Dubai
Dubai is the second largest of the seven emirates of the United Arab Emirates and the name of its capital city, a port city on the southern shore of the Persian Gulf whose natural creek made it a centre of fishing, pearling and trade long before oil. First recorded in 1799, Dubai was taken over in 1833 by some 800 Bani Yas tribesmen of the Al Bu Falasah, led by the Maktoum family, who have ruled it since. After the 1966 discovery of the offshore Fateh field and the first oil exports of 1969, the emirate turned deliberately toward trade, ports, aviation, finance and tourism, building Port Rashid (1972), the Jebel Ali free zone (early 1980s) and Emirates airline (mid-1980s). Its record-breaking skyline includes the 828 m Burj Khalifa (2010) and the 150.23 m Dubai Frame (2018), while Dubai International has been the world's number one airport for international passengers since 2014, handling 95.2 million guests in 2025. A city where expatriates vastly outnumber Emiratis, Dubai joined UNESCO's Creative Cities Network as a City of Design in 2017 and hosted the first World Expo in the MEASA region (2020, held 2021-22), drawing 24,102,967 visits.