajar mountains.

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Figure 9: House and kiln in the dedicated potteryvillage of Wadi Haqeel.The Shihuh and related Habus mountain tribes utilizedthe topography of the wadis to cut terraces fed byshallow channels during the winter rains. They

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assembled small, single room houses from stone cutfrom the immediate location and then plastered theexternal walls with mud and layered thick joists ofghaf (prosopis cineraria) tree trunks, palm leaf mats,and rubble to create the roof. The interior spaceswere dirt floored with a small raised sleepingplatform. Wadi Malaha is a network of small houses,terraced grain fields, cisterns for water storage,mosques, and grain storage houses belonging to theHabus approximately two kilometres in area and rangingin elevation from 65 metres at the wadi floor to 317metres at the top fields. Scattered throughout thesurrounding terrain, rather than clustered in aseparate farig, or neighbourhood, these structuresacted as temporary housing during sowing andharvesting seasons. A second site, Barama belonging to the Mahabeebsubsection of the Bani Shatair Shihuh, on the spurforming the northern boundary of the Sir plain is moreextensive than Wadi Malaha. The main access to Baramafrom the Sir plains is along a stony wadi ascendinginto a plateau at about 800 meters. The wadi accessroute also contains two kilns and a public watercistern. The pottery scatter both in the wadi and inthe plateau terraces consist mainly of large numbersof late Islamic unglazed, slip painted pottery typicalof the region, known generically as “Julfar ware,” anda limited amount of imported late Islamic, likelyIranian, glazed ware. The first plateau is walled offat the wadi head with a series of large terraced farmfields harnessing the winter water run-off from thewadi walls built up the walls of the ascending slopesand around two hillock-like spurs located on theplateau floor (fig.10). The small rectangular housesthat follow the lines and curves of the terracedfields are constructed of loose stone harvested fromthe immediate area. The roofing, although nowmissing, was a mix of wood and scrub or stone anddirt. The Barama site is particularly endangered with

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quarrying and road construction destroying much of thesurrounding area.

Figure 10: A canal for redirecting rainfall in theterraced farm network of Barama.A third site, Wadi Haqeel, contained a dedicatedpottery village with large subterranean kilns attachedto each house (fig.9). Al Shehi’s interviews suggestthat this was one of, if not the main, potteryproduction village, exporting its Julfar ware to allthe main coastal ports of the northern Emirates. AlShehi’s work, still incomplete, nonetheless furtherindicates the importance of considering each house andindeed each settlement as part of a larger integratedwhole. For example, she has identified the variety ofagricultural products grown by the various Shihuhsubtribes, noting that the Mahabeeb grew only wheat,while the other subsections located within Wadi Sha’amalso cultivated onion, watermelon, guava, mango andloz. The Mahabeeb thus travelled north of the Sirplains to Sha’am for trade (Al Shehi, 2008). None of the mountain sites have been restored. Afortified site at the mouth of Wadi Bih with buildings

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dating back to the 13th century, locally known aseither Sheba’s or Xenobia’s palace, has beenidentified as a historic site and a concrete staircaseaccessing the site has been added.

6 Conclusion

Ras al-Khaimah has urbanized less rapidly than the oilproducing emirates of Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah.Nonetheless, the city itself has spread from itsoriginal peninsula across reclaimed land in the lagoonwith extensive industrial development to bothMa’airidh and the date growing hamlets. There arepockets of old masonry houses built from beach stoneand coral in the old town of Ras al-Khaimah. Theseare still inhabited, mainly by a new underclass ofexpatriate Asian labourers. The buildings exhibitseveral phases of building materials, withreconstruction or additions added using compressedshell and sand bricks from the 1950s and breeze blockintroduced in the 1960s. The landfill has erased theold anchorage sites on the east side and filled in theshallow backwater transportation corridor north toRams (fig.10). Few of the old houses survive inMa’airidh, separated from the water by infill, mixedcommercial and residential zones, and a largeinternational leisure resort. The fishing fleet hasbeen relocated to a dedicated harbour at the northedge of Ma’airidh. The palm gardens have been reducedin number and scale by the combination of a watertable emptied by the introduction of mechanical pumpsin the 1940s and the development of mixed commercial,industrial and residential zones.

