Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan

His brother, the ruler Shakhbut, appointed him governor of the Eastern Region (Al Ain) in 1946, and he administered it for twenty years. On 6 August 1966 Shakhbut was deposed and Zayed succeeded him as ruler of Abu Dhabi. ¹

Zayed led the negotiations that created the United Arab Emirates: the federation was proclaimed on 2 December 1971 and he was elected its first president, re-elected for successive terms until his death. Under him the oil wealth was directed to the development of the new state, and his well-known philanthropy reached beyond the Emirates. ¹

Sheikh Zayed died at Abu Dhabi on 2 November 2004 and was buried in the courtyard of the new Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi; his eldest son Khalifa bin Zayed succeeded him in Abu Dhabi and in the presidency. ^{1 2}

The Sunni reading rests on infoboxes alone: the English article's religion field reads "Sunni Islam" and the Arabic article's reads "Muslim Sunni" — two editions' structured values for one claim are a single source family, not two attestations; no text names a school for him, the Urdu stub's "Emirati Sunni Muslims" filing does not attest, and Wikidata's religion value is Islam only, so the structured family does not corroborate the branch there either. His school is therefore recorded as unknown, with the reading preserved here. No relations are written in his record: his father Sultan bin Zayed and his successor Khalifa bin Zayed have no museum records yet, and no group entity exists for the Al Nahyan family. ^{1 3 2}

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