Lost settlement hides a secret

Lost settlement hides a secret

By Fran Gillespie/Doha

On a lonely stretch of coastline at Ras Al Sharig, the small peninsula south of the old town of Zubara, a scatter of stones caught the eye of archaeologists exploring the area. There was little to show on the sandy surface – a few rocks, some low, wind-weathered mounds – and most people would have walked past without noticing anything. But to professionals who observe every change on the surface, however small, the signs indicated there was something below the surface.
One of the 15 date presses excavated this year at Rubaqa
Dr Andrew Petersen, director of the team from the University of Wales which has just completed a second season of excavations on Qatar’s north-west coast, intrigued his audience at a Qatar Natural History Group meeting on Wednesday when he described the number of enigmatic finds made at Rubaqa, the name of the little settlement. For a start, the inhabitants were not fishermen, nor were they fishing for pearls – there are none of the indications that go with these two common coastal occupations.
So if they were not pearling or fishing, what were they doing, and why did they choose to live on the coast? One answer lies in Rubaqa’s proximity to deep water, and the remains of a small jetty. Another is the extraordinary number of date presses – fifteen at the last count. Date presses [madbassa in Arabic] are very common in Qatar and occur in almost every Islamic settlement excavated, including Murwab, a large settlement not far from Rubaqa which dates to the Abbasid period of the 9th century. Basically, a date press consists of a rectangular or square area deeply grooved with parallel channels. Sacks of dates were piled onto these, and the weight of the compressed dates caused the sweet, sticky syrup to ooze out, which then trickled down the channels and into a large jar which was sunk into the ground to receive the syrup.
A curious fact about the Rubaqa date presses is that no two are alike. Some are coated with fine white gypsum plaster, some are not. One has holes and pits for two collecting jars, not one. And one has such a convoluted maze of collecting channels that the archaeologists have no idea of the purpose of such an extraordinary structure.
Does this indicate that the presses were made by people from other countries with their own way of doing things, or by individual local families each with its own traditional method of constructing a press? At present no one knows the answer.
The jetty, and the deep water which would allow ships to approach the coast, suggests that the people might have been producing date syrup on a commercial scale. But where the date plantations were located – whether in Qatar or elsewhere – is at present anyone’s guess.
That the settlement dates back some hundreds of years is known from the name Rubaqa, which is recorded in the 1760s, and from the earliest pottery found – 16th century Julfar ware from Ras al Khaimah in the UAE.
Middens [refuse mounds associated with occupation] contain ash and layers of detritus containing fragments of pottery and animal bone, which indicate a long occupation period. Samples have been taken for Carbon 14 dating, and these should yield more definite information as to the age of the site. The potsherds themselves illustrate how wide was the trade with other countries: besides the Julfar ware there are fragments of glazed pottery from China and Burma and pottery from Iraq and Iran. The ceramic tops of shisha – the local ‘hubbly-bubbly’ pipes -- confirm that tobacco was being imported.
A series of small, clay-lined pits filled with ash were perhaps used for cooking, although this is not certain. Analysis of the contents will shed more light on their purpose.
Two areas of building were excavated this year, one of housing and another constituting a large, irregularly shaped walled area, designated a ‘fort’ by the archaeologists as it was clearly defensive, with what had been a single, well-constructed corner tower – on the land ward, not the seaward side. It had been demolished at some period and the stones taken away to be re-used, but the solid foundations remain. The fortified area appears to be older than the rest of the settlement.
Embedded in the rubble of the walls of the ‘fort’ was a large cannon ball! History records many instances of attack along this stretch of coast in the 18th and 19th centuries – some a response to piracy, others for political causes – and the discovery of the cannonball, with another awaiting excavation, demonstrates that life was not always peaceful in Rubaqa. Even more exciting was the discovery of a cache of 19 fine quality Indian silver rupees, wrapped in a cotton bag and pushed into a crevice in the wall of a mosque. Whoever so carefully hid his savings there never returned to reclaim them. The coins, which bear the head of Queen Victoria on one side, date to the 1860-1880s.
Other coins found on the site include some from the Ottoman period of the 19th century, along with some from Iran, and the first Qatari coins from the 1930s, showing how long the site was occupied. In the remains of the mosque, which includes a large open prayer ground and another inner, smaller prayer room, was a fragment of plaster with a verse from the Qur’an written on it.
The archaeologists excavated right down to bed rock, and there they found a number of pits, presumed to be post-holes for buildings, cut right into the rock. To cut these must have been a laborious task, and at present the archaeologist have no clue as to their date or purpose. Further excavations may provide an answer. But meanwhile, Rubaqa guards its secrets.