Qal'a means fort, and the site gets its name from a Portuguese fort on top of the mound or tell. A tell is an artificial mound created by many successive layers of human occupation. The strata of this 300m by 600m tell show continuous human presence from approximately 2300 B.C. to the 16th century A.D. It was the capital of the ancient civilization of the Dilmun.
Lynn Salmon <>{ Last Updated: August 25, 2009