Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi is the capital city of the United Arab Emirates. The city sits on an island in the sea.

It has many tall towers that shine at night.

Abu Dhabi is the capital of the United Arab Emirates, a country of seven emirates on the Arabian Peninsula. The city has the same name as the largest emirate, Abu Dhabi, and it stands on an island off the coast.

The Statistics Centre Abu Dhabi estimated 2,823,340 people in the Abu Dhabi region, one of the emirate's three regions, in 2024. For the city itself, an official estimate gave about 1.75 million people in 2023.

City Population's tables from the Statistics Centre Abu Dhabi give the Abu Dhabi region 1,310,485 people in 2011 (an estimate), 2,595,390 in the census of 20 September 2023 and 2,823,340 in the estimate for 20 September 2024. The whole emirate counted 3,847,585 in the revised 2023 census.

For the city alone, the cities table lists 243,257 people in the 1980 census, 398,695 in 1995 and an official estimate of about 1,750,000 for mid-2023.

Abu Dhabi has an old fort. It is made of coral and stone from the sea.

The city also has tall towers and a hotel with domes.

Qasr Al Hosn began as a watchtower built of coral and sea stone, which guarded the way onto the island and the small community growing around it. More towers were added later and joined into a fort, which became the ruler's home and seat of government.

The modern city has many tall towers. In the photo, the Emirates Palace, a hotel with many domes that opened in 2005, glows gold in front of the Etihad Towers, a group of five towers whose tallest is 305 meters high.

Qasr Al Hosn's own history says a sheikh of the Bani Yas tribe from the Liwa Oasis ordered the first watchtower, of coral and sea stone, to watch over coastal access to the island. Between 1793 and 1816 more towers were built and linked into a defensive enclosure, the seat of government and the ruler's family home. After the first oil concessions in 1939, a palace was built around the old fort walls, tripling the site. A later conservation project dealt with a white render that had trapped moisture on the original coral stone bricks, revealing the original foundation again.

Wikidata dates the Emirates Palace hotel's opening to February 2005, lists 305 m for the tallest of the five Etihad Towers (inception 2011), and 342 m for the ADNOC Headquarters tower (inception 2015), seen still under construction at the left of the photo.

Long ago, people in Abu Dhabi dived for pearls and fished.

Then oil was found. Now the city has tall buildings, universities, hospitals and museums.

Abu Dhabi began as a settlement that relied on fishing and pearling. The first oil concessions, agreements letting companies look for oil, were negotiated in 1939, and from the 1960s oil exports transformed the emirate. The Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East credited the emirate with about 90 percent of the UAE's oil reserves.

Oil money paid for universities, hospitals, museums, hotels and office towers. The Louvre Abu Dhabi, an art museum, opened in November 2017.

The Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East credited the emirate with 90 percent of the UAE's roughly 100 billion barrels of oil reserves and 60 percent of its gas reserves, and said these revenues funded international airports, universities, hospitals, museums, towering hotels and office buildings 'where only fifty years earlier there were simple palm-frond huts and dusty paths'.

Qasr Al Hosn's history places the first oil concessions in 1939, negotiated with Great Britain. Wikidata dates the opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi to 8 November 2017.