Final Years
In 1999, while he hospitalized and undergoing a series of tests, the people of the UAE wrote him a personal thank-you letter with 1.5 million signatures. He underwent a kidney transplant in 2000 at the Cleveland Clinic in the U.S.
On 2 November 2004, Abu Dhabi TV announced that Zayed had passed away. He was believed to be 86 years old. He is buried in the courtyard of the new Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi.
His eldest son, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, born in 1948, took an increasing role in government beginning in the 1990s. Directly after his father's death, he was ratified as the Ruler of the United Arab Emirates by his fellow rulers on the Supreme Council.
Shaikh Zayed International Airport located in Rahim Yar Khan, Punjab, Pakistan is named in his honour. There is also a lecture theatre named in his honour at the London School of Economics. A local airport in the northern city of Kukës, in Albania, is named "Zayed Bin Sultan Al-Nahyan"
Read more about this topic: Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan
Famous quotes containing the words final and/or years:
“And then ... he flung open the door of my compartment, and ushered in “Ma young and lovely lady!” I muttered to myself with some bitterness. “And this is, of course, the opening scene of Vol. I. She is the Heroine. And I am one of those subordinate characters that only turn up when needed for the development of her destiny, and whose final appearance is outside the church, waiting to greet the Happy Pair!””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“In 1845 he built himself a small framed house on the shores of Walden Pond, and lived there two years alone, a life of labor and study. This action was quite native and fit for him. No one who knew him would tax him with affectation. He was more unlike his neighbors in his thought than in his action. As soon as he had exhausted himself that advantages of his solitude, he abandoned it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)