The Qatar peninsula, shaped a bit like a thumb, juts northward into the Persian Gulf from the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It is about 160km (90mi) long and 55km (35mi) to 80km (50mi) wide. Including its small islands, Qatar is just a bit smaller than the US state of Connecticut. This is one flat country - the highest part is only 40m (130ft) above sea level. It's also dry, with most of the country covered in gravelly desert with virtually no natural vegetation.
Qatari fauna is limited to birds, such as the houbara, and to animals that are pretty hard to spot, such as bats and sand cats. You will, of course, see camels, but because Qatar doesn't have much in the way of vegetation, it never had the huge herds you'll see in other parts of the Middle East.
Summer lasts from May to September, and temperatures at that time generally average 35°C (95°F), although it can get up to 50°C (122°F). The 90% humidity adds to the discomfort. The winter months (December-February) are much milder with pleasant, cool evenings. Throughout the year, but especially in spring, Qatar is subject to sandstorms, and the rainstorms that hit the country in December and January cause many of the roads to close.
Archaeological digs have shown that the Qatar peninsula was inhabited during the Stone Age, when the region's climate was milder than it is today. But the archaeologists have found little evidence of habitation between the most ancient of times and the modern era, and Qatar is the only significant place in the Gulf to have no Portuguese ruins of any sort. Since the Portuguese conquered, or at least attacked, just about everywhere else in the Gulf, this strongly implies that 16th century Qatar was either uninhabited or very nearly so.
For most of its recorded history, Qatar has been dominated by the Al-Thani family, who arrived in the mid-18th century, when Qatar was already well established as a pearling centre, and became the peninsula's rulers about 100 years later. Activity was then centred on Zubara in the north-west, which was under control of the Al-Khalifa family (who are now the rulers of Bahrain). Since that time, and even into the present day, tension between the Al-Khalifa and the Al-Thani has been a constant feature of Qatar's history. Today, the principal territorial dispute between the two countries concerns the Hawar Islands, which lie just off Qatar's western coast. Historically, Doha (now the capital) was never a particularly important trading port, and throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries Qatar remained shockingly poor, even by pre-oil Gulf standards. Places like Zubara were so hotly contested precisely because they controlled access to the one thing which provided enough money to feed the local populace: the pearl beds.
Qatar's first Al-Thani emir established his capital at Doha in the mid-19th century. To strengthen his position vis-a-vis the other tribes in the area, he signed a treaty with Britain in 1867. He and his son who followed became masters at maintaining their independence by playing the British off against the Turks. In 1872 the emir signed a treaty with the Turks allowing them to place a garrison in Doha. Over the years the small Turkish garrison began to seem more destabilising than reassuring. The garrison was forced to be withdrawn from Qatar in 1915, after Turkey entered WWI on the side of Germany. With Britain and Turkey on opposite sides in the war, and the British controlling the rest of the Gulf, switching alliances seemed like a wise move, especially since Qatar had to worry about the founder and future king of Saudi Arabia, who was then in the process of conquering most of eastern Arabia. After expelling the Turks, Qatar's emir signed an exclusive agreement with the British in 1916, under which Britain guaranteed Qatar's protection in exchange for a promise that the ruler would not have any dealings with other foreign powers without British permission.
Even before the collapse of the pearl market around 1930, life in Qatar was rough. With poverty, hunger and disease all widespread, the emir welcomed oil prospectors who first arrived in the early 1930s. A concession was granted in 1935 and the prospectors struck oil in 1939. Because of WWII, however, production did not begin for another 10 years. At that point things began to move very quickly.
The quantity of oil produced in Qatar was not huge, but the country's tiny population had plenty of cash to go around. Much of the early revenue went to modernising the country: the first school opened in 1952 and health care facilities were upgraded. The injection of funds did wonders for the emirs' lifestyle, and from the mid-1950s, successive emirs took less and less interest in government and more and more interest in falconry, jet-setting and fancy cars. Despite this, the amount of wealth, more or less evenly distributed, blunted the political interests of most Qataris, and there were few calls for democracy or an end to the monarchy.
When the British announced that they would leave the region by the end of 1971, Qatar entered talks with Bahrain and the Trucial States (now the United Arab Emirates) with the intention of forming a confederation. When Bahrain pulled out of the talks, Qatar followed suit almost immediately, declaring independence on 1 September 1971. Six months later Khalifa bin Hamad al-Thani, a cousin of the emir and for many years Qatar's ruler in all but title, took power in a palace coup. The years following the coup were marked by political stability and, as was the case throughout the Gulf, the dramatic rise in oil prices in 1974 gave the government more than enough money to build one of the world's great all-encompassing welfare states.
