Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi: Ruler of Sharjah, Historian and Patron of Culture

Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi is the Ruler of Sharjah and a member of the UAE Federal Supreme Council. This profile uses the UAE Cabinet and Sharjah government biographies and other published sources.

Early life and education

• He was born on 2 July 1939 in Sharjah and began school in 1948 at the Al-Islah Al-Qasimiya school.
• He graduated from the Faculty of Agriculture at Cairo University after settling in Cairo at the end of 1965.
• He holds a PhD in History from the University of Exeter (the Sharjah government gives the date as 10 May 1985) and a second PhD, in the geopolitics of the Gulf region, from Durham University.

Public office

He was appointed Minister of Education in the first UAE Cabinet after the federation was formed, and has been Ruler of Sharjah since 25 January 1972 and a member of the Federal Supreme Council since then. According to the King Faisal Prize biography, he is also chancellor of the University of Sharjah and the American University of Sharjah.

As an author and historian

His books include The Myth of Arab Piracy in the Gulf and The Gulf in Historic Maps: 1493–1931, which are cited as important references on the history of the Emirates, and an autobiography, My Early Life, covering the 29 years before he became Ruler. In the first, he argues that the nineteenth-century description of the Qawasim as pirates was used to justify British naval action. That is his thesis, which historians continue to discuss.

Culture and books

UNESCO named Sharjah its World Book Capital for 2019, in recognition of its efforts to promote reading, literacy and publishing, and officials credited the Ruler, according to Gulf News. Sharjah was also the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation’s Islamic Culture Capital in 2014. The King Faisal Prize site lists his honours.

What we could not confirm

Economic statistics on Sharjah’s diversification, foreign investment and cultural sector circulate widely but we could not trace them to a primary source. For figures, see the Sharjah Statistics Centre and the Sharjah Chamber of Commerce and Industry.