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Northern Forts Trip


      An unusually chilly wind whipped around the LAS car park as some thirty-five hardy explorers prepared to brave the road works of the Great North Road to Al Ruwais to explore the forts in the northern part of Qatar. Listening attentively as Fran Gillespie gave us a short briefing on the forts we would be visiting, we shivered in the cold snap of early February. But once on the road we forgot the cold and focused on trying to keep up with the caravan of cars amid the road works and speeding Land Cruisers of the North Road.

      Having safely navigated the ever-moving off-ramp we stopped outside the fort of Al Zubara. This comparatively new fort was constructed in 1938 on the orders of Sheikh Adbullah bin Jassim al-Thani in response to Bahrain’s claim on the nearby town of Al Zubara and their fortifications on the nearby Huwar islands. After a minor altercation with the gate-keeper over the issue of an “admission fee” we made our way through the sturdy doorway into a sunny courtyard. Honey-coloured stone walls and sturdy corner towers, a view of the ruined town of old Al Zubara through the gun slits, a deep well in one corner (covered with a grid) – all these invited us to climb and clamber and peer and peep. Fran kept on giving more bits of information and answering the many questions put to her.

      Then it was back into the cars and across a rocky desert stretch following tracks that kept disappearing to the fort of Al Thaqab. It has been determined that this fort dates from the 19th-century but the remains of a few houses scattered around may be of an earlier date. Al Thaqab has recently been restored and now proudly displays its 3 round and 1 rectangular corner towers. A feeling of being somewhere familiar was explained by Fran – the restoration was done by the same architect who did Souq...

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