Mohammed bin Rashid: We salute the heritage to remain a witness to our past and our human values

His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, said: “We search in the past to explore its treasures and treasures, salute the heritage to revive the memory of our people, and preserve it from extinction, so that it remains a witness to our past and our human and cognitive values, and revive the energies and ideas of our youth. And their creativity, and employing them to serve the country and raise its flag, and deepening the spirit of national belonging to young people and successive generations ».

His Highness visited the Jumeirah Archaeological Site, which was discovered in 1969, and witnessed the excavations carried out by excavators and excavators for the antiquities of the youth of the homeland. His Highness added during the visit: “Happy with you guys, and proud of your difficult and delicate work that requires patience and skill at work, in search of On the biography of the ancestors and the fathers rooted in this giving land, documenting the eternal history of our region, adhering to our authentic Arab identity, and linking our honorable past with our hopeful present that was rooted in the land leading to the achievement of the hopeful future ».

And directed His Highness concerned in the departments of Dubai Municipality, Tourism and Commercial Marketing, to open the doors of the site to tourists, visitors and citizens, especially schoolchildren, to get to know the civilization of a thousand-year-old people.

The Dubai Municipality began exploring the treasures of this site, which dates back to the ninth century AD (the Abbasid era), as it was a stopover and rest stop for commercial caravans crossing between Iraq and the Sultanate of Oman, and from there to India and the Republic of China.

His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, at the end of his tour of the site's land - which is one of the most important and largest Islamic sites discovered so far in the region, and reflects the Abbasid architecture, as well as the prosperity and relative prosperity of the site's population during that period - praised the efforts The Dubai Municipality team work, and their perseverance in exploring everything that comes to us in the ancient past, and highlighting it as a witness to the region's civilization, the heritage of its people, its originality and humanity.

His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has stopped, at the start of his visit to the site in the visitors' building (the museum), which includes among its sides images, sculptures, pottery and coins discovered on the site.

His Highness and his companions got acquainted with the excavator of antiquities in the Dubai Municipality, foal Saif Al-Mansoori, on the history of each antiquity that was found, its importance in terms of defining the history of the site, its secrets and its contents, and the importance of the region to commercial caravans of that era.

His Highness conducted a field tour around the site that reached an area of ​​about 80 thousand square meters, and saw the ruins of the buildings that were using housing and rest houses, and the number of eight buildings, most of them (with the exception of the mosque building) are regular in its engineering form, and attached to them small rectangular rooms, and an open courtyard It contains a family oven, and a center of activities such as baking, grinding and cooking, and the buildings are all built with sandstones and fixed with gypsum and gypsum plated, also inside and outside.

His Highness expressed his admiration and pride in the history and civilization of our country, and the strategic location occupied by the UAE in general and the city of Dubai in particular, on the map of the world, ancient and modern.

His Highness was accompanied on the tour by His Highness Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman of the Dubai Aviation Authority, Supreme President of the Emirates Airlines Group, Deputy Chief of Police and Public Security, Lieutenant General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Union Museum, Mohammed Ahmed Al Murr, and Managing Director and CEO of the Mohammed Foundation Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge, Jamal Bin Huwaireb, Director General of Dubai Municipality, Daoud Al Hajri, Director General of the Protocol and Hospitality Department in Dubai, Khalifa Saeed Suleiman, Director General of the Department of Tourism and Commercial Marketing in Dubai, Hilal Saeed Al Marri, and a number of officials.

8 buildings on site

The buildings on the site include one housing of 480 square meters. It is in rectangular shape and is built in two stages, decorated with two circular towers.

The second building, the market, which at that time played a major role in society, and the remains of its building attest to the development of Dubai, and its role as a commercial center in the region. The interior design of the market is characterized by a walkway separating the two main buildings, and each building consists of small stores, and has a storage room.

The third building is a typical house, built on an area of ​​103 meters, and consists of five rooms and an open patio, and has three ovens for baking and cooking, and the corners of the house supported by small circular towers, with a well-known design for that era.

Likewise, the fourth building is a residential house, with an area of ​​120 square meters, and includes five rooms, a multi-purpose external patio and a tanoor, with three entrances. It is built on foundations built of different stones and was built in two phases.

Among the eight buildings is the Al-Khan building, which is one of the largest and most beautiful buildings on the site, and extends over an area estimated to square kilometers, and reflects the traditional design of the Abbasid era architecture, and is considered a meeting place for traders and travelers to rest and relax from the hassle of traveling, and the building has a central open courtyard surrounded by residential rooms, and has two entrances Two presidents on the east and west sides.

There is also a large housing building, and it is considered the most beautiful residential building constructed in Islamic style, such as arches, columns and gypsum facades with geometric decoration, and the house consists of two separate buildings connected by an open courtyard, and each building has a separate entrance.

The eighth residential building is rectangular in shape, with a length of more than nine meters, and a width of about nine meters. It consists of six rooms and has four entrances. It is built on sandy ground without solid foundations to protect it from collapse. The wall thickness is 40 cm.

A mihrab in the qibla wall

As for the building of the mosque, it is different in its design from the rest of the buildings of the archaeological site of Jumeirah, it is a square-shaped building, with an area of ​​49 square meters, and has a mihrab in the qibla wall, in addition to murals indicating our master Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace, and confirm that it is the mosque The old chief in the region, and has been a worshiper for 1,000 years.