At the time, the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, like the other states along what was then known as the Trucial Coast, was in treaty relations with Britain, which had first established its presence in the region as early as 1820, signing a series of agreement on maritime truce with the local rulers that gave the area its name.
Abu Dhabi was poor and undeveloped, with an economy largely based upon the traditional combination of fishing and pearl-diving along the coast, and simple agriculture in the scattered oases, like those at Liwa and Al Ain inland. When the world market for the Gulf's high-quality pearls collapsed in the late nineteen twenties and early nineteen thirties, owing to the invention by the Japanese of the cultured pearl and the world economic depression, the already poor emirate suffered a catastrophic blow to its economy. Sheikh Zayed's family, like their people, fell upon hard times.
When the young Zayed was growing up, there was not a single modern school anywhere along the coast. He, like his fellows, received only a basic instruction in the principles of Islam from the local Islamic preacher, although an enthusiasm and a thirst for knowledge took him out into the desert with the Bedouin tribesmen, absorbing all he could about the way of life of the people, their traditional skills and their hard-won ability to survive under the harsh climatic conditions.
These early years not only taught Sheikh Zayed about his country, they also brought him into contact with the people, and by the nineteen thirties, when he was scarcely out of his teens, his brother Sheikh Shakhbut found that Zayed was well worthy of his trust. When the first geological survey teams from foreign oil companies arrived to carry out a preliminary surface survey of the trackless wastes of Abu Dhabi's deserts, it was Sheikh Zayed who was assigned the task of guiding them.
He performed well, living up to all the expectations placed in him, and in 1946, shortly before the search for oil began in earnest after the end of the Second World War, he was the obvious choice to fill a vacancy as Ruler's Representative in the inland oasis of Al Ain, then a mere cluster of small villages, although today a thriving city with a population nearing 200,000.
In 1971, the United Arab Emirates had a population of only some 180,000, but, latest figures suggest, it has now risen ten-fold to around 1.8 million. Where there were only a few thousand children at school, mainly boys, now there are over 300,000 studying, boys and girls, in schools that extend to the smallest desert village and mountain settlement, as well as covering the main population centres. Abu Dhabi's first university graduates, educated abroad, returned home only in the mid-nineteen sixties. Now there are over 8,000 students at the Emirates University in the burgeoning green and pleasant oasis-city of Al Ain, while several hundred more are hard at work in the six Higher Colleges for Technology in Abu Dhabi, Al Ain and Dubai.
The youth of the country, 'the real wealth of the nation,' in Sheikh Zayed's words, now have the access to the opportunities they, and Sheikh Zayed himself, lacked. And they, in turn, are making use of those opportunities to contribute to the building of their country - in the oil industry, in business, in Government, and now in sport, with the UAE national soccer team qualifying in 1989 for the World Cup in Italy.
If Sheikh Zayed is a father to his people, he has made it clear that the responsibilities of parenthood apply to the UAE's women as well as to the men. He rejects the suggestion that women have no place at work. "Women have the right to work everywhere," he says.
"Islam", Sheikh Zayed notes, "gives women their rightful status, and encourages them to work in all sectors, as long as they are afforded the appropriate respect. 'Me basic role of women is the upbringing of children, but over and above that, we have to support and encourage any woman who chooses to perform other functions."
With around half of the country's potential workforce of nationals being women, and with thousands of young female as well as male University graduates now entering the job market, the UAE's women can be found playing an increasingly important role in commerce and the health services, in education and banking, in Government and administration.
Like his people, Sheikh Zayed knows what it is to be poor, to be thirsty and to be hungry. It is, after all, only three decades since oil was first discovered in Abu Dhabi. Since then, and, more especially since the United Arab Emirates was established, progress has been so fast as to be almost unimaginable a generation ago. Only some-one with extra-ordinary vision could have conceived of the possibility of such changes - let alone to have worked to see them come true.
