the last of the founding fathers

Sheikh Saqr bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, the Ruler of Ras al Khaimah and a member of the UAE’s Supreme Council of Rulers, was the world’s second-longest serving monarch after King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand, and the oldest. Said officially to have been born in 1920, he belonged to the same generation as the late Sheikh Zayed, the founder of the nation. During his 62-year reign, Sheikh Saqr oversaw the transformation of Ras al Khaimah from a wild desert landscape into a thriving international city.

“In modern times,” writes Wilson, “Ras al Khaimah is widely credited as having the most educated national population in the lower Gulf, and this is directly as a result of Sheikh Saqr’s policies as far back as the 1950s.”