For thousands of years Qatar
was almost unnoticed backwater, often overshadowed by its greener
When inhabited, its people were poor. Bedouin
struggled to scrape a living from a hard and unforgiving desert,
and raiding was a way of life for the desert nomads.
The settled people spent hard summers diving for pearls - a dangerous enterprise which meant lives lost every year. Sometimes pearl diving meant a profit, but in bad years the divers ended up in debt.
It was the discovery of oil in 1939 that would lead to a change in the country's fortunes - but not until after the second world had taken place. Drilling began in 1947, and the first oil was exported from Messaieed in 1949.
In the 1970's a third discovery was made - the world's largest non-associated Natural Gas field in the world. It is this combination which means Qatar, when taking into account only its native population and not the 1.3 million expatriates living in the country, is now the richest country on Earth.