Arabian Peninsula
The Arabian Peninsula, or simply Arabia, is a peninsula in West Asia, situated north-east of Africa on the Arabian plate. At, comparable in size to India, the Arabian Peninsula is the largest peninsula in the world.
Geographically, the Arabian Peninsula comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, as well as southern Iraq and Jordan. The largest of these is Saudi Arabia. In ancient antiquity, particularly from the 9th century BC to the 7th century AD, the Sinai Peninsula was also considered a part of Arabia.
The Arabian Peninsula formed as a result of the rifting of the Red Sea between 56 and 23 million years ago, and is bordered by the Red Sea to the west and south-west, the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman to the north-east, the Levant and Mesopotamia to the north and the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean to the south-east. The peninsula plays a critical geopolitical role in the Arab world and globally due to its vast reserves of oil and natural gas.
The era of human settlement in the Arabian Peninsula predating any systematic written records is known as Prehistoric Arabia. The period of Arabian history beginning with the appearance of systematic records, until the rise of Islam, is known as Pre-Islamic Arabia. In the medieval Islamic period, geographers divided the Peninsula into four main regions: the Central Plateau, South Arabia, Al-Bahrain, and the Hejaz.
Etymology
In antiquity, the term "Arabia" encompassed a larger area than the current term "Arabian Peninsula" and included the Arabian Desert and large parts of the Syrian–Arabian desert. During the Hellenistic period, the area was known as Arabia. The Romans named three regions "Arabia":- Arabia Petraea : it consisted of the former Nabataean Kingdom in the southern Levant, the Sinai Peninsula and north-western Arabian Peninsula. It was the only one that became a province, with Petra as its capital.
- Arabia Deserta : signified the desert lands of Arabia. As a name for the region, it remained popular into the 19th and 20th centuries, and was used in Charles M. Doughty's Travels in Arabia Deserta.
- Arabia Felix : was used by geographers to describe the southern part of the Arabian peninsula, mostly what is now Yemen, which enjoys more rainfall, is much greener than the rest of the peninsula and has long enjoyed much more productive fields.
Arabians used a north–south division of Arabia: ash-Sham vs. al-Yaman, or Arabia Deserta vs. Arabia Felix. Arabia Felix had originally been used for the whole peninsula, and at other times only for the southern region. Because its use became limited to the south, the whole peninsula was simply called Arabia. Arabia Deserta was the entire desert region extending north from Arabia Felix to Palmyra and the Euphrates, including all the area between Pelusium on the Nile and Babylon. This area was also called Arabia and not sharply distinguished from the peninsula.
The Arabs and the Ottoman Empire considered the west of the Arabian Peninsula region where the Arabs lived 'the land of the Arabs'—billad al-'Arab, and its major divisions were the bilad al-Sham, bilad al-Yaman, and bilad al-'Iraq. The Ottomans used the term Arabistan in a broad sense for the region starting from Cilicia, where the Euphrates river makes its descent into Syria, through Palestine, and on through the remainder of the Sinai and Arabian peninsulas.
The provinces of Arabia were: al-Tih, the Sinai peninsula, Hejaz, Asir, Yemen, Hadramaut, Mahra and Shilu, Oman, Hasa, Bahrain, Dahna, Nufud, the Hammad, which included the deserts of Syria, Mesopotamia and Babylonia.
Geography
The Arabian Peninsula is located in the continent of Asia and is bounded by the Persian Gulf on the north-east, the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman on the east, the Arabian Sea on the south-east, the Gulf of Aden, and the Guardafui Channel on the south, and the Bab-el-Mandeb strait on the south-west and the Red Sea, which is located on the south-west and west. The northern portion of the peninsula merges with the Syrian Desert with no clear borderline, although the northern boundary of the peninsula is generally considered to be the northern borders of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, also southern regions of Iraq and Jordan.The most prominent feature of the peninsula is desert, but in the south-west, there are mountain ranges, which receive greater rainfall than the rest of the peninsula. Harrat ash Shaam is a large volcanic field that extends from north-western Arabia into Jordan and southern Syria.
