Geographical names are the memory of generations

A place represents a legal entity that expresses a physical location, gaining its identity from the nature of the events or entities that took place around it. The study of geographical names and their meanings reveals important historical information about a place across a period of time, encompassing a language and customs that have disappeared. The names of ancient sites in the United Arab Emirates constitute part of its historical and geographical heritage and cultural identity. Many of them have been wiped out by urban sprawl and have been lost to contemporary memory. In this book, the author has collected and authenticated many geographical names, addressing their history, nature, and relationship to the surrounding environment, as well as the changes that occurred in their pronunciation due to the presence of other nationalities who find some Arabic names difficult to pronounce. Consequently, the name has been altered or its pronunciation has been altered. Therefore, the author first verified the existence of the correct name, then its correct pronunciation and spelling. He also answered people's questions: How and when were places named? And who gave them these names? He also addressed some of the principles and controls followed in naming places and the methods of writing names in Arabic for non-native speakers. He also reviewed in some detail the locations of population and ancient settlements in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, the important islands inhabited in the past, and some of the land population centers and their transportation routes. He devoted a chapter to further detailing the Elewa and its palm trees, extracting detailed statistics on its population and the number of palm trees. He concluded the book by describing 1,195 names and mentioning more than 3,500 geographical names in the form of a mini-dictionary of geographical names in the United Arab Emirates, illustrating these on maps. In this study, he was able to differentiate between known and lost place names, correct and weak, and selected those that were closest to the truth and farthest from doubt.