**2. Results**

Through a heuristic approach and a comparative conclusion, cultural tourism potential for the sites is established, and important levels of integration, although asymmetric from a comparative viewpoint, were achieved. Further attention needs to be given to archaeological research and commodification.

The interdependencies between archaeological research and leisure have been studied for quite some time now and converge within the broad field of cultural tourism (Campbell 2004; Pinter 2005; Richards 2016; Walker and Carr 2016; Timothy and Tahan 2020). Religious heritage plays a defined role in this outline, from the perspective of pilgrimage, indeed of all sites that welcome tourists and, more specifically, of the ones that do no longer function as locations for worship (Nolan and Nolan 1992; Hernández Espinosa and Ontiveros 2020; Burgess 2021), which is the topic of this paper. The precise archaeological references to both temples under examination, one from the 1st–2nd centuries AD to an eastern Arabian deity and one Christian, dating from the 6th century, are provided below, but their integration in regional tourism development plans finds support in comparable case studies (Butler and Suntikul 2018; Scarce 2020; Chaddad 2021). Economic growth and archaeology are often perceived as mutually beneficial yet are not naturally aligned and do generate multiple colliding interests (Gould and Pyburn 2016), although edited volumes on capacity building (Srivastava 2021), local development (Girard and Nijkamp 2016),

**Citation:** De Man, Adriaan. 2022. Two Pre-Islamic Places of Worship in the Tourism Landscape of the UAE. *Religions* 13: 715. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/rel13080715

Academic Editors: Fátima Matos Silva, Isabel Borges and Helena Albuquerque

Received: 25 June 2022 Accepted: 4 August 2022 Published: 8 August 2022

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**Copyright:** © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

and place regeneration (Wise and Jimura 2021) offer wide-angle insights on benefits and opportunities for community-centered heritage tourism. The UAE is fertile in examples that simultaneously integrate dynamics common to the MENA region (Seyfi and Hall 2021) and others that are profoundly local, with regard to narratives on the use of architectural heritage (Auji 2022), historic building restoration (Somhegyi 2019), sustainable conservation practice (Best 2022) and their integration in cultural tourism proposals for specific local destinations (De Man 2018; Longart and Iankova 2022).

Ed-Dur is a major archaeological site in the emirate of Umm Al Quwain, with successive consistent occupations since the Bronze Age, but it is especially significant as an academic reference because of its classical development into a commercial coastal hub. The main excavated structure, and the core argument for a World Heritage inscription application, is a rectangular temple that was identified in and has been studied since the 1980s by a team from Ghent University, led by Ernie Haerinck, following initial joint seasons with other European teams (see Boucharlat et al. 1988, 1989). The prolific, multidisciplinary outputs from this Belgian mission (Haerinck et al. 1991; Haerinck 1992; Van Neer and Gautier 1993; Vrydaghs et al. 2001; Daems 2004; De Waele 2007; Rutten 2007, to mention just a few) and subsequent spinoff projects in the region by original and new team members (e.g., the excavations at Mleiha, now directed by Bruno Overlaet; e.g., Overlaet and Haerinck 2014; Overlaet 2015; Overlaet et al. 2016) remain fundamental as source material for the local domestic and defensive architecture, and indeed the material expression of this important classical settlement in which Roman, eastern Mediterranean, southern Mesopotamian, Iranian, and Indian imports from the first centuries BC and AD have been recovered. The temple itself is, in fact, a sanctuary to a solar deity and is about eight square meters, erected in large, well-cut stone and covered in a geometrically decorated gypsum (Figure 1). Several altars surround the temple, while combustion areas and hydraulic infrastructures are connected to it in some way, in addition to a funerary area (Haerinck 2011). A large Aramaic inscription identifies the deity Shamash, hence the attribution of the complex to this sun god, an observation strengthened by further architectural details and by the widespread evidence of solar cults in this Arabian region (perceptible through multiple coin emissions and a reference by Ptolemy to a sacred sun promontory, plausibly located just north of ed-Dur, see Potts 1991 and Groom 1986, respectively). In structural terms, the temple is a balanced result of superposed, well-cut ashlars with corner and entrance pillars, as well as plaster decorations, originally painted, including the addition of hemicylindrical imitations of columns and pedestals on each side of the monumental entrance, which would have supported statues (Haerinck et al. 1993; see Figure 2).

Despite its quasi-isodomic configuration, the temple lacks any foundations and is built directly on the sand. Precise ritual practices at ed-Dur have been subject to some speculation, given the lack of direct written or iconographic sources, with the exception of some local coinage and funerary epigraphy (Haerinck et al. 1998). Yet, as pointed out by Haerinck (2012), it seems fair to assume a tradition that links to the reality described in a 9thcentury source, the Kitab al-Asnam (Faris 1952), in which the adoration of idols is presented as ubiquitous in Arabia, and the process includes the circumambulation of temples, where stones representing deities, as well as animals, would be offered—a plausible interpretation for the many fireplaces, pebbles, stones, and altars around the temple of ed-Dur.

**Figure 1.** Temple of Shamash, at ed-Dur (Umm Al Quwain), during conservation works.

**Figure 2.** Entrance to the temple (note the pedestals and gypsum).

Sir Bani Yas is a small island just off the coast of the emirate of Abu Dhabi, in front of Al Dhannah, some 430 km southwest of Umm Al Quwain, in the direction of the Saudi border. The archaeological significance of the entire coastline was validated by a multiyear initiative, the Abu Dhabi Islands Archaeological Survey, or ADIAS, which identified thousands of sites during its operational period. Sir Bani Yas was one of the first surveyed islands, and its Christian structures were quickly recognized and published (King and Hellyer 1994). At

that point in time, a few Nestorian churches had already been identified in the northern Gulf area, as well as in Saudi Arabia, but not in the eastern parts of the Arabian Peninsula (King et al. 1995). Current archaeological systematizations have gathered more comprehensive data but still depend on local fieldwork. Subsequent research and Sir Bani Yas, partly through a geophysical survey (Kˇrivánek 1997) and partly through test trenches and open area excavation (Figure 3), defined the perimeter of a monastery containing a number of small units, interpreted as individual cells organized in blocs with their own cistern, and a church. This building follows a rather standard plan (central nave, two aisles, and a narthex). Architectural elasticity conferred by the stucco allowed for the creation of curved interior surfaces (niches, domes) and decorative elements, such as Greek and Latin crosses, geometric motifs, vine scrolls, and floral patterns (Elders 2003), which, together with radiocarbon and formal indicators, provide a 6th- to 7th-century chronology with some opportunity to establish constructive and abandonment phases (Carter 2008), fully aligned with the timeframe of the unsuccessful late antique attempts to evangelize the Arabian Gulf. The monastic nature of daily life is well reflected by very modest material culture, of which perhaps the glass fragments become most indicative (Phelps et al. 2018), in addition to some pottery provenance studies, which amplify the idea of Gulf-wide connections (Carter et al. 2011).

**Figure 3.** Aerial view of the Nestorian church, in the courtyard of the monastery at Sir Bani Yas, during excavation (2009).
