Dubai
As long ago as 1580, an Italian traveller reported that Dubai was a prosperous pearl-diving and fishing community. It was still much the same at the beginning of the 20th century, when over 300 pearl-diving dhows were stationed in Dubai's Creek. Modern Dubai can be said to date from the 1830s when 800 men of the Bani Yas tribe under the Al-Maktoum family settled here. The Al-Maktoums have ruled ever since and what's more seem to have been blessed in each generation with a leader of acute business acumen.
In 1894 the family began giving tax exemptions to foreign traders and in 1903 persuaded a British steamship company to use Dubai as the main port of call en route to India. When Sheikh Rashid took over, things really began to hot up. In the 1950s he invested heavily in dredging the Creek, which was beginning to silt up. The modernization programme continued with the decision to build Jebel Ali, the world's largest man-made port, and to develop Dubai's international airport, with its famously lavish duty-free area. Dubai's unbridled laissez-faire economy was encouraged, but crucially underpinned by considerable spending on infrastructure. It seems to have paid off. Dubai is not dependent on oil production for its success-less than a quarter of the emirate's wealth comes from petroleum exports. Instead, Sheikh Rashid emphatically achieved his ambition of making Dubai the region's leading trade centre: Dubai today accounts for 70 per cent of the UAE's imports and re-exports. He died in 1990 and was succeeded by his son, Sheikh Maktoum, who would seem to be keeping a steady hand on the tiller.
