Abu Dhabi rules the UAE from a Persian Gulf island
Abu Dhabi is capital of the United Arab Emirates and of its namesake emirate, second only to Dubai in population. Most urban life sits on a Gulf island linked to the mainland, housing federal offices, the presidential palace and deep archaeological layers back to Umm Al Nar in the third millennium BC.
The name means father of the gazelle in Arabic, and a popular tale links it to a gazelle chased by a hunting party. That party, led by Sheikh Dhiyab bin Isa Al Nahyan of the Bani Yas tribe, found fresh water near the coast in 1761, and the Al Bu Falah branch founded a settlement of a fort and twenty houses there. The tribe had come from the Liwa Oasis in the west. For generations the local economy rested on pearls: divers without air tanks, wearing leather nose clips and finger guards, went down for up to three minutes as many as thirty times a day.
British truces with Gulf sheikhs in the 19th century, aimed at securing the route to India from pirates, made Britain the dominant power on what became the Trucial Coast. As pearling faded in the 1930s, attention turned to oil, with a concession signed on 5 January 1936. Offshore drilling struck the Umm Shaif field in 1958, followed by the onshore Murban well in 1959, Bu Hasa in 1962 and Lower Zakum in 1963. In 1966 Britain backed a bloodless coup that replaced Sheikh Shakhbut with his younger brother Zayed, who in 1971 became the first president when six emirates joined to form the UAE.
Japanese architect Katsuhiko Takahashi laid out the modern city in 1967 for just 40,000 people; by 2023 its urban area held about 2.5 million. The island lies less than 250 meters off the coast, tied to the mainland by the Maqta, Mussafah and Zaha Hadid–designed Sheikh Zayed bridges. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, based there, manages roughly a trillion dollars, the world's third-largest sovereign fund, and the emirate produces about two-thirds of the national economy.
Summers are brutal, with July and August highs averaging over 40 °C and occasional sandstorms, while January averages 18.8 °C. Offshore waters host the largest population of Indo-Pacific humpbacked dolphins anywhere, and the Mangrove National Park lines the island's eastern shore.
Source: Abu Dhabi
