Overview

The pre-Islamic city of Mleiha represents the peak of the area's ancient civilisation. During the last centuries BCE and after, an important caravan town flourished there - part of the network of Arabian overland trade that linked the shores of the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean worlds in antiquity. Mleiha issued its own coinage, and its rulers and merchants were wealthy enough to acquire the finest camels and horses, and to build monumental tower tombs that expressed their status.The archaeological evidence of the Mleiha area reaches back as far as the Paleolithic period 130,000 years ago. Later, as the last Ice Age gave way to a warming climate, graveyards and adjacent settlements shed light on the lives of the Neolithic communities who lived there from 11,000 years ago. Civilisation evolved during the succeeding Bronze Age from 3000 BCE onward, evidenced by elaborate communal tombs. The centuries that followed witnessed the introduction of the underground falaj irrigation system. Domestication of the camel enabled extensive trans-regional trade connections. There is evidence for all of these developments in the Mleiha region. The Emirate of Sharjah today takes great pride in its role as a centre for culture, the arts and civilisations that one flourished in this unique area. Mleiha: The Unwritten History is available in English and Arabic and provides a valuable record of the history, pre-history and archaeology of this significant region of the world.

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9781909339644

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Sabah Jasim obtained his BA and MA from the University of Baghdad, and his PHD from the University of Cambridge, UK, in 1985. He has worked extensively in Iraqi archaeology, including fieldwork in Ninevah, Hatra and Babylon, and at Tell Abada, Tell Rashid and Abu Khazaf in the Hamrin region. He participated in the British archaeological excavations at both Abu Salabikh in southern Iraq and Tell al-Rimah in Northern Iraq as well as in the Soviet archaeological expedition at the sire of Yarim Tepe in north-western Iraq during the 1970s. Since 1992 he has been head of the local archaeological team in Sharjah, in charge of the Sharjah Directorate of Antiquities since 1995, and was Professor of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Sharjah during 1998-2000.Dr Margarethe Uerpmann has been working as an archaeologist and archaezoologist in the Near and Middle East for more than 30 years. She is affiliated to the Institutes of Early Prehistory and Scientific Archaeology at the University of Tubingen (Germany). A major focus of her research has been on south-east Arabia where she worked in the Sultanate of Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Dr Hans-Peter Uerpmann was a Professor of Archaeobiology at the Institute of Scientific Archaeology of the University of Tubingen, where he first worked for the interdisciplinary project The Tubingen Atlas of the Near and Middle East. His main topics were prehistoric subsistence economy in general and the ancient history of domestic animals in particular. At present his research is concentrated on the Arabian horse and dromedary.

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