Political boundaries
The Peninsula's constituent countries are Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates on the east, Oman on the south-east, Yemen on the south, and Saudi Arabia at the center. The island country of Bahrain lies just off the east coast of the Peninsula. Due to Yemen's jurisdiction over the Socotra Archipelago, the Peninsula's geopolitical outline faces the Guardafui Channel and the Somali Sea to the south.The six countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE form the Gulf Cooperation Council.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia covers the greater part of the Peninsula. The Peninsula contains the world's largest reserves of oil. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are economically the wealthiest in the region. Qatar, the only peninsular country in the Persian Gulf on the larger peninsula, is home to the Arabic television station Al Jazeera and its English-language subsidiary Al Jazeera English. Kuwait, on the border with Iraq, is an important country strategically, forming one of the main staging grounds for coalition forces mounting the United States–led 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Population
Despite its historically sparse population, political Arabia stands out for its rapid population growth, driven by both significant inflows of migrant labor and persistently high birth rates. The population is characterized by its relative youth and a heavily skewed gender ratio favoring males. In several states, the number of South Asians surpasses that of the native population. The four smallest states, with coastlines entirely bordering the Persian Gulf, showcase the world's most extreme population growth, nearly tripling every two decades. In 2014, the estimated population of the Arabian Peninsula was 77,983,936. The Arabian Peninsula is known for having one of the most uneven adult sex ratios in the world, with females in some regions constituting only a quarter of people aged between 20 and 40.Cities
The ten most populous cities on the Arabian Peninsula are:Landscape
The rocks exposed vary systematically across Arabia, with the oldest rocks exposed in the Arabian-Nubian Shield near the Red Sea, overlain by earlier sediments that become younger towards the Persian Gulf. Perhaps the best-preserved ophiolite on Earth, the Semail Ophiolite, lies exposed in the mountains of the UAE and northern Oman.The peninsula consists of:
- A central plateau, the Najd, with fertile valleys and pastures used for the grazing of sheep and other livestock
- A range of deserts: the Nefud in the north, which is stony; the Rub' al Khali or Great Arabian Desert in the south, with sand estimated to extend below the surface; between them, the Dahna [|Mountains]
- Stretches of dry or marshy coastline with coral reefs on the Red Sea side
- Oases and marshy coast-land in Eastern Arabia, the most important of which are those of the Al Ain emirate and Hofuf/Al-Ahsa, according to an author
- The south-west monsoon coastline of Dhofar and Eastern Yemen.
Arabia has few lakes or permanent rivers. Most areas are drained by ephemeral watercourses called wadis, which are dry except during the rainy season. Plentiful ancient aquifers exist beneath much of the peninsula, however, and where this water surfaces, oases form and permit agriculture, especially palm trees, which allowed the peninsula to produce more dates than any other region in the world. In general, the climate is extremely hot and arid, although there are exceptions. Higher elevations are made temperate by their altitude, and the Arabian Sea coastline can receive cool, humid breezes in summer due to cold upwelling offshore. The peninsula has no thick forests. Desert-adapted wildlife is present throughout the region.
A plateau more than high extends across much of the Arabian Peninsula. The plateau slopes eastwards from the massive, rifted escarpment along the coast of the Red Sea, to the shallow waters of the Persian Gulf. The interior is characterized by cuestas and valleys, drained by a system of wadis. A crescent of sand and gravel deserts lies to the east.
Mountains
There are mountains at the eastern, southern and north-western borders of the peninsula. Broadly, the ranges can be grouped as follows:- North-east: The Hajar range, of UAE and Oman
- South-east: The Dhofar Mountains of southern Oman, contiguous with the eastern Yemeni Hadhramaut
- West: Bordering the eastern coast of the Red Sea are the Sarawat, which can be seen to include the Haraz Mountains to the east of Yemen, as well as those of 'Asir and Hejaz the latter including the Midian in what is now north-western Saudi Arabia
- North-west: Aside from the Sarawat, the northern portion of Saudi Arabia hosts the Jabal Shamar Mountains, which include the Aja and Salma subranges
- Central: The Najd hosts the Tuwaiq Escarpment or Tuwair range
Not all mountains in the peninsula are visibly within ranges. Jebel Hafeet in particular, on the border of the UAE and Oman, measuring between, is not within the Hajar range, but may be considered an outlier of that range.