Doha Fort/Al Koot Fort

This guide to Doha Fort, also called Al Koot Fort, follows a Gulf outpost that began around 1880 as an Ottoman police post watching over nearby traders, then hardened into a jail by 1906. It traces the Ottomans' withdrawal around 1915 and the fort's silent decade before Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani rebuilt it in 1927, and pauses in its roofless courtyard mosque, built so a guard on the wall above could watch every prisoner at prayer.