Abu Dhabi - a great 'showcase'

Abu Dhabi - the capital city - lies among the lifeless sand and parched rivers on the Persian Gulf. This is the largest and richest cities in the UAE.

'The showcase' of the half million of the city, the capital of the state, serves as a quay, that consists of gleaming skyscrapers. In Abu Dhabi there are enough attractions, one of the most interesting - Oil Show, where audiovisual describes the city's development. Here is the Abu Dhabi Corniche - a specially reconstructed shipyard, where produced Arab dhow. The city's largest and most populous of the emirates, it is called the "garden city bay - here as much man-made gardens and parks, based on the irrigation of each tree and bush (used for irrigation, desalination plants). In this sense it is comparable only with Al-Ain. Zeid Port is the gateway to the sea, as well as Rashid in Dubai and Mina Khalid in Sharjah. There is, of course, and an international airport. However, its role as the main oil-producing state of the city, Abu Dhabi is not a major center of recreation or cheap trade.

In Abu Dhabi, called the Manhattan of the Middle East. Perfectly straight streets of the city form a network with six major highways. The most spectacular buildings are clustered along the coastline or are on parallel streets: Sheikh Khalifa, (Sheikh Khallf), Sheikh Hamdan (Sheikh Hamdan) and Sheikh Zayed (Sheikh Zayed). Features that distinguish Abu Dhabi from any other modern city, and which reflects its Muslim character - is a large number of mosques in the city and its environs. Everywhere in the town you can see several intricately decorated minarets. Visitor affects the abundance of greenery in Abu Dhabi. Along the main road into the city and the entire waterfront stretch line planting hide arid soil, growing eucalyptus and palm trees. There are a lot of grassy lawns, ornamental shrubs. In the evening you should definitely take a walk along the waterfront and delight your eyes playing water jets in fountains, with fanciful names - "Dalla", "Pearls," "The Flying Swans".

Abu Dhabi was founded in 1760. On the basis of the capital of the UAE there is a beautiful legend. Arabs-hunters from one of the oases chased gazelle. Gazelle long wound in the desert, and then withdrew the hunters on the shore of the Persian Gulf, where the water rushed in and proceeded to wade to the island. The hunters followed, and the gazelle brought them to power with a beautiful fresh water. In gratitude, the hunters gave gazelle life, and is based near the source of the settlement was called "the father of a gazelle," which in Arabic sounds like Abu Dhabi.

Pearl of the Persian Gulf - Qatar

The Middle East region is the epicenter struggle of a number of world states for control over Middle Eastern oil, because the Gulf is the largest in the world place deposits for crude oil.

Pearl of the Persian Gulf - such a definition, enjoyed the small state of Qatar, as it represents enormous opportunities to meet the needs of all categories of tourists.

Qatar - one of those countries that are difficult to immediately find on the world map. Surprisingly, prior to the beginning of XX century, most European travelers do not even imply the existence of this tiny peninsula.
In 1989, the Qatari government opened its borders to foreigners, by authorizing the immigration authorities the issuance of tourist visas.

Qatar today - is a dynamically developing country. But since it is still not very popular, the prices here with the same quality of service are significantly low. There are no visa restrictions for unmarried girls under age 30 in Qatar. The country is absolutely safe, late at night you can calmly walk down the streets.

Best time to relax in Qatar - is September-January and March-May. Excellent hotels and sandy beaches are waiting for you. Many beaches have the swimming pools interconnected and equipped with water slides. Persian Gulf is considered a excellent place for diving. One of the most popular entertainments offered to tourists in Qatar - the safari. In contrast to the UAE, this safari is more extreme and recalls the roller-coaster ride. After racing tourists are awaited for a barbecue on the Persian Gulf beach under the curtain of the picturesque tent.

Middle Eastern ancient jewellery

Sumerian, Babylonian, and Assyrian tombs of the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC have given us a great quantity of gold and silver jewellery, including headdresses, necklaces and earrings inset with precious and semi-precious stones. Middle Eastern jewellery incorporating animal figures as amulets is also commonly found. However pieces from this area and time are seldom on the market and are not likely to be actually worn.

Very fine gold and silver jewellery was also made in Persia, Anatolia and Phoenicia.

Manufacturing techniques of Middle Eastern jewellery included granulation (surfaces decorated with clusters of tiny granules of gold), filigree, inlaid gems, and cloisonné and champlevé enamel.

Within the Middle East there is clear Egyptian influence on Phoenician work and of Mesopotamian styles on Persian pieces, and this suggests widespread trade and other contacts.


The art of jewelry has influenced many cultures. Traditionally, jewelry displays distinctive character, presents intense artistic images, and carries rich cultural assets through plasticity and expression. The language of jewelry is fairly complex and hard to interpret. Just like popular ancient languages that dominated in certain historic periods, such as Aramaic, Hebrew, Persian, Greek and Latin, the language of jewelry and the jewelry items themselves have changed and developed in time, according to laws and customs of historical development. Stylistic evolution from the Early Oriental to Hellenistic-Romanian trends served as a basis for the stylistic changes in the art of jewelry making. Aside from its external beauty properties, every jewelry object has a second, internal life triggered by its semantic significance and perceived through one’s mind, intuition or aesthetic sense.

It is known that diadems were a special sign of a god or royalty. Gold garlands were kept in temples as parts of gold funds and were given as rewards for special achievements. Fragments of diadems were found among the finds of Oxus and Tillya-tepe.

Characters crowned by similar head jewelry can be found on coins, intaglios, pottery, paintings, frescos and reliefs, which allow us to recognize them as royalty or god-like creatures. Most of diadems were gold. Sometimes they are made by the stamping method. Details and fragments of diadems are made in the shape of leaves, trefoils or rosettes.

Earrings represent one of the most popular types of adornments at all times. There are many types and kinds of earrings. Mostly earrings were made of gold, sometimes of bronze earrings, and made out of electrum, naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver.

As an example of earrings (as a popular item of jewelry), can be seen on an ancient sculpture. Like on one where the ears of small head are decorated with simple rings (no lock), which were made separately and especially for the head.

One of the widely-spread types is a circle-base ring shape. Decorative element is represented by zoomorphic ends, anthropomorphic images, plant elements, figure images, and the actual ring shape with thickening ends. Jewelers used casting, forging and later granulation. A steatite mold for casting, attributed to XIII- XII B.C., is an eloquent testimony to that. Among other stones, garnet was frequently used both as inserts and as separate pendants.

The earrings of the ancient Middle East demonstrate different stylistic trends: ancient Eastern, Hellenistic, Egyptian, and Hellenistic-Roman, which is typical for the ancient culture and art in this region, because it was an integral part of the overall context of the history of ancient civilizations. The adornments in question demonstrate certain stages of the art of jewelry developing in the ancient world.