Qatar goes in search of its next ‘pearl’

When William Gifford Palgrave, the British traveller and Arabist, sometime around 1863 arrived in Beda’a, the capital of Qatar, he was unimpressed by the arid landscape.

“To have an idea of Qatar, my readers must figure to themselves miles on miles of low barren hills, bleak and sun-scorched, with hardly a single tree to vary their dry monotonous outline,” he wrote in his Narrative of A Year’s Journey Through Central and Eastern Arabia.

Today, Beda’a is called Doha, and is unrecognisable from the desolate vista described by Mr Palgrave. The city shoreline is an elegant, well-maintained corniche, surrounded by opulent hotels, cafés and office towers that glitter in the sunshine.