Qatar

Qatar juts north from the Arabian mainland into the Gulf, a low peninsula of limestone, gravel and sand with no rivers and very little rain. Coastal summers are hot and heavy with humidity. In the south-east, dunes roll down to Khor Al Adaid, a tidal inlet called the Inland Sea, while grey mangroves fringe the creeks around Al Khor. Oil fields line the west coast at Dukhan, and offshore lies the North Field, a vast reservoir of gas beneath the seabed.

For centuries the people of this coast lived by pearl diving and fishing, and inland by herding camels. Al Zubarah, a walled pearling town of the eighteenth century, lies in ruins. The Ottomans kept a garrison until 1915, and from 1916 Qatar was bound to Britain by treaty. Cultured pearls from Japan ruined the pearl trade in the 1930s, but oil was struck at Dukhan in 1939. Independence came in September 1971, the year the North Field was found.

Bedouin custom lives on in falconry, in the majlis where guests are received, and in camel racing, where robot jockeys replaced child riders in the 2000s. Machboos, spiced rice with meat or fish, is the dish of family gatherings. I. M. Pei’s Museum of Islamic Art stands on its own island off the Corniche, and Qatar hosted the football World Cup in 2022. Liquefied gas shipped from Ras Laffan earns most export income, alongside crude oil, fertilisers and aluminium from Mesaieed.