About this Book

Yet only fifty years ago, when oil-exploration started, there was no electricity, no plumbing or telephone system, not a single public hospital nor modern school, no bridges, no deep-water harbour, no metalled roads, no more than a handful of cars and scarcely a building more impressive than the crumbling mud-brick forts and watchtowers of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Where now high-rise stacks, gilded domes and minarets tower over wide boulevards, where cascades of water are flaunted with conspicuous opulence, and where acres of shrubs burgeon on the desert shore, stood sleepy settlements of reed, coral and mudbrick houses, sweltering on sand spits and islands in the most ferocious summer heat.