It’s older than the pyramids. And most people living here have no idea.
Ras Al Khaimah doesn’t get the same attention as Dubai or Abu Dhabi. But when it comes to history, RAK has something neither of them can match – over 7,000 years of continuous human habitation, making it one of the longest-settled places on Earth.
That’s not a rough estimate. German archaeologists working at a shell midden near Jazirat al-Hamra in the late 1980s found fragments of Mesopotamian pottery from the Ubaid period among heaps of fish bones and mollusc shells. Those ceramic shards date to the fifth or sixth millennia BC – among the oldest pottery ever found in the lower Gulf. They pushed RAK’s confirmed history back at least 7,000 years.
To put that in perspective, the Great Pyramid of Giza was built around 2560 BC. RAK had already been inhabited for over 2,000 years by then.
Today, around 1,000 separate archaeological sites and antiquities are scattered across the emirate. And the story they tell isn’t about a quiet fishing settlement. It’s about one of the most important commercial ports in the history of the Arabian Gulf.
Before it was RAK, it was Julfar
The city that most people know as Ras Al Khaimah was once called Julfar – and under that name, it was one of the wealthiest and most powerful trading ports in the Gulf for centuries.
Julfar wasn’t a minor stop on a trade route. It was a major commercial centre with connections stretching from East Africa to China. Archaeological excavations at the Julfar site have uncovered Chinese Ming dynasty porcelain, Southeast Asian celadon ware (ceramics from the Vietnam and Thailand region), and goods from across the Indian Ocean trading network.
The trading town was so significant that it’s the only settlement on the southern Arabian Gulf that is consistently mentioned by early Arab historians and geographers – including Al-Maqdisi, Al-Idrisi, and Yaqut. Its strategic location close to the Strait of Hormuz, its safe harbour, and access to the fertile palm gardens of Shimal made it a prize for successive empires.
At its peak between the 15th and early 16th centuries, Julfar was a well-defined urban settlement stretching approximately 5 kilometres along the coast. Archaeologists estimate its population may have reached up to 70,000 people. The town had a large mosque, a fort, a town wall, and a dense network of streets packed with mudbrick, stone, and coral houses.
The pearl trade that named a word
Julfar’s pearl trade was arguably its most defining feature. Pearl diving fleets launched from this coastline, and the trade was so dominant that it shaped language itself.
The Portuguese word for pearl – aljofar – may originate from the name Julfar. Portuguese explorer Pedro Teixeira, writing in the early 17th century, noted the connection, and a particular type of pearl was even named “julaffar” after the trading town. Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa, writing in 1518, described Julfar as a place of “persons of worth, great navigators and wholesale dealers” with “a very great fishery as well of seed-pearls as of large pearls.”
The pearl trade connected RAK to markets across the Gulf and beyond. Merchants from Hormuz came to Julfar specifically to buy pearls and carry them to India and other lands. This wasn’t a local industry – it was a global supply chain, centuries before the term existed.
The navigator born on this coastline
Julfar’s maritime heritage produced one of history’s most significant navigators. Ahmad ibn Majid was born here around 1432, into a family of professional navigators. By 17, he could pilot ships across open ocean.
Over his lifetime, Ibn Majid authored roughly 40 works on navigation, astronomy, and seamanship. His masterwork – the Kitab al-Fawa’id fi Usul Ilm al-Bahr wa’l-Qawa’id (The Book of the Benefits of the Principles and Foundations of Seamanship) – was the definitive encyclopedia of Indian Ocean sailing. It covered monsoon patterns, celestial navigation, safe harbours, dangerous waters, and geographic descriptions from East Africa to Indonesia.
Arab sailors knew him as “the Lion of the Sea.” For centuries, a popular story credited him with guiding Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama from Africa to India in 1498. Modern scholarship – particularly research by Ibrahim Khoury and Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi of Sharjah – has shown this is almost certainly untrue. Ibn Majid would have been in his late seventies at the time and considered himself too old to navigate. The actual pilot was likely a Gujarati sailor.
But the correction makes the real legacy even more significant. Ibn Majid wasn’t famous for helping one European explorer. He was the person who systematically documented the entire navigational knowledge of the Indian Ocean at a time when Arab sailing was at its peak and Europeans had only a limited understanding of these waters.
Two of his handwritten manuscripts are now prominent exhibits in the Bibliotheque nationale de France in Paris. In 2025, UNESCO inscribed one of his works – Al-Nuniyah al-Kubra (The Great Nuniyah) – into the Memory of the World Programme.
A city that needed a 7km wall
To protect its wealth, Julfar built something remarkable: Wadi Sur.
This was a fortification wall stretching over 7 kilometres in a straight line from Shimal Fort (locally known as “Sheba’s Palace”) at the foot of the Hajar Mountains to the coast. The wall was originally around 5 metres high and 2 metres thick, reinforced with approximately 45 towers at 150-metre intervals, and fronted by a ditch 3.5 metres wide and 2.5 metres deep.
