Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum has led the transformation of his realm from a drowsy fishing village to a tax-free business haven and world capital of glittering excess.

Source: National Geographic Magazine
There once was a sheikh who dreamed big. His realm, on the shores of the Persian Gulf, was a sleepy, sun-scorched village occupied by pearl divers, fishermen, and traders who docked their ramshackle dhows and fishing boats along a narrow creek that snaked through town. But where others saw only a brackish creek, this sheikh, Rashid bin Saeed al Maktoum, saw a highway to the world.

One day in 1959, he borrowed many millions of dollars from his oil-rich neighbor, Kuwait, to dredge the creek until it was wide and deep enough for ships. He built wharves and warehouses and planned for roads and schools and homes. Some thought he was mad, others just mistaken, but Sheikh Rashid believed in the power of new beginnings. Sometimes at dawn, with his young son, Mohammed, by his side, he’d walk the empty waterfront and paint his dream in the air with words and gestures. And it was, in the end, as he said. He built it, and they came.

His son, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, now rules Dubai, and around that creek has built towering dreams of his own, transforming the sunrise vision of his father into a floodlit, air-conditioned, skyscrapered fantasy world of a million people. With its Manhattan-style skyline, world-class port, and colossal, duty-free shopping malls, little Dubai now attracts more tourists than the whole of India, more shipping vessels than Singapore, and more foreign capital than many European countries. The people of 150 nations have moved here to live and work. Dubai has even built man-made islands—some in the shape of palm trees—to accommodate the wealthiest of them. Its economic growth rate, 16 percent, is nearly double that of China. Construction cranes punctuate the skyline like exclamation points.

Dubai is also a rare success story in the Middle East, a region with a history of failure and stagnation. Whether Dubai represents a glitzy anomaly or a model to be copied by other Arab nations is a question worth asking these days, as the Islamic world struggles to cope with modernization. Abdulrahman al Rashid, a Saudi journalist and director of the Al Arabiya news channel, put it this way: “Dubai is putting pressure on the rest of the Arab and Muslim world. People are beginning to ask their governments: If Dubai can do it, why can’t we?”

Dubai, it must be said, is like no other place on Earth. This is the world capital of living large; the air practically crackles with a volatile mix of excess and opportunity. It’s the kind of place where tennis stars Andre Agassi and Roger Federer play an exhibition match on the rooftop helipad of the opulent Burj al Arab megahotel; where diamond-encrusted cell phones do a brisk business at $10,000 apiece; where millions of people a year fly in just to go shopping.

The Desert

Dubai’s Sheikh Zayed Road was near-empty desert as recently as the early 1990s

Street of SkyScrapers

Today, eight lanes of traffic course between a mile (1.6 kilometers) of skyscrapers on Sheikh Zayed Road.

Towering Ambition

From the 44th floor of a skyscraper expected to become the world’s tallest building, Mohammad Ali Alabbar, CEO of Emaar Corporation, surveys Dubai’s downtown. Scheduled to be finished next year, Emaar’s Burj Dubai will contain apartments, offices, and an Armani hotel. For the past 30 years Dubai’s rulers have built big and fast, using oil money from the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf to turn a modest fishing port into a booming center of business, banking, trade, and real estate.

Eighth Wonder of the World

The Palm Jumeirah, a man-made island whose fronds offer beachfront lots for 4,000 villas and apartments, juts audaciously into the Persian Gulf. Dubbed the Eighth Wonder of the World, the development has doubled Dubai’s 45-mile (72 kilometers) shoreline, but has also disrupted its coastal ecosystem.

God Save the Queen

Waving the flag of St. George, patron saint of England, British expatriates celebrate St. George’s Day at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel with a boisterous evening of patriotic songs played by Her Majesty’s Royal Marine Band. High-paying jobs in construction and other industries have led professionals from Europe, the United States, and elsewhere to make their lives in Dubai. On the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum, unskilled guest workers from India and Pakistan labor at the city’s many building sites and sleep in crowded dormitories without electricity or running water.

Staying Afloat

For laborers at the bottom of the pay scale, such as these South Asian men taking a water taxi to work, life in Dubai can be drudgery.

The Other Side of Dubai

More than half of Dubai’s population lives in workers’ camps like this one, where South Asian men sleep in crowded dormitories that open onto standing sewage. Most owe money for the cost of their trip to Dubai. Many wait months for wages; some never see them.

Identity Crisis

Club-goers at a nightspot catering to expats break Muslim traditions by their revealing dress. Dubai’s meteoric success has left the city with a vexing problem: how to retain its identity.

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