From humble beginnings to global heights: Sheikh Mohammed’s journey unveiled in new biography

Dubai’s development from an impoverished and under-developed trading port into a global city had taken place in Mohammed’s lifetime. Born into an adobe fort with no electricity or running water, he had seen his fair share of both booms and busts. From the boom generated by the city’s gold exporting trade in the 1960s through the petroleum-fuelled development of the early 1970s, the city encountered a huge impact as a result of the 1973 oil embargo.

Back on its fast-track path to growth, the Iran–Iraq War of the 1980s once again brought matters to a halt. It was a pattern repeated so often, it almost became routine; however, Dubai had continued to grow at a frenetic pace.

Emirates airline Chairman Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum observed: “Each time the world has been shaken, 11 September, the Great Recession, the Covid-19 pandemic, we have emerged. Sheikh Mohammed has a belief that Dubai’s best days are still to come.”

That conviction would be an invaluable asset in 2009. Amid Western media’s brutal personal attacks and efforts to write the city’s obituary, the spotlight had never been as focused on Mohammed. From the creditors that Dubai World sought to engage and the international investors who had ploughed billions into the emirate during those surging years, to ordinary families who had purchased property and the families who called Dubai home, there was now a burning question: what would Mohammed do?

For all the talk of his vision, and that of his father before him, Mohammed seemed to have finally bitten off more than he could chew. Pundits had long been waiting for this moment, when the man who had refused to think small and accept his limitations finally met the inevitable consequence of his ambition.

As so often before, they were to eat their words. Mohammed held firm, retrenched, minimised losses and regrouped. Alternative financing was put in place. Like his father Sheikh Rashid, Mohammed worked creatively to find sources of revenue and shore up the city’s cash flows.

Before oil wealth had transformed Sheikh Rashid’s city, accelerating his development plans, Rashid had managed to pull together loans and financing packages, leveraging revenues from the city’s fledgling state enterprises to fund his vision for the future of Dubai. Back in the 1960s, Rashid had introduced the first road toll in Dubai, selling little books of ten blue toll ‘chits’ which were used to cross Maktoum Bridge from Deira to Bur Dubai.

Now Mohammed was to benefit from the newly introduced ‘Salik’ road toll – and revenue from state enterprises like Emirates and DP World that were gigantic compared to Rashid’s startups. When Mohammed inaugurated the 828-metre Burj Khalifa in 2010, it provided a useful metaphor for his belief in positivity and the power of hope to triumph in a region of the world all too used to conflict and despair.

Viewed by the ever-present critics as a vanity project, the Burj Khalifa was conceived not only to put Dubai on the global map but also to form the iconic core of a $20bn real estate development. Today, properties with a view of the Burj sell and rent at a handsome premium, and tourists flock to the hotels, restaurants, stores and attractions anchored by the futuristic tower at the core of the area of Dubai known as Downtown.

Throughout the financial crisis, Dubai’s institutions were quietly strengthened, lessons learned. The real estate sector was brought under tighter regulation, reforms instituted across trade and finance. The transport and communications infrastructure, stretched to breaking point over the boom years before 2008, was steadily enhanced. Dubai launched its metro rail network; new roads were constructed.

As the city emerged from a painful global recession, Mohammed’s unshakeable faith in the future seemed less an act of denial than one of prescience and vision. In hindsight, his confidence can be judged by the results that followed. In the past decade and more, Dubai has emerged as one of the world’s most futuristic cities, a place where millions of people from over 195 countries live, work, learn and play in an environment of security, prosperity and tolerance.

With the city home to multinationals, startups, unicorns, research hubs and space centres, Dubai attracts top talent and supports a vast number of global enterprises. Enjoying world-class healthcare, educational institutions and unparalleled leisure facilities, millions of people from around the world have made the city their home and found new opportunities awaiting them and their young families. They have helped to shape Dubai as a truly global city.

Time and again throughout the turbulent years since his birth in 1949, Mohammed has been advised to set his sights lower, to temper his ambition. Told it can’t be done. That it is impossible. Time and again, he has charted his own course and led his people to remarkable achievements. Restless, driven and even relentless, his drive for development and progress has seen his personality stamped on his city and his nation.

This is his story.