Abu Dhabi

• 1. Father Of Gazelle

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  Abu Dhabi means "Father of Gazelle," from the Arabic "Abu" for father and "Dhabi" for gazelle. The name traces to a hunting party in 1761, led by Sheikh Dhiyab bin Isa Al Nahyan, who found fresh water near the coast. A popular story holds that the hunters were chasing a gazelle when they made the discovery. From that spring grew the capital of the United Arab Emirates, a city on a T-shaped island reaching into the Persian Gulf. How did a settlement that began as a fort and twenty houses become a metropolis of 2.5 million people by 2023? The answer runs through pearls, oil, and a single ruling family. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, headquartered here, is estimated to manage roughly one trillion US dollars in assets. That makes it the world's third-largest sovereign wealth fund, after Norway's Government Pension Fund Global and China's CIC. The emirate accounts for about two-thirds of the roughly 503 billion dollar UAE economy. Yet long before any of that, divers held their breath in these same Gulf waters, searching for oysters by hand.

• 2. Pearls And Oysters

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  Pearl divers worked the Persian Gulf, considered the best location for pearls, in a trade believed to date back around 7,000 years. The boom ran from the late 19th century through the second decade of the 20th century. A diver would stay underwater for one to three minutes at a stretch and might descend as many as thirty times in a single day. Air tanks and any other mechanical device were forbidden, so the work demanded only the body and its limits. Each diver wore a leather nose clip and leather coverings on the fingers and big toes, protection while searching the seabed for oysters. The economics were unforgiving. Divers were not paid for a day's work and instead received a portion of the season's earnings. This industry defined Abu Dhabi as a small, ethnically homogeneous pearling community. That identity would soon be remade as foreign interest turned from oysters to the oil beneath the same waters.

• 3. From Truces To Concessions

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  Treaties known as "Truces," entered into during the 19th century between Great Britain and the sheikhs of the Arab States of the Persian Gulf, gave the Trucial Coast its name. Britain's first purpose was to protect the trade route to India from pirates, which is why the area was earlier called the "Pirate Coast." After piracy was suppressed, the British wanted to exclude other powers from the region. Following their withdrawal from India in 1947, the British kept their influence in Abu Dhabi as interest in the Gulf's oil potential grew. The oil chapter opened formally on the 5th of January 1936. Petroleum Development Trucial Coast Ltd, an associate of the Iraq Petroleum Company, signed a concession with the ruler Sheikh Shakhbut bin Sultan Al Nahyan to explore for oil. A seventy-five-year concession followed in January 1939, though the desert terrain made inland exploration difficult. In 1953, the exploration arm of BP obtained an offshore concession, transferred to a joint venture between BP and Compagnie Française des Pétroles called Abu Dhabi Marine Areas. Perceived mismanagement of oil revenues, along with fears of a pan-Arab uprising, led Britain to back a bloodless coup. On the 6th of August 1966, Shakhbut's younger brother Zayed Al Nahyan took power.

• 4. Oil Beneath The Gulf

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  In 1958, a marine drilling platform called the ADMA Enterprise struck oil in the Umm Shaif field at a depth of about 8755 feet. The following year, 1959, brought an onshore discovery at Murban No.3. Abu Dhabi Marine Areas went on to find the Bu Hasa field in 1962 and the Lower Zakum field in 1963. Today the main onshore producing fields also include Asab, Sahil, and Shah, while offshore production draws from al-Bunduq and Abu al-Bukhoosh. The scale of this wealth is hard to overstate. Abu Dhabi owns the majority of the UAE's hydrocarbon resources, 95 percent of the oil and 92 percent of the gas. The emirate holds 9 percent of the world's proven oil reserves, 98.2 billion barrels, and almost 5 percent of the world's natural gas. As of April 2022, UAE oil production was about 3.0 million barrels per day, with plans to expand capacity toward 5 million by 2030. Gas extraction carries its own difficulties, shown by the sour gas project at Shah, where the gas is rich in hydrogen sulfide and expensive to develop. By 2009, the government began diversifying, and non-oil and gas GDP now constitutes 64 percent of the UAE total.

