The bustling souq weaves tales from the Capital’s wealthy historical past
Huge growth initiatives in Abu Dhabi metropolis haven’t dimmed the attraction of an all-time favorite vacation spot within the capital. The Mina carpet market or the Afghan carpet market, as it’s popularly identified, stays a hang-out of Abu Dhabi residents in addition to vacationers. It’s a stroll again in time, then and now.
The bustling souq nestled close to the Mina port exudes a uncommon and rustic attraction in a metropolis that’s quick turning into a world vacationer vacation spot. The market is a maze of round 100 retailers that promote among the finest and most inexpensive carpets. Their partitions communicate of the wealthy historical past of Abu Dhabi.
Effectively earlier than the emirate reworked from a sleepy fishing hamlet to a contemporary metropolis in a span of 4 many years, the market catered to area of interest prospects, together with wealthy sheikhs and rulers. After the Mina port was inbuilt 1972, commerce began to flourish and retailers from Afghanistan introduced intricate hand-woven carpets to Abu Dhabi. The Mina market, because it existed in these days, was only a patch of desert close to the port.
Abdul Mannan, 65, one of many oldest carpet merchants in Mina says, when he got here to Abu Dhabi within the 80s, there have been only a clutch of merchants and a small tent. He was simply 18 when he landed in Abu Dhabi with a handful of Afghan carpets.
To start with, there was only a tent
Ghousudhin, 62, slips out of his room on the primary ground of his store solely after the solar goes down. He is without doubt one of the earliest Afghan merchants who continues to be doing enterprise out there. He spends his evenings strolling by the market and joking with the younger merchants who’ve largely taken over the enterprise from their fathers and uncles. Just a few of his buddies are nonetheless alive, he says.
“We’re only a few left behind. Many have gone residence and died,” says Ghousudhin, who remembers how the market reworked into what it’s at the moment.
“I got here to Abu Dhabi in 1989. It was a unique world then. There have been no roads or air conditioners,” he reminisced, sitting within the cool consolation of his store.
Ghousudhin says the carpet market got here into being solely due to the generosity of Sheikh Zayed, whose framed picture hangs within the vendor’s store.
“In the future, Sheikh Zayed got here to the market, and he felt unhealthy that we have been promoting carpets underneath the recent solar. He moved us to a small constructing the place at the moment’s fish market is,” he says.
The founding father ordered the development of the present market and gifted each dealer a store. “He used to go to us each few months and purchase a carpet from every store. It was not that he wished so many carpets, however he wished to assist us,” says Ghousudhin, who provides that he owes his life and store to ‘Baba Zayed’.
For the love of Zayed
Sheikh Zayed’s legacy nonetheless lives on out there. A viral video that circulated on social media just a few years in the past confirmed an unidentified Emirati man asking an Afghani store proprietor to promote a portrait of Sheikh Zayed on a carpet. The person within the video, Moosa Khan, refuses, saying: “That is my baba Zayed.”
Khan tells Khaleej Occasions that, even when somebody stuffed his store with arduous money, he wouldn’t promote the image. “My father acquired the carpet accomplished in Turkey as a tribute to Sheikh Zayed. Even when he died two years in the past, he advised me by no means to promote that image for cash.”
He had his share of fame when later, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, now UAE President, visited the person and pinned a ‘Yr of Zayed’ badge on his shirt. Later, Sheikh Mohamed took to Twitter to specific his admiration for the dedication of the dealer and his abiding love for Sheikh Zayed.
Discount hunter’s favorite
Over time, the market has expanded to showcase quite a lot of carpets. Merchants say the pandemic has taken its toll, with companies hit in 2020.
“With the lockdown and Abu Dhabi being closed to vacationers, there was hardly any enterprise. Many people needed to go residence. However now, we’re bouncing again,” says Shahzaad Abdul Hameed, who took over Store No 7 from his father 20 years in the past.
From costly hand-made Afghan and Kashmiri carpets to machine-made varieties from Turkey, Hameed says the market is catering to all tastes and pockets.
Mohammed Gulam, one other dealer, says vacationers and residents alike flock to the market as they provide the most effective costs.
“Competitors is hard. There are a lot of new retailers in Dubai and Sharjah. Purchasing malls even have began promoting carpets. However we’ve an edge as a result of we provide probably the most inexpensive costs.”
In keeping with him, an Afghan carpet that might value Dh4,000 exterior is on the market for round Dh2,000 in Mina carpet market.
“The place else will you get such aggressive costs? Additionally, folks love to return right here and cut price. We’re very accommodating.”
The market will retain its old-world attraction
The Mina space is present process a makeover underneath a large restoration undertaking introduced by the Abu Dhabi authorities. The undertaking, launched in two phases, goals to remodel the world into a brand new vacationer, business and residential vacation spot.
Spanning over three million sq. metres in Mina Zayed, it’s going to additionally see the previous fish and plant market adjoining to the Mina port remodel into a contemporary market.
However the carpet-sellers hope their market will at all times stay the identical.
“Many issues have modified over the past a few years besides this market. We hope, even within the subsequent 30 years, we are going to nonetheless be right here to inform the tales of Sheikh Zayed’s generosity and Abu Dhabi’s previous.”