Sheikh Maktoum: Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid al-Maktoum, who has died probably of a heart attack aged 62, took over as ruler of Dubai in 1990 on the death of his father, Sheikh Rashid al-Maktoum.
As ruler of Dubai he maintained a relatively low profile, but like his two brothers, he became known in Ireland and Britain through a series of major investments in racing, a sport - and business - on which he would prove to have a major influence. By the time he died he had enjoyed many classic winners and owned a string of hundreds of thoroughbreds across the world.
Maktoum was the one to build on his father's heritage in Dubai, with one substantive difference: Maktoum was only interested in business, whereas his father had been as interested in the political machinations of the United Arab Emirates as in the economic transformation of Dubai.
The ruler of Dubai plays a key role in the UAE, a seven-member federation of emirates on the coast of the Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Each emirate has a separate ruler and, as Dubai's ruler, Maktoum was also vice-president and prime minister of the UAE.
He maintained a low profile, though, preferring to allow the UAE defence minister, his younger brother - and successor - Mohammed, to run the day-to-day affairs of Dubai. Maktoum was always seen as one of the old guard, unlike the go-getting Mohammed, the wheeler-dealer.
Maktoum had been content to hand over the territorial squabble between the UAE and Iran to the UAE president's office to deal with. He did however play an active role in UAE foreign affairs, and with the death of the federation president in 2004 he was fleetingly acting president.
And then there was horse racing, which led to the establishment of such events as the $4 million Dubai world cup.
His father had taken power in Dubai in the late 1950s, following a bloody family feud.
From his balmy majlis above the Dubai Creek, Rashid al-Maktoum would sit cross-legged and receive allcomers, from taxi-drivers to kings, guarded by a small loyal troop of aides with silver-plated Kalashnikovs. However from the 1970s, he transformed the UAE and was the catalyst behind its 40-year economic boom.
Maktoum was born in the family seat at Shindagha and studied under private tuition in Dubai before continuing his education at university in Britain. Like Rashid al-Maktoum's other sons, Hamdan, Mohammed and Ahmed, he was a powerful figure. All four were children of the same wife and part of a staggeringly entrepreneurial family. Its latest adventure has been to bid for P&O Shipping as part of a plan to make Dubai the leading nation in the passenger-shipping world.
The family has presided over efforts by Dubai to transform itself from a desert outpost into an economic hub for trade, finance, property and tourism.
Maktoum was a philanthropist, noted for his substantial donations both at home and in the Third World in the cause of people with disabilities. He had two sons, one of whom, Sheikh Sayed bin Maktoum, survives him and has been in charge of his father's property business. However, his younger son, Sheikh Hamdan bin Maktoum, died in a car crash two years ago.
In 1981, he bought the 41-hectare (100- acre) Gainsborough Stud just outside Newbury in Berkshire, which became the headquarters of a horse-breeding operation that extended to both Ireland and the United States. Wood Park Stud of 324 hectares (800 acres) in Co Meath was purchased from the de Burgh family in April 1989 and more recently, the 202-hectare (500-acre) Ballysheehan Stud was added to the Irish estate.
Kentucky became the home of Sheikh Maktoum's US interests. The magnificent Gainsborough Farm was built in 1984 in Versailles, near Lexington, while the more recent addition of Dubai Millennium Farm brought the total estate up to 810 hectares (2,000 acres).
Sheikh Maktoum also owned Gainsborough Stables in Newmarket, whose resident trainer was Ed Dunlop. He trained the filly Lailani to win the Irish Oaks for the emir in 2001. Sheikh Maktoum was also a partner with his brothers in Godolphin, under whose colours many of their horses now race. These include Shamardal, the winner of two French classics in 2005.
The sheikh was a man who really enjoyed his racing. Former jockey Joe Mercer, his racing manager, recalled: "He was a good winner and, more importantly in this game, a good loser." The late Michael Osborne, who managed his Kildangan Stud in Co Kildare for 20 years, once described the sheikh as "the most competitive person he had ever met in his life".
Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid al-Maktoum: born 1943; died January 4th, 2006