Final Years
In 1999, while he hospitalized and undergoing a series of tests, the people of the UAE wrote him a personal thank-you letter with 1.5 million signatures. He underwent a kidney transplant in 2000 at the Cleveland Clinic in the U.S.
On 2 November 2004, Abu Dhabi TV announced that Zayed had passed away. He was believed to be 86 years old. He is buried in the courtyard of the new Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi.
His eldest son, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, born in 1948, took an increasing role in government beginning in the 1990s. Directly after his father's death, he was ratified as the Ruler of the United Arab Emirates by his fellow rulers on the Supreme Council.
Shaikh Zayed International Airport located in Rahim Yar Khan, Punjab, Pakistan is named in his honour. There is also a lecture theatre named in his honour at the London School of Economics. A local airport in the northern city of Kukës, in Albania, is named "Zayed Bin Sultan Al-Nahyan"
Read more about this topic: Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan
Famous quotes containing the words final and/or years:
“Waiting for the race to become official, he began to feel as if he had as much effect on the final outcome of the operation as a single piece of a jumbo jigsaw puzzle has to its predetermined final design. Only the addition of the missing fragments of the puzzle would reveal if the picture was as he guessed it would be.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)
“But he answered his father, Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’”
—Bible: New Testament, Luke 15:29,30.