Published: 24.04.2024. 08:00h
Source: Vanja Milenković
PHOTO: BILAL QABALAN / AFP / Profimedia
We know that Qatar is one of the richest countries in the world. But all the money can’t replace what they don’t have – water. Here’s how to live in this small country:
Qatar is surrounded by desert. That is this country was created in the desert, why they have no fresh water so they have to distill the sea to have drinking water. Because of all this, pure water is the most expensive drink in Qatar.
Power has been in the hands of the emirates for decades. Absolute monarchy reigns here, and the House of Tani has ruled Qatar since 1868 after the end of the Qatar-Bahrain war. The current emir is Tamim bin Hamad al Tanin, who has ruled the country since 2013. And his mother, Moza, the second wife of Sheikh Hamad, is probably the richest woman in the world.
99% of the population of Qatar are citizens of Doha. According to statistics, 9 out of 10 Qatari residents live in Doha.
All food in Qatar is imported from other countries because they have no arable land.
Alcohol is prohibited in Qatar.
Qatar is the second safest country in the world. Qatar has the second lowest crime rate in the world, just behind Abu Dhabi.
The number of men is significantly higher than the number of women, there is one woman for every three men.
Qatar is one of the richest countries in the world. Much of the wealth comes from oil and natural gas, which accounts for more than 60 percent of GDP. For several years in a row, Qatar is the first country in the world when looking at gross domestic product per capita. It is on the list ahead of Luxembourg, Singapore, Brunei. It sounds almost surreal, but just 70 years ago, it was one of the poorest places on the planet. The inhabitants of Qatar, which was then a British protectorate, lived by fishing and selling pearl shells.
At the end of the thirties of the last century, oil appeared in the small town of Duhan, in the west of the country. Qatar started selling it to the world and nothing has been the same since. However, the real development started only in the seventies. Qatar gained independence from Great Britain in 1971, and in those years the world’s largest single natural gas deposit was discovered in the Persian Gulf. An energy source that was once considered almost worthless will transform the country overnight and make Qatar what we see today.
In the last two decades, members of the ruling Al Thani family have invested a lot of money in arts and culture. Today, Qatar is one of the largest buyers of works of art in the world. Nearly 10,000 exhibits from across the Islamic world are housed in the Museum of Islamic Art, a building located on an artificial peninsula overlooking modern Doha. Apart from the influence of Islam, life in Qatar was strongly influenced by the Bedouin, nomadic culture. Regarding their history, Qataris remember the national holiday on December 18 the most. On that day in 1878, Sheikh Jassim bin Muhammad al-Thani, the founder of modern Qatar, succeeded in uniting the local Qatari tribes.
