Iron Age in the United Arab Emirates

[5] The majority of finds dated to the Iron Age I period are centered around Shimal, Tell Abraq and Al Hamriyah on the West coast and Kalba to the East.

Gazelle, oryx and domesticated animals (sheep, goats and cattle) also formed part of the Iron Age I diet, supplemented by the emerging widespread cultivation of wheat and barley.

Extensive evidence of Iron Age II settlement has been found throughout the UAE, particularly at Muweilah, Thuqeibah, Bidaa bint Saud, as well as Rumailah and Qattara in Al Ain.

[9] It is thought nearby Bidaa bint Saud became an important site during the Iron Age, both as a caravan stop and as a settled community of farmers that used the falaj irrigation system there.

[14] A columned hall at Rumailah provides a further link to Muweilah, while a number of pyramidal seals found there echo with similar objects discovered at Bidaa bint Saud.

This central building contained at least twenty columns and has been a rich trove for archaeologists, with extensive finds of painted and spouted vessels, iron weapons and hundreds of bronze pieces.

[18] The Iron Age II period also saw the construction of fortifications, with a number of towers and other buildings offering protection to aflaj and the crops they watered.

[6] Recent finds of pottery in Thuqeibah and Madam have further linked the development of early aflaj (plural for falaj, the word used to denote waterways of this type in the United Arab Emirates) water systems there to an Iron Age II date, further substantiating the attribution of the innovation of these water systems to a southeastern Arabian origin based on the extensive archaeological work of Dr Wasim Takriti around the area of Al Ain.

[20] He notes academics such as JC Wilkinson (1977) adopting an Iranian origin for the technology under the influence of Sargon's annals and Polybius,[21] but points out at least seven Iron Age aflaj recently discovered in the Al Ain area of the UAE have been reliably carbon dated back to the beginning of the first millennium BCE.

In 2016, Rémy Boucharlat in his paper Qanāt and Falaj: Polycentric and Multi-Period Innovations Iran and the United Arab Emirates as Case Studies, asserted that the attribution of the technology to Iranians in the early first millennium BCE is a position that cannot longer be maintained,[26] and that the carbon dating of aflaj in Oman and the UAE to the ninth century BCE by Cleuziou and evidence for such an early date provided by Tikriti are definitive.

[30] Contemporary Greek manuscripts have given the exports from Ed-Dur as 'pearls, purple dye, clothing, wine, gold and slaves, and a great quantity of dates'.