History
UAE is a recently created country with a history that is shared by the neighbouring empires such as Persia, Rome, Ottoman empire, and foreign powers such as Portugal and England. The earliest inhabitants were the Neolithic people, 5500 B.C. Significant control, and commerce was established by the successive Persian empires. During the Sassanid era, Persians controlled most of the lands around the Persian Gulf. The Romans also exerted influence on the Persian Gulf. Envoys from the Islamic prophet Muhammad saw the islands convert to Islam around 630 C.E. The Portuguese would then battle the then dominant force in the Persian Gulf, the Safavid empire and control UAE for the next 150 years. During the 16th century, the Ottomans took control of the Islands and UAE was known as the "Pirate Coast." By the 19th century the British empire had taken complete control of the land then called "Trucial Sheikhdoms"/"Trucial States"/"Trucial Coast". Oil was discovered in 1959. Trucial Sheikhdoms were under the control of the British empire until 1971. Consequentially, with weakening British control, the Trucial Sheikhdoms became the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 1971-1972.
The term Emirati comes from the Arabic word emir (Arabic: أمير) which means commander. Each emirate is ruled by an emir, whose citizens (generally) belong to his clan. The Bani Yas tribe forms the basis of many clans within the United Arab Emirates. Sub-clans of the Bani Yas include
- Al Bu Falah (Abu Dhabi)
- Al Bu Falasah (Dubai)
- Al Qawasim (Sharjah, Ras Al Khaimah)
- Al Ali (or Al Mualla) (Umm Al Quwain)
- Al Sharqiyan (Fujairah)
- Al Nu'aim (Ajman)
Another definition of "Emirati" is Arabs with origins in the UAE.
Read more about this topic: Emirati People
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
Stringent laws, and that things
Do get done in this way, but never the things
We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
To see come into being.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)