My trip to the Iftar Cannons of the seven emirates!
- bfqazi
- Jul 15, 2019
- 11 min read
The Middle East (as with any other part of the world) is full of seemingly endless cultural traditions, one of which is the firing of the "Iftar Cannon". In the holy month of Ramadan Muslims around the world fast from dawn till dusk every day for all thirty days. Nowadays thanks to the implementation of special moon sighting committees and other religious programs that keep the time and inform people of important events, knowing when to break the fast is as easy as humanly possible. Even many non-Muslims know the timings and understand the rules associated with Ramadan, but back in the olden days (especially in the Middle East) there were not that many big committees, nor any way to easily spread those committees' findings. You were lucky to have electricity in your house much less internet or any other significant means of connecting to the outside world. So instead in many Middle Eastern countries (especially in the more remote areas) officials would fire cannons when the time to break the fast arrived (which I will refer to as the "athan" or call to prayer), as well as at the announcement of the start and end of the month. At the time this was a practical and important way of "spreading the news" but now it has continued on as a traditional activity that holds a fair amount of cultural and religious significance.
For the longest time every emirate in the UAE had its own cannon/s except, of course, for our very own Ras Al Khaimah (RAK). However this year (2019) at long last RAK has taken on the tradition and we now finally have an "Iftar Cannon" in all seven emirates. I personally have been intrigued by the whole cannon idea for a long time, so when the final emirate got one, the most logical thing to do was go see all of them! Now before I start I do want to say, as you might expect, this post is a bit different in a few ways than my others. For one it's several different locations, so instead of talking in depth about each emirate, I will instead try to speak briefly about each one, and then sum up my experience with them all together. Also I won't be including the cannons' locations at the start as I usually would, instead I will replace the "Want some more information about this place?" with every cannon location I know of in each emirate. A few of these locations were hard to find and I wouldn't be completely surprised if a couple of them change over the years, but I am hopeful that at least the more central ones will stick around. With all that said let's get into the "journey".
So the way I decided to go at these cannons was from north to south, and for those of you who don't know the UAE's make up, that means first RAK, then Um Al Quwain (UAQ), Ajman, Sharjah, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi. Unlike all the other emirates Fujairah is on the east coast so I chose to squeeze it in between UAQ and Ajman. Also Ajman technically isn't before Sharjah, it's instead in the middle completely surrounded by Sharjah, but all the cannons we went to see were in the emirates' main cities, and Sharjah's main city is under Ajman's, so Ajman comes first. If you are confused (which is almost definite) don't worry, I'll throw in a map so the mess I just wrote might make a bit more sense.
So first off was our very own RAK, as you already know RAK only has one cannon location so that's the one we went to. Some emirates have local police fire the cannon while others employ the military to do the job. In RAK's case the military is called in to fire the cannon, so four people pull up in old WWII era jeeps pulling the cannon (that dates back to the British occupation) behind them. The soldiers can be distinguished from other emirates' local police by their old military ceremonial clothes; basically if they are wearing orange they're from the military. As you will soon see, not all the emirates follow the same protocol, nor do they go through the same ceremonial procedures (although RAK was my second favorite). In RAK the military/police (or as I like to call them "cannon boys") get to the spot about fifteen minutes before the time to break the fast. They set up the cannon and then chit chat for the next ten-or-so minutes until about five minutes before the athan (again: "call to prayer"). Once this time arrives they group up and the leader yells out orders in Arabic to first "march to the cannon", then "load the cannon", then "get ready", and finally "fire". Those of course are all rough translations, but you get the idea. After the cannon is fired and the smoke clears the shell is ejected and the cannon boys sit down to break the fast.
