Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates)

Abu Zaby

Last modified: 2013-12-29 by zoltán horváth
Keywords: abu dhabi | united arab emirates | emirates heritage club |
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1:2
image by Željko Heimer

• Description
• Civil and Air Ensigns
• Ensign until 1958
• Flag until c.1968
• Flag c.1899-c.1901
• United Arab Emirates University
• Judicial Flag of Abu Dhabi

• United Arab Emirates

Description

A red flag with a white canton, a variant of the no. 1 flag described in the General Maritime Treaty 1820.
Santiago Dotor, 18 April 2001

Red flag with white canton, width 1/3 of the hoist, length 1/3 of fly. Source: Album des Pavillons (2000). A note explains that this flag is often replaced with the Union flag.
Željko Heimer, 31 July 2001

The construction details given by the Album 2000 and quoted by Željko are correct according to The "Flag Law for the Year 1969" (Law No. 1 of 1969), published in Official Gazette No. 1 of January 1969:

Article 3:
The flag shall consist of the colours white and red, and it shall be rectangular in shape so that its length equals double its width.
Article 4:
The white colour shall be at the upper part of the right side of the flag as shown in the diagram,
Article 5:
The proportions of the length and width of the white colour to those of the red shall be as shown in the diagram provided that this does not effect the total stipulated length and width of the flag.

The diagram mentioned above shows a flag with the canton on the right in the Islamic manner - a canton which occupies one-third of the width by one-third of the length.
Christopher Southworth, 6 June 2004

Just arrived in Abu Dhabi and was quite interested to see that the Abu Dhabi flag is nowhere to be seen outside of the Emirate's crest. The UAE flag is is everywhere.
Ruppert Baird, 13 January 2013

Civil and Air Ensigns

I believe the current emirates have civil ensigns. I have the civil ensign and the air ensign of Abu Dhabi.
Jaume Ollé, 14 June 1999

Ensign until 1958

1:3 image by Santiago Dotor

Santiago Dotor asked, "when did Abu Dhabi reduce its hoist stripe to a canton?". In 1958, at first at sea. On land the flag was still plain red. Only later the plain flag was abolished for the canton-flag. But I still do not know when, might be around 1968.
Ralf Stelter, 20 April 2001

1:3 image by Santiago Dotor

1:2? image by Christian Berghänel, 19 October 2002

I am still researching the history of the Arab Emirates' flags. One of the unsolved questions is what did the green flag of Abu Dhabi (used for about ten years) look like.
Ralf Stelter, 19 April 2001

A plate from the Flag Research Center's Corpus Vexillorum Mundi (CVM): National Flags issued in 1986 deals with the green flag of Abu Dhabi:

The color plate CVM 00007 represents the national flag at sea (also presumably used on land) of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, a semi-independent state protected by the United Kingdom, as displayed no earlier than October 1899 until approximately October 1901. This flag is documented in Lorimer's Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Volume I, Part I, p. 744, and the historical précis of the Indian Government prepared in 1906 by Mr. Saldanha.

image by Santiago Tazón

In January 2002 I spent a week in the United Arab Emirates. I saw the flag of the United Arab Emirates University, placed in Al-Ain (Abu Dhabi).
Santiago Tazón, 6 February 2002

The seal of the United Arab Emirates University, which can be found at www.uaeu.ac.ae, features the flag of the UAE very prominently; two UAE flags form the framework of the seal, extending from the base to an open space partially filled by a shield at the top.
Ron Lahav, 1 December 2005

Judicial Flag of Abu Dhabi

image by Eugene Ipavec, 02 December 2009

While one never sees the Abu Dhabi flag flown in the emirate, only the national flag, its image is seem everywhere, since the crest of the Abu Dhabi government/municipality consists of two crossed Abu Dhabi  flags on spears together with a falcon. This crest appears on everything from bus stops to the entrance to the public beach. A similar crest appears on a flag flown by the emirate's judicial department, this time including judicial scales. I don't have a very good shot of that, but I attach the best one I have, together with a shot from the outside of the judicial department building showing the crest in better detail.
Martyn Cornell, 18 November 2009