The people of the Ru'us Al Jibal carry a culture crafted by the isolation and hardship of the Hajar mountains.
Although the Shehhi speaking community have started moved to luxurious housing further from the mountains, this heritage has not been abandoned or forgotten in the move to modernity.
Modern Shehhi culture embraces the future to keep its past. Fujairah’s Al Saif Traditional Sword Competition is a mountain version of Pop Idol, where entrants compete in a sword dancing contest to win SMS votes and impress a panel of judges. Its contestants are not nostalgic old men but teenagers.
In new neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the desert and on gravel plains, many haven chose to build mansions that honour the mountains they came from, painting stone-inspired design onto their homes.
National Day celebrations have become one of the biggest annual events for Shehhuh communities. A walk up the mountains to hang UAE flags from cliffs has become a modern-day tradition. Villages will often pool together tens of thousands of dirhams and take pride in the fact that they design and decorate villages themselves.
The Shehhuh continue to celebrate weddings in wadis, where thousands of men and women congregate to celebrate by drumming, dancing and eating copious amounts of biryani cooked onsight.
Old villages on mountain summits have undergone a recent revival. People often employ workers to build and live year round in their ancestral winter homes. The government has supported this by building more roads and offering helicopter delivery services to bring generators and construction supplies to old villages, like this one on Jebel Janas.
*Anna Zacharias
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
Nayanthara: Beyond The Fairy Tale
Starring: Nayanthara, Vignesh Shivan, Radhika Sarathkumar, Nagarjuna Akkineni
Director: Amith Krishnan
Rating: 3.5/5
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
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In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
