RAF sketch map of the Qatar Peninsula Al Kharsaah

Al Kharsaah (; also spelled ''Al Khuraisa'') is a village in

Qatar Qatar, officially the State of Qatar, is a country in West Asia. It occupies the Geography of Qatar, Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it shares Qatar–Saudi Arabia border, its sole land b ...

located in the

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality' ...

Al-Shahaniya Al Shahaniya () is a municipality (3299 km2) in Qatar, with its municipal seat being a city of the Al-Shahaniya (city), same name (39 km2). Formerly in the municipalities of Qatar, municipality of Al Rayyan, but now an independent munic ...

, approximately 80 km west of the capital

Doha Doha ( ) is the capital city and main financial hub of Qatar. Located on the Persian Gulf coast in the east of the country, north of Al Wakrah and south of Al Khor (city), Al Khor and Lusail, it is home to most of the country's population. It ...

. Nearby areas include Umm Washah, Umm Al-Jaljam,

Umm Bab Umm Bab () is a settlement in Qatar, located in the municipality of Al-Shahaniya. It used to be part of the Al Rayyan municipality and prior to that part of Al Jemailiya municipality before the latter was incorporated into Al Rayyan. Umm Bab is w ...

and Umm Taqa. It hosts a stage of the Qatar International Rally.

History

In 1908, J.G. Lorimer documented Al Kharsaah in his ''

Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf The ''Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia'' (nicknamed ''Lorimer'') is a two-volume encyclopedia compiled by John Gordon Lorimer. The ''Gazetteer'' was published in secret by the British government in India in 1908 and 1915 a ...

'', giving its location as "11 miles north-east of the foot of Dohat as-Salwa and 6 from the west coast". He refers to it as a

Bedouin The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu ( ; , singular ) are pastorally nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia (Iraq). The Bedouin originated in the Sy ...

camping ground and notes that there is good water at 18 fathoms in a masonry well.

Geography

Al Kharsaah has a very low elevation and there is a small amount of vegetation. Locals speculate that the area was the site of a

meteorite impact An impact event is a collision between astronomical objects causing measurable effects. Impact events have been found to regularly occur in planetary systems, though the most frequent involve asteroids, comets or meteoroids and have minimal eff ...

, owing to its low elevation and rough surface. However, Qatari geologists believe that the area was once a large cave, but that natural factors caused the ceiling of the cave to collapse.

Infrastructure

The village has 30 houses, half of which are inhabited full-time, and the other half of which are inhabited only on the weekends by locals who spend most of their time in Doha. Public services are limited. There are two primary schools; one for boys and one for girls. In July 1985, the government announced it had begun a campaign to distribute fresh water to rural villages in Qatar suffering from water shortages. As part of this campaign, QAR 5,000 was allocated towards water distribution in Al Kharsaah. The Qatar Electricity and Water Company (QEWC) designated land in Al Kharsaah for a major

solar power Solar power, also known as solar electricity, is the conversion of energy from sunlight into electricity, either directly using photovoltaics (PV) or indirectly using concentrated solar power. Solar panels use the photovoltaic effect to c ...

project in 2017. As part of the project, a solar power plant with a production capacity of 500 MW was planned to be inaugurated by 2020. Costs of the projects were predicted to be upwards of $500 million. The plant was commissioned in October 2022 with a nameplate capacity of 800 MW as Qatar's first large solar plant.

External links

Al Kharsaah at placesmap.net

References

Populated places in Al-Shahaniya {{Qatar-geo-stub