2006/08/10

Roundabouts of Al Ain #1

This is the first of what should be on ongoing series of pictures of the statues and fountains in the roundabouts of Al Ain.

First up is the Sheik Zayed Roundabout:

Zayed Roundabout

This rounadabout is on Khalifa Street, one block of the Islamic Institute (boys campus of UAE University).  You can see it on Google Maps here.  As you can see, it has a pretty interesting statue of Sheik Zayed and four palm trees.

Statue

Here is a closer view of the top.  Just out of curiosity, does anyone know if the brass colored metal supposed to symbolize anything?  Maybe a moon cresent?

Top of Statute

Below that is this, which I assume is stylized Arabic writing.  I have a terrible time reading stylized Arabic, but it looks like it begins with aleph and ends with ya and ra.  Can anyone tell me what the rest of it is?

Arabic Writing

8 comments:

nzm said...

Cool!

I want to know what the glass-house thing on a pedestal roundabout is all about. It looks as if it's filled with a dead forest!

Brn said...

Which one do you mean, the Al Ain Hospital one or the one in Maqam?

don_veto said...

For the last picture, the word written is Al Khair, next to the palm tree. Khair means goodness / kindness / wealth depending on the context. From the palm tree next to it, it propably is meant as goodness from Dates.

don_veto said...

I just noticed that Al Khair was placed under Sheikh Zayed's profile. It is refering to Zayed Al Khair, which he is sometimes called because he brought wealth and prosperity to his people and is well loved and remembered.

Brn said...

don_veto,

Thanks for the translation. I would never have guessed that the letter I was missing was kha.

nzm said...

Brn - I'm not sure where it is exactly. All I know is that we go through it if we head to Jebel Hafeet and turn right by Hili Fun City off the Dubai-Al Ain road.

Marcus Aurelius said...

A new one. That one wasn't there when I was last in Al-Ain, but Sheik Zayed was still alive at the time.

Anonymous said...

I never was able to get the link to Google map working for me, anybody having the same problem? I also tried this many times before (getting a map of any city in UAE on google) with no luck, any idea?
Thanks
Ash