As oil revenues began to flow in the early 1960s, it became clear that the small community of Abu Dhabi would soon expand into a major city.
In September 1960, British civil servants presented their first plan for naming different districts to the Arabian Department of the British Foreign Office, along with a crude hand-drawn map. Some will be familiar to current residents; many others have vanished.
"I enclose a copy of a list of district names for the map of Abu Dhabi town," an official wrote in this unclassified dispatch.
"I am sorry we have been so long in doing this. It was partly due to my being away and partly to the difficultly of getting the ruler (Sheikh Shakhbut) to agree someone give us the official names.
"The blue pencil lines are only an approximate guide to the areas. The boundary lines themselves should not be marked, but they give a guide as to the extent of coverage which each name should indicate.
"The Ruler wants names to be written in Arabic only, and not in English."
The enclosed list included "three sections of Al Bateen Village," of which "the whole of the three shall carry the general name Al Bateen".
"The north-east tip of the island shall be called Ras al Bar. The areas immediately south-west, (near the Emirates Palace) where a solitary house stands, should be called Al Damiyah.
"The Westerly corner of the island west of Bateen village is called Al Khahaira."
Other areas listed in the dispatch included the Ruler's Palace and the quarters of Gamzan, Al Hamamel, Ajam, Gbeisat, Al Sudan, Al Suq and Al Sudan.
A year later, a second report dated May 5 noted the prospects of the growing city. The author, RA Beaumont, a local official for the British government, noted that at least one major international construction company was quizzing him about prospects for the city.
"Did Her Majesty's Government wish to see Abu Dhabi develop? And if so, did they regard it as desirable that serious British concerns should be associated with that development, thereby channelling back into this country some of the sterling which Abu Dhabi seemed likely to earn from oil? I said 'yes' to both questions."
Politically, Mr Beaumont noted with some foresight that: "If oil were to be successfully exploited in Abu Dhabi, one might expect - taking Kuwait as an example - that there would grow up there strong vested interests in the continuance of an independent Abu Dhabi linked with the other Trucial States but not absorbed in Saudi Arabia".
* The National
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Founders: Abdulmajeed Alsukhan, Turki Bin Zarah and Abdulmohsen Albabtain.
Based: Riyadh
Offices: UAE, Vietnam and Germany
Founded: September, 2020
Number of employees: 70
Sector: FinTech, online payment solutions
Funding to date: $116m in two funding rounds
Investors: Checkout.com, Impact46, Vision Ventures, Wealth Well, Seedra, Khwarizmi, Hala Ventures, Nama Ventures and family offices
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Almnssa
Started: August 2020
Founder: Areej Selmi
Based: Gaza
Sectors: Internet, e-commerce
Investments: Grants/private funding
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Origin
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Doubleday
THE LIGHT
Director: Tom Tykwer
Starring: Tala Al Deen, Nicolette Krebitz, Lars Eidinger
Rating: 3/5
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The Brutalist
Director: Brady Corbet
Stars: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn
Rating: 3.5/5
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
India cancels school-leaving examinations
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Vidaamuyarchi
Director: Magizh Thirumeni
Stars: Ajith Kumar, Arjun Sarja, Trisha Krishnan, Regina Cassandra
Rating: 4/5
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