History comes alive: the return of the Qasr Al Hosn Festival

The Qasr Al Hosn Festival returns with a slate of new experiences, from immersive shows and culinary workshops to a night safari. Here's a sneak peek at Abu Dhabi’s favourite heritage event.

A fisherman throws a net to catch fish at the Qasr Al Hosn Festival, which is back for its latest edition with a variety of new experiences.Mona Al Marzooqi / The National

The fourth annual Qasr Al Hosn festival opens this evening with an updated programme of exhibitions and events that its organiser, Abu Dhabi’s Tourism and Culture Authority (TCA), hopes will attract even larger crowds than the 120,000 visitors who attended last year.

As well as the familiar displays of traditional Emirati arts and crafts and heritage zones ­dedicated to traditional life in the desert, oases, islands and the sea, this year there are several major new features, the most notable of which has nothing to do with the festival at all.

During the past year, Qasr Al Hosn has had the architectural equivalent of a facial peel and the result is walls that are knobbly, uneven, and grey – very different from the pristine image that appears on the UAE’s Dh1,000 note.

The effect is as temporary as it is eye-catching and is part of the ongoing work to restore the monument.

But before its walls regain their ­familiar crystalline whiteness, this year visitors get to see the fort as never seen before, with a kind of X-ray vision that reveals its many secrets.

By way of an explanation, TCA have commissioned a bespoke light show. Designed by the same specialists who animated the surfaces of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque during the UAE’s 40th anniversary celebrations – and who recently bathed St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican in projections – it promises to be something ­special.

“Instead of a regular tour, this year the building is telling its own story,” explains one of the event’s organisers, Randa Bin Haidar.

“Inside the fort, the light show will put the building in the context of the turning points of Abu Dhabi’s history while the outside walls of the fort talk about the building.”

It’s not the only installation designed to provide actual and intellectual illumination.

In the Cultural Foundation building a new immersive exhibition, The Anatomy of a Photograph: Iconic Images from the Past, will allow visitors to digitally deconstruct a series of famous historic photos, including Hermann Burchardt's famous photograph of Sheikh Zayed the First sitting outside the walls of Qasr Al Hosn, and Wilfred Thesiger's iconic image of Bedouin with camels fording the ­Maqta crossing.

“We understand our past through these images, they are a part of our narrative,” says Bin Haidar, who is a programme manager with TCA’s culture section.

“If you look at the photographs, there is a ­sequence, but they also operate as a series. There is a story inside each image but there is also a wider story arc – they tell a deeper story.”

Anatomy of a Photograph is complemented by two other exhibits in the Cultural Foundation that contrast the insights that can be gained from official histories with those that arise from unofficial memories.

Archives and Memories: Capturing the Nation's Story, brings together documents from six of Abu Dhabi's most extensive archives to examine key themes in Abu Dhabi's history, while Recollections of the Cultural Foundation allows ­visitors to listen to the memories of individuals who have witnessed key moments in the ­building's history.

“We try to come up with a different angle each year to guide our programming,” Bin Haidar ­explains.

“Last year involved a contrast between tradition and modernity but this year is about making connections through the memories of the people and, by collecting their memories, to build a collective memory,” she says.

“Last year we were collecting memories and this year we want even more information.”

As always with the festival, the exhibitions that combine serious scholarship with the latest findings about the history of Qasr Al Hosn and the Cultural Foundation building are accompanied by family-focused events that are designed, most importantly, to be fun.

On the festival stage there will be a cultural play titled Bab Al Khair, a night safari that will introduce the audience to the UAE's native animals, and a Sky Show featuring birds from Al Ain Zoo.

As well as performances, food also features more prominently during this year’s show. In the festival’s Marine Zone, there will be workshops where visitors can cook and sample traditional fish dishes.

The festival’s traditional Arabian coffee, or gahwa, pavilion now has an outdoor terrace where visitors will be able sit and sample Emirati staples such as slow-cooked lamb with crushed wheat, alongside chabab cream cheese and ­honey pancakes, both of which can be washed down with iced karak tea or even a ­Vimto ­mojito.

So if you think you know everything about Abu Dhabi’s favourite downtown heritage event, or even the city we call home, think again and – while you’re at it, ask not what the festival can do for you but what you can do for the festival.

You never know, your memories could be part of the Qasr Al Hosn story next year.

Past perfect

One of the significant changes at the festival this year can be seen in the Qasr Al Hosn ­exhibition. Not only has it been overhauled for the third time, it has also expanded in its scope.

“Qasr Al Hosn is a symbol of Abu Dhabi and the home of the royal family. It’s why we’re all here,” says Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority’s Randa Bin Haidar. “[But] the exhibition now recounts the story of Abu Dhabi and its people through oral tradition, with Qasr Al Hosn running like a thread through the curatorial narrative.”

Rather than focusing on the building’s history, the new show follows the journey of the Baniyas tribes from the deserts of Liwa to Abu Dhabi, and examines how they lived in the desert, why they made the journey in the 18th century, and their lives once they had arrived in their new capital.

The major difference between this show and previous ones, which relied heavily on maps and old photos, is in the use of objects borrowed from Al Ain National Museum. Early displays contain saddle bags, a bow and arrows, a bowl for collecting camel milk, and even a pair of knitted goat’s-hair socks, whose simplicity and utility speak of the harshness of desert life.

Later displays look at the tools that made the pearl trade possible, before oil fuelled Abu Dhabi’s wealth, and the ways in which people expressed their fortunes – in gold jewellery, burqa and silver khanjars that are still a feature of the Bedouin ceremonial dress. Also on show are objects such as an embroidered ghutra said to have belonged to Sheikh Shakhbut, and a spike-studded hardwood door that will eventually be returned to Qasr Al Hosn once the fortress has been reinstated.

Less tangible but more intriguing are the sections that look at why the Baniyas chose Abu Dhabi island as their home and its resources that made life possible: water, fish, pearls, salt and coral stone – the traditional building material at Qasr Al Hosn. The reason we are all here, the exhibition suggests, is that thanks to its supply of drinkable water and a natural, easily defensible moat, Abu Dhabi island was one of the most strategic locations on the Gulf coast.

The final sections examine the ongoing conservation works at Qasr Al Hosn and the issues that are likely to determine the monument’s fate: what role will it play in the future of Abu Dhabi, and how can it tend to the city’s different communities?

“This was a nomadic society that carried its culture with it,” says Bin Haidar. “That is where our values have come from and it is important to remember how that culture was communicated.”

• The Qasr Al Hosn festival opens to the public at 8.30 tonight and will be open daily from 4pm to 11pm until February 13. On Sunday, the festival will be open for women and children only. Entrance is Dh10; children under 4 are free. Visit www.qasralhosnfestival.ae for more details