A large town thrives in about 500 BCE at Wusail, some twenty kilometers north of present Doha (also seen as Ad Dawhah).

The Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the early fifth century BCE, refers to the seafaring Canaanites as the original inhabitants of Qatar.

The influential Greek geographer Ptolemy, active in second century CE in Alexandria, shows in his map of the Arab world a town that scholars believe to be a forerunner to the present Qatari town of Zubarah.