Ahlia University

Ahlia University (AU) is a private university located in the heart of Manama, Bahrain.

Established in 2001, Ahlia University was the first private university to be licensed by the Government of Bahrain. Ahlia University is an autonomous institution, independently chartered, funded and managed by the private sector. The programmes offered by AU are recognised by Bahrain’s Higher Education Council as well as by universities in the UK and USA.

The university was among the first Bahraini private universities to be recognised by the Kuwaiti Ministry of Higher Education. Ahlia University has five colleges: the college of arts and science, the college of business and finance, the college of engineering, the college of information technology and the college of medical and health sciences.

Published in hundreds of international journals, research has been carried out in subjects as diverse as "Women and the Politics of Military Confrontation" and "Building Knowledge Capacity for Sustainable Development in the Arab World".

The library includes 2.5 million e-journals, 40,000 e-books and 8,000 printed books and a partnership with King Hamad University Hospital allows physiotherapy students to work and study there.

Accessible via its own causeway, the university is located in Manama, the modern capital of the Arabian Gulf island nation of Bahrain and has been the centre of major trade routes. Its Bahrain National Museum showcases artefacts from the ancient Dilmun civilization that flourished in the region.

The city was rated the best city in the world to emigrate to in 2017, scoring highly in the getting settled index, with respondents saying they found it easy to get by without speaking Arabic, with the local people behaving in a welcoming fashion to foreign residents.