Fujairah

Fujairah, United Arab Emirates

Fujairah, also spelled Al-Fujayrah, constituent emirate of the United Arab Emirates (formerly Trucial States, or Trucial Oman). It is the country’s only emirate with no territory on the Persian Gulf; its entire coastline is on the east side of the Musandam Peninsula (the horn of southeastern Arabia), facing the Gulf of Oman. Because Fujairah’s territory is divided or interrupted by exclaves (detached sections) of other emirates, its boundaries have been only partially demarcated.

Fujairah has had a turbulent modern history, the central theme of which has been the power struggle between the Qasimi sheikhdom of Sharjah, which annexed the area about 1850, and the Sharqi sheikh of Fujairah and his allies, who desired independence. Alone among the Trucial States that now form the United Arab Emirates, Fujairah was not recognized as independent by Great Britain in the 19th century but was considered a part of Sharjah. The sheikh of Fujairah staged numerous uprisings against Sharjah, and by 1886 he was a virtually independent ruler. Both the sultanate of Muscat and Oman and the sheikhdom of Abu Dhabi laid claims to Fujairah’s territory, but these were not accepted by Britain and had little basis in de facto rule over the area. In 1952 the British government accepted Fujairah as an autonomous state; the sheikh signed the same treaties that bound the other Trucial States to Britain, including the Exclusive Agreement, whereby Fujairah undertook to allow all its foreign relations to be conducted by Britain. When Britain announced its intention to leave the Persian Gulf in the late 1960s, Fujairah was a member of the proposed Federation of Arab Emirates; after the withdrawal of Bahrain and Qatar from the federation, it became a constituent emirate of the newly independent United Arab Emirates in 1971.

Economically, Fujairah is one of the poorer states of the country. There is some agriculture in the hilly areas away from the coast, where truck crops and tobacco are produced. Some fishing boats are headquartered in the small ports along the Gulf of Oman. Boat building is important, and several marble and tile factories have been built at Fujairah town. The principal urban centre is Fujairah town, the capital. Since the opening of its new container port in the early 1980s, Fujairah town has become a major transshipment point. There is also a small international airport, which is located near the town centre. In the northern section of the emirate is Dibba, only part of which lies in Fujairah; the remaining area is divided between Sharjah emirate and the Sultanate of Oman. Paved roads have been built across the peninsula from the capital to Sharjah city and also along the Gulf of Oman coastline. From 1964 to 1972 Fujairah issued many stamps for collectors; these stamps had no legitimate postal purposes and were not recognized by reliable catalogs and philatelic organizations. Area 500 square miles (1,300 square km). Pop. (2005) 125,698; (2017 est.) 236,811.