• 5. A City Drawn From Sand

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  In 1967, under the guidance of Sheikh Zayed, the Japanese architect Katsuhiko Takahashi planned the city initially for a population of 40,000. In the 1960s and 70s the plan was revised for a predicted topmost population of 600,000, with high-density tower blocks and wide grid-pattern roads. The street numbering reveals that ordered mind. Horizontal streets are oddly numbered and vertical streets evenly numbered, so the Corniche is Street No. 1, Khalifa Street is No. 3, and Hamdan Street is No. 5. The Corniche itself, the city's seaside promenade, runs about 10 kilometers with gardens, playgrounds, and a BMX and skateboard ring. Bridges stitched the island to the mainland. Al Maqta Bridge, built in 1968, was the first connection to what had been a small fishing village. The Mussafah Bridge opened in 1977, and the Sheikh Zayed Bridge, designed by Zaha Hadid, opened in late 2010. The skyline rose to match. Notable towers include the 382 meter Central Market Residential Tower and the 74-story, 310 meter Sky Tower. The Aldar Headquarters is the first circular skyscraper in the Middle East. Rapid growth overran the original plan, bringing traffic congestion and a shortage of parking, which a new addressing system called Onwani is now working to fix.

• 6. Stone From Many Nations

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  Construction of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque began on the 5th of November 1996, drawing materials from countries around the world, including Italy, Germany, Morocco, Pakistan, India, Turkey, Iran, China, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Greece, and the United Arab Emirates. More than 3,000 workers and 38 contracting companies took part. The chosen materials, marble, stone, gold, semi-precious stones, crystals, and ceramics, were selected with durability in mind. The internal prayer halls opened in December 2007, in a building large enough to hold approximately 41,000 people. In July 2019, the mosque was placed third out of 750 landmarks from 68 countries in a travel website's Travelers Choice Awards. Other landmarks carry the same founder's name and memory. The Founder's Memorial honors Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the first President of the UAE, who died in 2004, with an artwork called The Constellation at its center. The Presidential Palace, Qasr Al-Watan, or "Palace of the Nation," opened to the public in March 2019 on the grounds of Ladies beach. Worship in the city is deliberately plural. The Abrahamic Family House on Saadiyat Island, opened to the public on the 1st of March 2023, holds the Imam Al-Tayeb Mosque, St. Francis Church, and the Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue, the UAE's first purpose-built synagogue.

• 7. Mosque, Museum, And Megaproject

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  Qasr Al Hosn, built by the Bani Yas tribe in 1761, is the oldest building in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and once served as the seat of government and palace of the Al Nahyan family. It is now a museum where visitors see Talli, a traditional decorative embroidery done by women, and Al Sadu patterns that represent symbols of daily life. From this old fort the city has reached toward global entertainment and culture. In July 2019, Abu Dhabi allocated 163 million dollars to finance global entertainment partners as part of its plan to wean the economy off oil. The Ghadan 21 program, launched in 2018 with a total injection of 50 billion AED, organizes initiatives around business, society, knowledge, and lifestyle. Film crews arrived too. The Etihad Towers and Emirates Palace Hotel appeared in Furious 7, where cars smash through the windows of the towers, and the city has hosted productions including Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Dune, and War Machine. The future promises more spectacle. In 2024, the Madison Square Garden Company confirmed a second Sphere venue, identical to the one in Las Vegas, would be built here. In 2025 came confirmation that Disneyland Abu Dhabi would rise on Yas Island, the seventh Disney theme park resort worldwide.

• 8. Driverless And Diverse

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  On the 26th of November 2025, WeRide and Uber began Level 4 fully driverless Robotaxi commercial operations on Yas Island, with no vehicle specialist inside the car. The city's mobility ambitions stretch across land, water, and air. The Etihad Rail network's second phase, completed in 2023, carries freight across all seven emirates. Abu Dhabi's first flying taxi vertiport is set to open at the Zayed Port Cruise Terminal by late 2025, serving helicopters and eVTOLs with direct access to Saadiyat Island and the Louvre Abu Dhabi. The people moving through this city come from across the world. Around 80 percent of the population are expatriates, and of 2,650,000 people in the emirate, 477,000 were UAE nationals. Migrants come from Nepal, India, Pakistan, Russia, Ethiopia, the Philippines, and many other countries, so languages from English and Hindi-Urdu to Malayalam, Somali, and Bengali are widely spoken. Sport reflects the same outward reach. The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix has run at the Yas Marina Circuit since 2009, usually closing the Formula One season. In March 2019, the city hosted the first Special Olympics World Games in the Middle East, drawing more than 7,500 athletes across 24 disciplines. For the ninth year running, in 2025, Abu Dhabi was ranked the world's safest city by the statistical website Numbeo.