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Figure 11: A panoramic photograph of the Ras al-Khaimah looking east from Ras al-Khaimah town.Fortified towers and houses, high status seasonalresidences, and mosques exist in crumbling conditionscattered and abandoned in the undeveloped pocketsalong the edge of the alluvial fan with a number ofindividual sites, typically belonging to the ruling AlQasimi family, preserved or restored by the NationalMuseum of Ras al-Khaimah. Other sites and buildingshave been all but destroyed in the emirate’sindustrial development. The old village of Ghubb,for example, lies within the precincts of a cementfactory. The terraced farms in the wadis have alsobeen by and large abandoned with the construction ofvillages on the alluvial fan for the mountain tribesin the 1970s. Some itinerant farming is still carriedout and members of the Habus and Shihuh tribes whopreviously resided in the wadis are returning,constructing new houses on or near the old villages.Julie Reisenweber, reviewing the relationship betweenlandscape preservation and cultural geography, arguesthat preservation is, on one hand, “a social andpolitical movement and, on the other, a set ofinstitutionalized practices that expressly seek toretain, stabilize and breathe new life into materialremnants of the past” (Reisenweber, 2008, p.28).Furthermore, preservationists are “ a distinct socialgroup with distinct beliefs acquired through specifictraining and practice.” (Resienweber, 2008, p.30) Inthe United Arab Emirates specifically and the Gulfgenerally, this distinct social group is small, withno indigenous institutions providing the training andpractice. Isolated from each other and often from thedecision-making process, practitioners occupy, atbest, a nascent social group. While the developmentcall in the Gulf is based on adopting best practicesas identified by international professionalcommunities, contemporary critical approaches applying

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literary theory to the link between landscape andpower is sometimes anathema to current governmentalhierarchy. The result is that buildings associatedprimarily with the ruling family are preserved, oftenfenced off from public interaction, and otherstructures and elements of the land and sea are eitherleft to be reclaimed by the climate and erosion or areerased in modern urbanization. The political concernsexhibited in this process are, of course, presentthroughout the world, since, as archaeologist JohnCarman notes, a common criticism level at significanceevaluation of heritage sites internationally is thatit “...has nothing to do with archaeological researchas such but is a bureaucratic practice” (Carman, 2002,p.159).At the same time, the Gulf’s specific demographicconditions and its rapid rate of urbanization over thelast two generations makes the extant historicalremnants of great value to the local population.Hillary Jenks, citing sociologist Maurice Halbwachs,argues “...that memories place us in society, and‘through them, as by a continual relationship, a senseof our identity is perpetuated.” (Jenks, 2008, p.49)With the indigenous population of the United ArabEmirates floating at around 20% according to the 2005census (UAE Interact, 2011), the historicalconnections symbolized in these buildings, land andseascapes are emotionally significant. Thepreservation of the buildings as isolate icons alonedoes not capture the resonance of memories of seasonalmigrations between floors of the house, or of thesighting of stars signalling the move to the dategardens. These ephemeral qualities are as integral apart of the buildings’ significance as the stone andmortar of the walls. This 10 kilometre by 10kilometre square of Ras al-Khaimah thus acts as amicrocosm for the complexities of the architecture andlandscape and its relationships to memory, identify,seasonal residence, tribe, tribal hierarchy, economic

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function, and natural environment for the United ArabEmirates and the Gulf as a whole. As such it presentsa set of challenges to preservationists, mirroringlarger issues facing the region.Nobody is suggesting that we turn back time and returnRas al-Khaimah to its 19th century state. FolkloristBernard Herman “draws an analogy between preservationand taxidermy, implying that stopping change takeslandscapes and buildings out of the organic world, anact that often means stopping life.” (Reisenweber,2008, p.29) This is not a form of preservation thatwill contribute convincingly to Ras al-Khaimah and itssociety. However, the emirate is unique in not onlyits extant buildings, but its landscapes, lagoons andbackwaters and supporting agricultural features, likewells, aflaj, terraced fields, and gardens. Since thesea, the stars, the seasonal climate and movements ofthe wind played such an important social and economicrole in the buildings, their location, and the livesof their residents, attention needs to be paid to howthis role might be expressed to the larger public aswell. It presents an opportunity that has passedelsewhere in the Gulf.What is need is the integration of preservation andheritage education into an overall development planthat doesn’t rely exclusively on large scale realestate development led by multinational constructioncompanies, but rather includes alternative tourism aspart of a package of initiatives aimed at facilitatingsustainable development. David Weaver definesalternative tourism as an alternative to mass orlarge-scale tourism “...involving modes of tourismthought to be more benign with respect to theirimpacts upon the destination...,” synthesizingexperiences “respectful of host community values andinterests...” with those expressing “...a symbioticrelationship between tourism and the naturalenvironment” (Weaver, 2001, p.80). Such an approach

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balances the specific cultural concerns of Gulfresidents with a policy shift towards sustaining thesurviving, fragile natural environment.This is not to criticize the admirable efforts ofthose professionals who have successfully preservedand restored buildings and landscapes across theUnited Arab Emirates. If anything, it is a call tosupport their efforts through the expansion of aninterested community, across not only the emirate butthe nation and region as a whole. This requires anintegrated planning approach utilizing the input of arange of emirate and federal governmental officialsacross multiple ministries, educators, and touristorganizations as well as the former owners andpresent residents in the buildings and gardens of theemirate, something remarkably absent in much of thecountry. Such planning hinges on a completely newattitude towards preservation and its active role incontemporary life in Ras al-Khaimah.

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