Al-Zubarah fort serves as a pristine example of a typical Arab fort built using the traditional Qatari technique. The Coast Guard used the sturdy fort as a station until the mid 1980s when it was turned into a museum to display findings uncovered in the nearby Al-Zubarah town. H.H. Sheikh Abdullah bin Qassim Al-Thani built the fort in 1938 on the ruins of an older castle that had been destroyed.
It was constructed with high, thick walls that would last for countless decades and would serve to protect those inside. The fort is a regular square courtyard with massive walls on each side. Three of the corners have large circular towers topped with Qatari-style battlements. The fourth corner contains a striking rectangular tower with traditional triangular-based ledges with slits called machicolations that - in the event of an attack - were used to shoot at enemies.
The one-meter-thick walls strengthened the defensive capabilities of the fort, and helped isolate the heat and keep the rooms cool. The walls were built by joining overlapping raw pieces of coral rock and limestone with a mud mortar, then covering it with a gypsum-based plaster. The roof was finished with a layer of compressed mud, protecting the fort from the blazing sun during the hot seasons #Al #Fort #Qatar #Zubarah
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