Majlis Ghorfat Umm Al Sheif

About Majlis Ghorfat Umm Al Sheif

Former home of Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum

The Majlis Ghorfat Umm Al Sheif is the preserved summer house of Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, the late Ruler of Dubai, one of the founders of the UAE and father of the present ruler, in Jumeirah 2 near the coast. It was built in 1955, when the area lay far from the town of Dubai among date-palm plantations beside a small fishing village, and was named after a pearl fishery of the same name. The two-storey building was made of traditional materials, adobe, gypsum and coral stone with timber, and its roof terrace served both for drying dates and as a cool open-air sleeping platform on summer nights. Here Sheikh Rashid sat with his advisers and weighed the decisions that drove Dubai's rise in the decades that followed. The majlis was fully restored in 1994, with a small garden of date palms and a traditional falaj irrigation system, and it is managed today by Dubai Culture and Arts Authority as a heritage site. A short visit gives a sense of the simplicity and natural ventilation of traditional Emirati houses and of Dubai's beginnings before the towers; it is a small but much-liked stop in Jumeirah.

Where:

Dubai, United Arab Emirates