Inside Abu Dhabi’s Maritime Heritage Festival: Remembering the Emirati Coastal Past 

It takes a lot to make the skyscrapers of Abu Dhabi blur into the background, but that ultimately happened on my one single day in the city. I went from the blinding white marble of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque to the pristine gold-embossed Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental: everything here seemed designed to dazzle.

My time was a whirlwind 34 hours on the ground, courtesy of the Etihad stopover program, on my way back from Oman. I popped into expansive malls packed with gold jewelry, ornate fabrics, and heaps of spices. I tried Karak tea and camel ice cream. I went to the Grand Mosque twice within 10 hours to see what it looked like in the morning and at night. But my most impactful stop was an Emirati cultural event, which was held at the edge of the Corniche. 

My timing just happened to overlap with the third-annual Maritime Heritage Festival in 2024. A true happy accident! This is a fleeting, ten-day event in late February where the city slows down to remember its roots.

Abu Dhabi didn’t used to be all glitz, glamour, and gold. Before the oil boom, it was a small, coastal town that relied on the Arabian Gulf to survive. Even back in the 1950s, there weren’t paved roads; people walked or rode camels. The older generation today has watched their home transform from quiet settlements built right on the water’s edge to a city with a towering skyline that sparkles in the Arabian sun.

A Dhow, a Fisherman’s Chant, and My Guide Fatima

When I attended the Abu Dhabi Maritime Heritage Festival, I wasn’t navigating it alone. I had booked a guided tour with a local woman, Fatima Al Taei. Little did I know that she was actually an acclaimed, barrier-breaking Emirati actress and storyteller whose own career is deeply rooted in exploring modern identity and the voices of local women. Together, we headed down towards the water. 

Looking around, the contrast of old and new hit me immediately. Out on the water, I saw a rowing crew cutting their way through the water, their oars moving perfectly in sync, as they made their way to shore. Behind them in the distance, the modern arches of the Rixos Marina five-star hotel loomed.

Just at the shore’s edge, a dhow boat was propped up on the sand, and a deep, rhythmic chanting rang out from it. A group of men were gathered right on the ship’s deck, each dressed in a white short-sleeved top and traditional blue checkered izaars—the lightweight, wraparound lower garments that Emirati fishermen and pearl divers wore in the past to handle the intense coastal heat.

They sang together, mostly in unison, although a few of them occasionally fell slightly out of sync. But then again, these songs aren’t actually sung nowadays, so it’s completely understandable to forget a lyric now and then. When I asked Fatima about the song, she explained it was an old fisherman’s tune. Historically, these rhythmic sea chants were a crucial tool on the water, designed to keep the crew energized, focused, and perfectly synchronized during the intense manual labor of rowing, dragging heavy nets, or pulling up the massive sails.

Traditional Crafts and Falconry at the Festival Grounds

As we moved away from the water and back towards the Corniche, we arrived at the main festival grounds. Walking along the smoothed sandy pathways, traditional music filled the air. Row after row of palm-frond structures lined the sand, housing local artisans, food stalls, weavers, and traders. 

And although the scale of the site was quite large, I found myself most drawn to the quiet precision of the individual craftspeople. Fatima and I stopped to watch two gentlemen artisans sitting on woven mats. With a fishing net anchored firmly beneath one of his feet, an elder worked with incredible patience, weaving and knotting loose cords by hand to repair a tear.

Right nearby, another man was meticulously hand-stitching thick canvas sheets with a needle: a skill absolutely vital for repairing dhow sails in the time before modern manufacturing. Just a few feet away, another artisan sat cross-legged, coating a tray of fresh fish with coarse white salt. Fatima explained that this method is called Al Maleh, a traditional technique used to cure and preserve the catch for long journeys out at sea in the time before refrigeration existed.

A lively rhythm pulled us toward a booth labeled Takhameer, named for the small, hand-beaten drums that are prominent in the ancestral Al-Ayyala dance. A group of three men sat on a patterned carpet, testing the instruments and warming up for their performance still to come. 

Nearby, the region’s famous desert traditions took center stage at the falconry station. We paused to admire a magnificent, hooded white-and-grey falcon, who was perched calmly on its handler’s leather glove. He wore a crisp white kandura (the traditional, loose-fitting robe worn by men across the Gulf), but the ancient sport of falconry came with a modern soundtrack: sleek sunglasses and a single AirPod tucked into his ear.

Meet the Women Preserving Emirati Craft Traditions 

All day, Fatima and I had been talking about the role of women in Abu Dhabi, and particularly the gender disparity that is still extremely prevalent, according to her. Like in Oman, women in the UAE are generally not comfortable being photographed. Fatima was careful about it, though—before I raised my camera, she checked with each woman individually to make sure she was comfortable being photographed. It was an opportunity I didn’t take for granted, as this would ordinarily not be the case.

There were a good number of stalls run by local women, showcasing the essential crafts that were once deeply incorporated into Emirati domestic life. The artisans wore outfits considered classic Gulf attire: black abayas (long, loose-fitting outer robes) and battoulahs (traditional, metallic-looking face masks).

Fatima and I paused at a station where a woman sat holding a large silver platter filled with a mix of spices. Right next to her, another woman was grinding a heavy brass mortar and pestle, crushing those exact spices down into a fine powder to create Bzar: an aromatic, savory spice blend which is native to the United Arab Emirates.

In another stall nearby, the focus shifted to a quieter, more meticulous art. An older artisan was teaching a hand-weaving technique to a woman in her twenties. I noticed she was the only demonstrator that day without a battoulah face mask on. Fatima explained that the masks are mostly worn by older women nowadays, while younger ones have largely adopted a more modern look. Alternatively, she mentioned that going outside without wearing one might simply mean a young woman wasn’t yet married.

The Al-Ayyala: Abu Dhabi’s Ancestral Stick Dance

As the late afternoon sun dipped below the horizon, turning the sky a stark orange, Fatima and I walked back towards the shoreline where a performance had begun. It was our afternoon’s grand finale.

Underneath the brightly colored sky, a long line of performers had formed, and a crowd began gathering nearby. Fatima explained that this was an Al-Ayyala performance—the ancestral cultural dance often called the “stick dance.”

The men were split into two parallel rows facing one another, with a group of drummers moving down the center between them. Each was dressed in a crisp white kandura and a dark vest, swaying in rhythmic unison. As one of the older men led a melodic call-and-response chant, the lined-up group dipped and waved their thin bamboo canes (khayzaran), a nod to the swords once carried into battle.

But the most vibrant addition to the performance was happening right in the front, closer to the audience. A group of young girls dressed in bright, colorful, glittering gowns (jalabiyas) swung their long hair side to side for the full length of the performance. If it were me, I probably would’ve fallen over from dizziness. This dance is known as the Na’ash dance, aka the “hair-flip dance.”

Standing beside Fatima as the sun went down and the ocean breeze picked up, chanting men on one side and a dizzying dance on the other, it felt like the perfect way to end the day. The fact that this cultural event stood against the backdrop of opulent skyscrapers showed me that Emiratis have found a way to preserve and honor their ancient traditions, even in the modern era.