Associated with the fall of rain .. and the growth of various plants

Winter in the UAE .. The season of good begins with the star of Suhail

• Abu Dhabi City in 1969. The National Archives

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A weekly page provided by "Emirates Today", in cooperation with the "National Archives", affiliated with the Ministry of Presidential Affairs, with the aim of introducing the way life in the Emirates before the federation, and during its early beginnings, and the great effort made by the founding fathers of the state for its establishment, and linking it to what the UAE leaders achieve, Today, her children are among the achievements the world has witnessed.

In the past, life in the Emirates was associated with many manifestations, customs and traditions that formed the social and economic features of the population, including their way of calculating the dates of the seasons of the year, as the people of the region knew the calculation of the times, and the use of the stars, to know the seasons of the year, and the roles are the collection of «turn», Which lasts 10 days, and the semester consists of 10 lessons, i.e. 100 days.

In addition, the summer had places for the residents to resort to in order to escape the high temperature, and various agricultural activities. Also, in the past, winter was associated with many aspects and signs that distinguished it, and the residents of the region considered the winter a good time, when rain fell, different plants appeared, and areas grow Grazing.

As for the first signs of winter, they were approaching with the appearance of the star of Suhail in the sky, heralding the mild weather, and continuing to appear in the far south of the sky, until the end of winter in the Arabian Peninsula.

Winter is good season

Sheikha Sabha Al-Khaili, in her book "Wayne Al-Taroush", which narrates tales from the Badia from the forties to the sixties of the last century, describes an aspect of life in the Badia during the winter, saying: “In winter, women used to bring water from wells on a camel. The water was carried on it in two, three or four pods, which was sufficient for our daily needs, and the Bedouin was aware of the existence of a well next to each camel, as they used to infer the sweet well (irrigated) from the color of the soil near it, which is often tends to (blueness) And we used to live on the well throughout the summer for a period of four months, then (Na'aih) in the winter, that is, we would travel by moving from one place to another, searching for pasture (grass) and pasture, and we did not go further from the well more than three to four kilometers, and if a well was found Others in the same area we went to the closest.

In the summer we return to the old well.

Because camels and sheep know their way well. ”

And she adds: “In the winter after the rains of (Al-Wasmi), that is, the rain, plants spread all over the desert, so the Bedouins will be glad to see (naked), (al-Faqaa), (Al-Tarathit), and its single (Tarthoth), which is a red-colored plant that has a head similar to (the hat) And at the end of it is a black knot, and there are two types of it: the first grows in fine sand, and one of its features is that it is long and sweet, and only the middle part is eaten, after it is cut into circles and then cooked with milk, while the second type grows in meadow and one of its characteristics is that it is short It is salty and is not eaten, but is cut and served as food for the sheep.

As for (Al-Aryoun), it is a white vegetable, and it is similar in shape to (the hat) as well. It is eaten after being grilled or roasted, then sprinkled with salt with onions, and added to rice or (makbous).

There is another type of winter plants, or those that sprout after the rains, which is (al-Faqaa), which is distinguished by its brown and white color, and it is called (zubaidi), and it is eaten after adding salt and pepper to it, or it is added to (bread), meaning rice.

For his part, narrator Salem Saeed Salem Al-Hassani describes, in the book "Their Memory Our History", published by the National Archives, more features of life in the old winter, explaining that the old houses were divided into two parts: a section for housing in the summer, and another for accommodation in the winter season. And the summer houses were made of dawn, which they carried with them to the area of ​​al-Muqeez (which may be a farm or a valley), but they avoided living in low places for fear of rain, and after the end of the heat they carried the supplications, the narwail, meaning the pillars of the arish from the trunks of trees, and materials And the only material is wooden galleries placed on top of the tent, and they return to their place of residence in the winter.

Winter homes

Winter houses have several names, including: the storehouse, the crane, the tent, and the components of building these houses are stones brought from the mountain on the back of donkeys, as well as sand that was called a "mask", and they were mixed with water and placed on the stones to be built.

The building of the store took about two months, and it was a square or rectangular room with a roof of palm trunks, and the construction process began with the laying of the stems, which is a bundle of palm leaves stacked side by side and tied with ropes, and they are laid on the ground and mixed with soil, hay and water, and the mixture is placed over the supports It holds together to become a ceiling of the room built with the specifications of insulation and cooling, and more like the ceilings of the rooms in which it is currently inhabited, according to what Al-Hassani mentions, and he adds: “And there is a storehouse in it, and the store used to collect inside it (the rupture), which is currently called the bathroom, and we used to store it with sandwiches. Dates, as we used to put the little morsos after their birth in the warehouse in which we slept with us, and in the rainy season they would put a stove in their shrine, and it was often near the door to facilitate the exit of smoke from the place.

Crane building

It takes about two months to build the crane, and it is a rectangular room bordered by two cylinders, the cylinder is a column of cement on which the roof is based, one cylinder on the right side, and the other on the left side, and each cylinder rises to the top of a conical shape, and the height of each cylinder is between two to three meters approximately According to the support, we place over the “material” that extends between the two cylinders, and after that we lower the support from both sides and tighten the support rope over the material and insert the rope between the back and the other staple and tighten the supports together, then we put two vessels on top of them so that the rain does not enter into the crane. The other two are lower.

Among the old winter dwellings is the “tent”, which takes less time to build than the period of building a storehouse or crane, as it is possible to build a tent in approximately 20 days, and the tent in its shape resembles a creek as it is triangular and has two cylinders that we fix in the ground, so we do not raise its sides except for a distance of a meter or half .

A special place

At present;

The winter season still enjoys a special place among the residents of the Emirates, as they consider it an opportunity to go out to the land, gardens and open places, to enjoy nature and the mild weather, so that - between November and March of each year - the demand for camping in the Emirates desert, and the practice of various customs and heritage activities, And return to nature, desert and land, and away from the hustle and bustle of cities.

Winter houses have several names, including: storehouse, crane, and tent, and the building components of these houses are stones, brought from the mountain.

The first signs of winter are approaching with the appearance of the star of Suhail in the sky, heralding for mild weather.

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