Umm Salal Muhammad Fort

Umm Salal Muhammad Fort lies in the village of Umm Salal Mohammed in the municipality of Umm Salal in Qatar. The municipality is also spelled as Umm Slal. It is not to be confused with the Barzan Towers, which is a set of two watch towers some 900 meters to the east, on the other side of the village.

This is not actually a fort but a complex of domestic fortified buildings. They were built by the village founder, Sheikh Mohammed bin Jassim Al Thani, around 1910, next to a date palm groove. Already in the 1970s the buildings were in ruins. I don't have any historical info about the complex.

I read that there should also be another tower to the north that, together with this fort and the Barzan Towers to the east, would form a defensive system guarding a low-lying area where water would accumulate after winter rains, but I was not able not find it.

The Umm Salal Muhammad Fort is private property and at the moment the site of a big redevelopment. The entire building site was fenced off and entry was of course strictly forbidden. Even photography wasn't allowed but I was able to snap a couple of shots through one of the building site's gates. It seems the fort's buildings have already been restored. A big pity, I would have liked to visit them up close.

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