Qatar P-32 1 Riyal 2022｜dhow｜pearls

This note was also issued in 2020 and 2025 with the same design, signatures and without a marked date/year.

Front: Coat of arms, flag, door

Back: Dhow, pearls

Composition: Hybrid substrate

Before oil and gas… there were pearls…

Before oil, Qatar lived by the rhythm of the pearling dhows. Each summer, sleek wooden sambuks and jalboots slipped from Doha, Al-Wakrah, and Al-Khor toward the shallow banks of the Gulf, their lateen sails catching the shamal winds. Crews of divers and haulers worked in brutal heat, plunging on a single breath to harvest oysters whose natural pearls were among the finest in the world—small, luminous, often with a soft rose or silver orient prized in Bombay, Paris, and London. The dhow was not just a vessel but a floating economy: captain (nakhuda), divers (ghawwas), rope-men (saib), and boys keeping time with work songs. These voyages shaped Qatar’s society, poetry, and hierarchy, until cultured pearls and oil ended the era in the 1930s, leaving the dhow and the Gulf pearl as enduring symbols of a maritime civilization built on courage, rhythm, and light.