This photograph of the bustling Abu Dhabi souq in the 1970s shows that while the supermarket may have largely replaced the market stall, the ritual of the weekend shop is as old as the nation.
But what constitutes the weekend? This week sees Saudi Arabia adopt Friday and Saturdays, in common with most of the Arab world, including Oman, which also swapped Thursday for Saturday as a day of leisure earlier this year. In the UAE the story is more complicated. Even before the unification of the seven emirates, the weekend constituted Fridays and Saturdays. Then, in the 1990s, the country switched to Thursdays, bringing it into line with Saudi Arabia.
The arrangement has a certain logic – the first day for family, the second day for God, but has the unfortunate effect of reducing the number of days business can be conducted with those parts of the world that take off Saturdays and Sundays, to just three days.
And so, on September 2, 2006, Saturdays became part of the weekend once more, with Thursday returning as a day of work.
* James Langton
