The Oasis of Al Ain - Gateway to the Great Emptiness, United Arab Emirates (409/418)

The Oasis of Al Ain - Gateway to the Great Emptiness, United Arab Emirates (409/418)

This is a place that lives from its extremes, between lush oases and the hostile threat of the desert. Al Ain, on the eastern edge of the emirate of Abu Dhabi is a real border town. Geographically, it lies close to the national border with Oman, but geologically, the oasis was always a gateway between civilization and the "infinite nothingness" - the "great emptiness" as the Bedouin have called the harsh desert of the Arabian peninsula for millennia.

The oasis has been settled for around 5,000 years, as evidenced by archeological finds dating from the unique burial tomb culture of the early Bronze Age. It has continued to thrive since then with new forts and palaces being added over the millennia. The basis for its very existence, however, was and remains a sophisticated, millennia-old irrigation system, called Aflaj. The mostly underground channels supply the oasis with plenty of fresh water from the nearby Al Hajar Mountains. As a result the desert wind blows across a sea of more than 1 million date palms, one of the largest oases in the world. It is the cultivation of date palms that allowed Al Ain to secure its importance as a center of trade for thousands of years.