Dafalas is recorded in this encyclopedia from the source named below.
Overview
Dafalas (Arabic: ديرة دفالس, romanized: Dīrat Dafalas) is a small agricultural and livestock village, located in the northeast of United Arab Emirates (UAE), in the Hajar Mountains, Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah, very close to the border with Oman. The village is located at the head of the Wadi Barut, tributary of the Wadi Ghalilah, at an approximate average altitude of 1,312 m (4,304 ft), and extends along a small plateau on the northern slope of the Jabal Ar Rahrah (1,691 m (5,548 ft)), highest mountain in the Emirates, located entirely within its territory. One of the arms of the upper course of the Wadi Barut passes through the village of Dafalas, draining a part of the waters that descend from the Jabal Ar Rahrah Ridge. This mountain ridge, almost 11 km (6.8 mi) long, delimits the drainage divide between the waters that flow into Wadi Ghalilah, Wadi Rahabah, Wadi Bakhit, and other smaller wadis that flow into the Persian Gulf, and those that flow into Wadi Shah or Wadi Shehah and its tributaries, and which contains, among other peaks, the Jabal Shintal (1,435 m (4,708 ft)), the Jabal Rahabah (1,543 m (5,062 ft)) and the Jabal Naqat (900 m (3,000 ft)). The village has 30 houses approximately, many of them renovated in a traditional style, and others in the construction phase. Dafalas has electricity and a drinking water supply, through a power line and a system of water pumping tanks, which arrives from the Wadi Ghalilah; this has facilitated the number of permanent residents in the locality to be much higher than in other mountain villages in the area. There are also numerous terraces intended for the cultivation of wheat and barley, corrals, and several tanks and small canals intended to collect runoff water, and direct it towards cisterns and crop areas. The livestock herd, made up mainly of goats, is very numerous. Dafalas can only be accessed by walking or with donkeys, for which there are two trails and donkey paths.
Source and reuse
The descriptive text above is drawn from the English-language encyclopedia article Dafalas, reused under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence and attributed in the sources block on this page. Figures in the infobox come from Wikidata and carry that project's own provenance; they should be checked against the cited source before being relied on.
Editorial note
This record is a sourced summary, not original research. Where the underlying material is silent on a point, this article is silent too. Last reviewed 2026-09-23.