Twenty-eight Emirati pupils on Saturday concluded their comprehensive look at the UAE’s heritage and history at their last stop in Ajman and Fujairah before heading to Abu Dhabi to celebrate the 43rd National Day.
They began their tour at the historical Ajman landmark, the Ajman Museum, which was opened in 1981 in an 18th-century fort. The museum served as the Ruler’s palace and office until 1970, when it became the main police station.
It houses a collection of antiquities, manuscripts, weapons and reconstructions of traditional life, as well as images portraying the way of life in the past.
In Fujairah, students visited the Fujairah Museum, located south of the Fujairah Fort. It displays unique artefacts that take visitors back to the sixth millennium BC, and which include Bronze and Iron Age weaponry, painted pottery, carved soapstone vessels and pre-Islamic silver coins. One of the museum’s prized pieces, discovered at Qidfa, is a bowl made from an ostrich egg dating back 2,200 years.
The Heritage Halls display the occupations of the region such as agriculture, fishing, weaving and pottery. They include ancient weapons and a rifle, called Khedewi, made in 1916.
The antique halls include numerous artefacts that were discovered in several locations, such as pots, mugs, and cups of various shapes and uses.
After the museum, the students headed to the oldest mosque in the UAE, Al Biadyah Mosque, also known as the Ottoman Mosque. It was built in 1446 AD from purely local materials, from large and small stones, and using burnt clay as a solder substance for constructing local stone and mud bricks .
The mosque is crafted with a prayer hall that can accommodate 60 worshippers, and a prayer niche or Mihrab, internal ventilation and shelves. A central column separates the space into four squares of similar dimensions, as well as supporting the four domes seen from outside.
The mosque is situated between two hills, each topped with a Portuguese lookout tower built in the 1800s.
rhaza@thenational.ae