It was the largest fortification structure in southeast Arabia – larger even than the famous wall at Bahla in Oman. Its purpose was to protect not just the port and settlement, but the entire agricultural hinterland of palm gardens that fed the town. Those palm gardens covered roughly 85% of Julfar’s arable land.
Today, Wadi Sur is an archaeological site – its remains eroded over centuries – but its scale tells you everything about how wealthy and strategically important Julfar was. A city doesn’t build a 7km wall unless it has something worth protecting.
From pearls to 75 million tonnes of cargo
RAK’s geography hasn’t stopped working. The same strategic position at the top of the UAE that made Julfar a pearl trading capital now makes RAK one of the most important industrial ports in the Middle East.
Saqr Port, the emirate’s flagship facility, is the largest bulk-handling port in the Middle East and Africa. RAK Ports operates a network of five ports handling over 75 million tonnes of cargo annually. The quarrying industry in the Hajar Mountains produces aggregate, cement, and building materials that supply construction projects across the entire GCC. Dubai’s skyline was partly built with RAK stone.
And the next chapter is already underway. The Saqr 2.0 expansion – a US$1 billion greenfield development – will add deep-water berths with drafts of up to 18 metres, the deepest in the UAE. Phase One is expected to be operational by 2027, adding 6-10 new berths and approximately 50 million tonnes of additional annual cargo handling capacity. The project will make RAK home to the largest and deepest project cargo port in the MENA region.
(Read more: Saqr 2.0: How RAK Is Building the Deepest Port in the Middle East)
For a full list of free and budget-friendly things to do in RAK, including many of these heritage sites, check out our guide.
What you can see today
The physical evidence of RAK’s 7,000-year story is still here – and most of it is open to visitors. (For a broader guide, see our top things to do in Ras Al Khaimah.)
National Museum of Ras Al Khaimah sits inside a 19th-century fort that served as the ruling Al Qawasim family’s residence until the 1960s. The collections span millennia: Julfar pottery, Bronze Age artefacts dating to 5,000 BC, the Mardhouf Al Quwasim coin (minted by the ruling family), a 12th-century gold coin, a 4,000-year-old palm seed from the Shamal Bronze Age settlement, traditional pearling and boatbuilding displays, and the only Jewish artefact found in the UAE – a gravestone of David, son of Moses, discovered near Shamal in 1998. There’s also a 2,000-year-old date press showing how date syrup was extracted. Staff serve you Arabic coffee in the majlis before you leave. Entry is AED 5.
Dhayah Fort is the only surviving hilltop fort in the UAE. Its 239 steps lead to panoramic views of the coast, palm groves, and the Hajar Mountains.
Shimal Fort (“Sheba’s Palace”) is reputed to be the oldest castle in the UAE, built as a medieval palace for the ruler of Julfar on a mountain plateau.
Suwaidi Pearl Farm is the UAE’s only traditional and cultured pearl farm. You reach it by traditional pearling boat at Al Rams, at the foot of the Hajar Mountains – the same waters where Julfar’s pearl divers worked centuries ago.
Julfar archaeological site is where excavations have uncovered the remains of the trading city – dense urban settlement, courtyard houses, mosques, and trade goods from across the Indian Ocean.
7,000 years and counting
Most conversations about RAK focus on what’s new – the Wynn resort on Al Marjan Island, Jebel Jais, the adventure tourism. And those are worth talking about.
But the reason any of it exists is geography. RAK sits where the Gulf narrows toward the Strait of Hormuz. That position made it a pearl capital, a navigation centre, a trade hub, and now a modern industrial and tourism destination.
The same coastline. The same strategic position. Seven thousand years apart.
Most people just don’t know it yet.
Sources:
- RAK Government Media Office (rakmediaoffice.ae) – 7,000 years of habitation, ~1,000 archaeological sites
- RAK Department of Antiquities and Museums (rakheritage.rak.ae) – Julfar history, Wadi Sur, ancient trade connections, Ibn Majid
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre (whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/6465) – Julfar tentative World Heritage listing, Ming porcelain and celadon ware finds, pearl trade, Wadi Sur details
- Wikipedia: History of Ras Al Khaimah – Archaeological evidence, Ubaid pottery discovery at Jazirat al-Hamra, Julfar population estimates
- Wikipedia: Julfar – Duarte Barbosa’s 1518 account, Pedro Teixeira’s pearl etymology, Wadi Sur construction details, urban settlement evidence
- Wikipedia: Ahmad ibn Majid – Navigational works, Ibrahim Khoury and Al Qasimi research debunking Vasco da Gama connection, UNESCO inscription
- Wikipedia: National Museum of Ras Al Khaimah – Exhibits including Mardhouf Al Quwasim coin, David son of Moses gravestone, madbasa
- RAK Ports (rakports.ae) – 75M+ tonnes annual cargo, five-port network
- Breakbulk (breakbulk.com) – Saqr 2.0 expansion details, US$1 billion investment, phase timelines
- Gulf News – Saqr 2.0 as deepest project cargo port in MENA
