RAF sketch map of the Qatar Peninsula Al Kharsaah

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

Qatar Qatar (, ; ar, قطر, Qaṭar ; local vernacular pronunciation: ), officially the State of Qatar,) is a country in Western Asia. It occupies the Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it sh ...

located in the

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

Al-Shahaniya Al Shahaniya ( ar, الشحانية, Ash Shīḩānīyah) is a municipality (3299 km2) in Qatar, with its municipal seat has a city of the same name (39 km2). Formerly in the municipality of Al Rayyan, but now an independent municipali ...

, approximately 80 km west of the capital

Doha Doha ( ar, الدوحة, ad-Dawḥa or ''ad-Dōḥa'') 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, it is home to most of the coun ...

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

Umm Bab Umm Bab ( ar, أم باب) is a settlement in Qatar, located in the municipality of Al-Shahaniya. It used to be part of the Al Rayyan municipality and before that was administered by Al Jemailiya municipality before the latter was incorporated in ...

and Umm Taqa. It hosts a stage of the

Qatar International Rally The Qatar International Rally (known previously as Qatar Rally, also known as International Rally of Qatar) is an international rally racing event held near the Qatari capital Doha. The rally, a gravel and sand event, dates back into the 1970s and ...

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 an ...

'', 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 nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. The Bedouin originated in the Syrian Desert and A ...

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 physical consequences and have been found to regularly occur in planetary systems, though the most frequent involve asteroids, comets or m ...

, 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. The Qatar Electricity and Water Company (QEWC) designated land in Al Kharsaah for a major

solar power Solar power is the conversion of energy from sunlight into electricity, either directly using photovoltaics (PV) or indirectly using concentrated solar power. Photovoltaic cells convert light into an electric current using the photovoltaic e ...

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