The next emirate was UAQ. Now I am not one to judge, and I ain't sayin' that the lovely emirate of UAQ isn't an awesome place, let's just say: going into it, I wasn't expecting much from them. However I will say that it was my third favorite emirate so clearly they didn't do too bad (at least by my standards). Like RAK, UAQ uses the military as their cannon boys so they have the same traditional orange uniform. We weren't sure at first whether or not UAQ would even have a cannon (I'm sorry, again I'm not judging) especially because we couldn't really find any mention of one on any websites. Luckily though I and my family know a fair amount of Arabic, so I thought since it was such a local tradition, maybe I would have more luck checking the Arabic side of the internet. Sure enough I came across several articles talking about the cannons in the UAE and a couple of them did mention one cannon in UAQ. So going completely off of these Arabic websites we went looking for the cannon and we almost didn't find it. The cannon did end up being where the article said it would, but it came later than us and so when at first we didn't see it we ended up driving around aimlessly. Even when we stopped and asked locals they all said there was no cannon. As a last attempt before we gave up we decided to pass by the original spot that the website mentioned and sure enough there were the cannon boys. I wouldn't say they were late, more like we were too early, so no blame on them as far as I'm concerned. The cannon boys were very nice in UAQ they let me get lots of pictures and after they fired the cannon they even came and offered us some food to break our fasts with.
The next cannon on the list was in Fujairah, and it counts as my fifth favorite. The cannon boys in Fujairah were from the local police but they still took the time to wear a traditional dress that was similar to the orange ones the military wore. Only difference being that the uniforms Fujairah used were blue instead of orange, and I'm sure there were a handful of design differences as well. I had been to the Fujairah cannon last year so it was a somewhat familiar sight, same location, same cannon, and same procedure. There was a quiz show for kids just before the cannon fired, that was being recorded live for Fujairah's local tv channel. I thought the little marching commands and stuff that the cannon boys in Fujairah did were interesting, and even better than some emirates. However the cannon they used was not a WWII left-over like the first two emirates, but it was instead a fake cannon, that was made just for show, so it didn't have as much oomph.
The fourth cannon was to be located in the smallest of the emirates (purely in terms of size), Ajman. Although Ajman is so small, it is wedged in the middle of Sharjah city (as I previously mentioned), which you might know is one of the most crowded "urban" cities in the UAE. I am mentioning this for context about the fact that almost all of Ajman is just one bit of the urban jungle that continues into Sharjah. Ajman's cannon makes it into sixth place for me, because of several reasons: first, its cannon boys are local police and unlike in Fujairah, they were not interested in putting on a show. Second, like Fujairah, Ajman did not have a WWII leftover so they also just had a tiny "show cannon" that removed some of the thrill. Thirdly, as I sort of mentioned at first, the cannon boys were not interested in entertaining, they did not wear any special uniform, they just kept their regular police uniforms. We did get there a bit late so we might have missed whatever marching they did but just judging by their whole body language, I'm guessing they probably didn't do very much if anything.
Fifth on the list is Sharjah. Now Sharjah has about eighty nine million cannons (or ten), so the challenge wasn't to figure out if there was a cannon, but instead which one to go to (we went to the Sharjah Cultural Palace). I'm sorry to say that Sharjah lands in seventh place for me because it was just the worst overall experience. Mostly just because, like in Ajman, the cannon boys in Sharjah just didn't seem to care about the whole thing. They got there just five or so minutes before the athan (super late compared to the other places), they just wore basic police uniforms, they didn't do any marching show of any kind, they barely seemed to even acknowledge the fact that people were eagerly watching, and they had another "play cannon" that had a bit more oomph than Ajman's, but was still underwhelming (to me).
Number six on this cannon-sighting expedition was the world famous, fully modernized, tourist jammed, urban jungle, known as Dubai. Like Sharjah, Dubai has several cannon locations (although not quite as many), which made choosing one kinda difficult since they were all placed in such good spots. Also if you haven't already guessed from the praising tone that I have been using in this paragraph, Dubai rests comfortably at the top of my list, in terms of overall enjoyment by mua. At the cannon we went to (in Jumeirah) the location was very pleasant, removed from the hustle and bustle of the city streets. The cannon they had was a WWII leftover so it had the "BOOM" that I was looking for, which is just one small pro. The cannon boys were local police, but like in Fujairah, they had proper ceremonial uniforms that were brown in color. However most important of all (for me) was the fact that the cannon boys were not there to fire a cannon, they were there to put on a show. They were at the place long before the athan, talking to people, taking pictures, and explaining the procedure to tourists. By that same token when the time to fire drew near they got in formation and the leader yelled out marching orders with a vigor that is almost indescribable, and a far cry from the tired mumbles of Ajman and Sharjah. They went through a long set of orders and movements that lasted longer than any other emirate, and when the the time came, for whatever reason, the oomph that their cannon created made my heart catapult, and even deafened my right ear.
