Purple Island

Purple Island — Where Mangroves Hide a 4,000-Year-Old Secret An hour north of Doha, near Al Khor, a small island rises from salt marshes and mangroves. Its name comes from a 2,000 BC purple-dye industry that once thrived here, extracted from murex snails — a colour historically reserved for royalty . Today, Purple Island is Qatar’s quiet wild side: flamingos drifting at low tide, crabs scuttling across exposed roots, and a wooden footbridge leading kayakers into green-canopied channels. History, nature, and silence — all in one tide.

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