Since independence, Qatar has retained its close defence ties with Britain and has increased defence cooperation with both the US and France. For many years Qatar's foreign policy followed the lead of Saudi Arabia, but in the 1990s that began to change. Doha ruffled some feathers around the Gulf by seeking closer ties with Iran. In 1993 Qatar became the first Gulf country to have open diplomatic contact with Israel and then in 1995 to start an economic relationship with the Jewish state, agreeing to supply Tel Aviv with natural gas. In June 1995 Shaikh Khalifa was unexpectedly replaced as emir by his son Hamad, until then the crown prince and defence minister. The new emir quickly announced an end to press censorship and has continued to establish Qatar as a maverick voice within the Gulf. Shaikh Hamad was the only Gulf leader to attend the 1996 antiterrorism summit in Egypt in person.
Qatari culture revolves almost entirely around Islam. A monotheistic religion, Islam's holy book is the Qur'an, and Friday is its sabbath day. Most Qataris adhere to the austere Wahhabi sect of Islam which also dominates Saudi Arabia. Qatari Wahhabism, however, is less strict. For example, alcohol, which is strictly prohibited in Saudi Arabia, is available in Qatar and there is no prohibition on women driving cars. Arabic is the official language in Qatar, though Doha's sizable population of Pakistanis make Urdu, the Pakistani language, seem more useful. English is also widely spoken.
Qatar is primarily a Bedouin culture, and the tribal ethos is still strong in modern society. Bedouins (being nomads) had a culture traditionally based on poetry and song rather than buildings or art. However, the practical art of weaving has produced some beautiful Bedouin artefacts, such as tents, rugs, cushions and saddlebags. The Bedouin weavers work with wool from sheep, goats and camels, using simple tools made from wood and gazelle horn. Qatar was once renowned for its weaving industry - it's said that even Mohammed preferred his clothes made from Qatari fabric. Traditional Qatari dress is characterised by gold or silver embroidery, known as al-zari or al-qasab. Women are veiled - most take the veil when they are around seven years old, and by adolescence they will cover their body entirely with an al-darraa, a long black dress. They also wear a black mask, called al-battoulah, which covers all of the face except the eyes, nose and mouth. Qatari men wear a thobe, a long white shirt over loose pants. They also wear that symbol of the Arab world, a loose headdress called a gutra, held on with a black rope known as the agal.
Qatar does not have an indigenous cuisine worth mentioning. Outside the big hotel restaurants, Doha is filled with the usual collection of Western fast-food places and small Indian and Pakistani restaurants offering little more than curries and biryani dishes. Fruit juice and soft drinks are the only beverages you'll find in the average Qatari restaurant. The good news is that Arab hospitality is legendary, and it is common for Qataris to invite strangers into their homes for qahwa - spiced Turkish coffee - served strong and in copious quantities.
Money & Costs
Currency: Qatari riyal (QR)
Relative costs:
- Budget meal: US$3-5
- Mid-range restaurant meal: US$5-15
- Top-end restaurant meal: US$15 and upwards
- Budget room: US$25-50
- Mid-range hotel: US$50-80
- Top-end hotel: US$80 and upwards
On an absolutely rock-bottom budget, you might be able to travel in Qatar for about US$30 a day. This assumes you can get a tourist visa through a Qatari embassy. Otherwise, the least expensive hotel that sponsors visas charges about US$90 a night. Figure on about US$60-75 a day for a mid-range budget. For a top-end place to stay and top-end meals, be prepared to spend at least US$100 a day.
Moneychangers provide slightly better exchange rates than banks, though changing travellers' cheques at a moneychanger can be a trying experience - each one seems to accept a different brand of cheques than the others. Credit cards are widely accepted and ATMs easy to find.
Around the Gulf, Doha has earned the unenviable reputation of being the dullest place on earth. You will be hard-pressed to find anyone who'll claim the place is exciting. That said, there's nothing wrong with Doha - you're unlikely to get shot or mugged or die from cholera. The bay is pleasant and there are enough interesting sites around town to keep you occupied for a day or two. Doha is also the only place in Qatar with hotels (and an airport), so even if you're travelling around the country, you'll be stopping through here.
The Qatar National Museum occupies what was once the palace of Shaikh Abdulla Bin Mohammed, emir from 1913 to 1951. The museum includes an aquarium over two levels: the top floor is full of stuffed fish, but there are live ones in the appealing surrounds of the basement. The sea turtles are probably the best thing here. Other collections include an interesting piece on seafaring and traditional celestial navigation methods, and displays on Islam, desert life, astronomy, the oil industry and the traditional lifestyle of the Qatari people.
The Ethnographic Museum is in a restored traditional Qatari house, found in the centre courtyard of a new souq shopping complex. The museum looks at life before the oil boom and explains how an ordinary family would have lived. The house includes one of the Gulf's few remaining wind towers, a traditional form of air conditioning in the region.
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