Now we reach the finale of the emirates, way down in the south, covering more than half of the UAE, and containing the capital city -- Abu Dhabi. Obviously if you've been paying any attention this whole time you'll be able to surmise that there is only one place left on my ranking list, which is fourth place, so that is where Abu Dhabi falls. Abu Dhabi also has several cannon locations, although surprisingly not as many as Sharjah, but when deciding which one to visit, there was no question that we were going to the one at the Qasr Al Hosn building, the reason being that we used to go there for classes way back when, while we were still living in Abu Dhabi, and it had been a considerable time since we had gone back to visit. The place had been upgraded since we were last there and since it is a "center for the arts" many of the new add-ons and the scenery in general were very modern and awe inspiring. In short the venue was to put it bluntly, beautiful, so before we even saw the cannon boys go to work we were already quite enthralled. Speaking of the cannon boys the ones in Abu Dhabi were immediately familiar to us because like in UAQ and RAK, they were from the military. Seeing those orange uniforms, we knew that we were going to get a pretty good performance, similar to the ones in RAK and UAQ, and that we did.
With that our journey comes to a close. If you have watched or will watch the video that comes out with this post then you will already have heard me droning about how much this post mattered to me. For that reason I don't want to blabber so much in text form as well, but I just have to say that I have been wanting to do something like this, with the iftar cannons, for a while. Especially since I am moving to the States this year it was just so nice to do something so quintessentially Middle Eastern, and I just had an absolute blast going around and making memories in the country I have grown up in. So I hope all of you have enjoyed this post or should I say "saga", and I will try my absolute best to include all the cannon locations I have heard or read about at the end of this post. As I mentioned before, I can't promise that all of the locations I list will still be around next year or any year after that, but I do hope you guys can make it to at least one or two of them, and if you do, say hi to the cannon boys for me. Thanks for reading and I'll see you all here for my next post.
Here are all the cannon locations that I have heard of, read about, or already know about, in each emirate, as of 2019 (if you need some more help, feel free to email me and I might be able to assist):
Ras Al Khaimah:
#1 On the corniche, under the big flag, near the Sheikh Zayid Mosque.
Um Al Quwain:
#1 At the Sheikh Zayid Mosque, in the parking lot.
Fujairah:
#1 At the new Sheikh Zayid Mosque, behind the Al Meshwar Restaurant.
Ajman:
#1 At the Sheikh Rashed Bin Humaid Al Nuaimi Mosque, on 1 Al Zahir st.
#2 Outside the old rulers palace, (maybe Ajman Museum, maybe Ajman Fort)
Sharjah:
#1 At the Sharjah Cultural Palace, facing the big roundabout.
#4 Near the Al Noor Mosque, at the Sharjah Waterfront.
#5 In the Al Mirgab area.
#6 At the Majlis Mughaider, in Al Talla.
#7 At Bukhari Mosque, on the Khorfakkan Corniche.
#8 At the Tarif Mosque, in the Kalba area.
#9 At the Shaikh Rashid Bin Ahmad Al Qasimi Mosque, in Dibba Al Hisn.
#10 Near the Al Dhaid police station.
Dubai:
#1 At the Zayed Bin Mohammad Centre, in Al Mizhar.
#2 At the Eid prayer grounds, in the Al Mankhool area, (sometimes called the Karma prayer grounds).
#3 On Fort Island, outside Mina Al Salam, in Madinat Jumeirah.
#4 At the Burj Khalifa, Near Dubai mall.
#5 At the Al Baraha Eid prayer grounds, near the Diera area.
#6 At the Dubai City Walk.
Abu Dhabi:
#1 At the Qasr Al Hosn, near the Abu Dhabi Culture and Heritage Foundation.
#2 Right outside the Shiekh zayid Mosque, (there is a tour available beforehand).
#3 Somewhere In the Zakhir area of Al Ain city, probably near a mosque.
#4 At the Al Jahili Fort, in Al Ain city.
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