the story

Jazeerah al Hamra, which translates as the Red Island, has been inhabited since at least the 16th century. For 40 years, the village has been deserted. In 1968 and the years following unification, the families of Jazeerah al Hamra left the village due to a disagreement with the ruling Quassimi family. Most of them moved to Abu Dhabi and some moved to modern villas a few hundred metres away. For decades the village sat empty, entered sporadically by family members of those who left long ago, or the occasional tourist. The villages abandonment is what have saved it. For four decades, its buildings remained more or less intact. Visitors could walk along its crumbling walls and sandy alleyways and experience life in the UAE before the discovery of oil. Jazirat al Hamra found its preservation in isolation.

The village used to be an island but was filled in  with the surrounding area in 1974

Jazirat al-Hamra is the southern most of the three main ports of Ras al-Khaimah. It was primarily inhabited by people from the Za’ab tribe, although because it was a pearling port, pearl merchants from the Al Bu Shamis tribe had a string of houses along the shore, merchant families from tribes based in southern Iran also maintained houses, and the edges of the village were inhabited seasonally by laborers and boat crews from the Habus and Shihuh peoples of the mountains, and the Bedu sections of the Al Khawatir, who used the southern desert of Ras al-Khaimah as grazing lands.