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"Arabia" and "Arabian" redirect here. For other uses, see Arabia (disambiguation) and Arabian (disambiguation).

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The Arabian Peninsula (Arabic: شبه الجزيرة العربيةshibh al-jazīrat al-ʻarabīyah or جزيرة العرب jazīrat al-ʻArab), also known as Arabia,[1] is a peninsula of Western Asia situated north-east of Africa. The area is an important part of the Asian continent and plays a critical geopolitical role of the Middle East and Arab World due to its vast reserves of oil and natural gas. The 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, the Persian Gulf to the northeast, and the Indian Ocean to the southeast.


The Arabian Peninsula is located in the continent of Asia and bounded by (clockwise) the Persian Gulf on the northeast, the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman on the east, the Arabian Sea on the southeast and south, the Gulf of Aden on the south, the Bab-el-Mandeb strait on the southwest, and the Red Sea on the southwest and west.[2] The northern portion of the peninsula merges with the Syrian Desert with no clear border line, although the northern boundary of the Arabian Peninsula is generally considered to be the northern borders of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.[2]

The most prominent feature of the peninsula is desert, but in the southwest there are mountain ranges which receive greater rainfall than the rest of the Arabian Peninsula. Harrat ash Shaam is a large volcanic field that extends from the northwestern Arabian Peninsula into Jordan and southern Syria.[3]

Political boundaries

The peninsula's constituent countries are (clockwise north to south) Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on the east, Oman on the southeast, Yemen on the south and Saudi Arabia at the center.[2] The island nation of Bahrain lies off the east coast of the peninsula.

Six countries, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Oman form the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This is however a disputed term. Iranians assert that it is a historical and internationally-recognized convention to name it the Persian Gulf, while Arab States, and most notably the six GCC member countries, have been claiming that the Gulf is Arabian since its shallow marine depths are a geological continuity of the Arabian peninsula's Eastern low-lying coasts, from Kuwait to the UAE's Northern Emirates.[4]

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia covers the greater part of the peninsula. The majority of the population of the peninsula live in Saudi Arabia and in Yemen. The peninsula contains the world's largest reserves of oil. Kuwait and the UAE are economically the wealthiest in the region. Qatar, a small peninsula in the Persian Gulf on the larger peninsula, is home of the Arabic-language 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 invasion of Iraq in 2003.


As of 2000, the estimated population of the Arabian Peninsula is 77,983,936.[5] In the Arab states of the Persian Gulf there are many residents who are non-nationals: in the United Arab Emirates they are 87%, in Qatar they are 80%, in Oman they are 29.4%, in Bahrain they are 54%,[6] while in Kuwait they are 46%.[7]


Geologically, this region is perhaps more appropriately called the Arabian subcontinent because it lies on a tectonic plate of its own, the Arabian Plate, which has been moving incrementally away from the rest of Africa (forming the Red Sea) and north, toward Asia, into the Eurasian plate (forming the Zagros mountains). 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:

  1. a central plateau, the Nejd, with fertile valleys and pastures used for the grazing of sheep and other livestock.
  2. a range of deserts: the Nefud in the north,[8] which is stony; the Rub' Al-Khali or Great Arabian Desert in the south, with sand estimated to extend 600 ft (180 m). below the surface; between them, the Dahna.
  3. stretches of dry or marshy coastland with coral reefs on the Red Sea side (Tihamah).
  4. ranges of mountains, paralleling the Red Sea coast on the west (e.g., Asir province) but also at the southeastern end of the peninsula (Oman). The mountains show a steady increase in altitude westward as they get nearer to Yemen, and the highest peaks and ranges are all located in Yemen. The highest, Jabal an Nabi Shu'ayb in Yemen, is 3666 m high.

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 (e.g., Al-Hasa and Qatif, two of the worlds largest oases) 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 surprisingly cool, humid breezes in summer due to cold upwelling offshore. The peninsula has no thick forests, although desert-adapted wildlife is present throughout the region.


Land and sea


The fertile soils of Yemen have encouraged settlement of almost all of the land from sea level up to the mountains at 10,000 feet (3,000 m). In the higher reaches elaborate terraces have been constructed to facilitate grain, fruit, coffee, ginger and khat cultivation.


Main article: Arab (etymology)



The Arabs and the Ottoman Empire considered the west of the Arabian Peninsula region where the Arabs lived 'the land of the Arabs' – bilad al-Arab (Arabia), and its major divisions were the bilad al-Sham (Syria), bilad al-Yaman (the Land of the southern Peninsula), and Bilad al-Iraq and modern day Kuwait (the Land of the River Banks).[10] The Ottomans used the term Arabistan in a broad sense for the subcontinent itself 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[11]

The provinces of Arabia were: Al Tih, the Sinai peninsula, Hedjaz, Asir, Yemen, Hadramaut, Mahra and Shilu, Oman, Hasa, Bahrian, Dahna, Nufud, the Hammad, which included the deserts of Syria, Mesopotamia and Babylonia.[12][13]



For much of its history most of the Arabian Peninsula has been controlled by a patchwork of tribal rulers.

Ancient history

Main article: Pre-Islamic Arabia

There is evidence that human habitation in the Arabian peninsula dates back to about 15,000 to 20,000 years ago.[14] However, the harsh climate historically prevented much settlement. In pre-Islamic Arabia, apart from a small number of urban trading settlements, such as Mecca and Medina, located in the Hejaz in the west of the peninsula, most of what was to become Saudi Arabia was populated by nomadic tribal societies or uninhabitable desert.

Archaeology has, however, revealed some early settled cultures: the Dilmun on the Persian Gulf, and Thamud north of the Hejaz. The earliest known events in Arabian history are migrations from the peninsula into neighbouring areas.[15]

The Arabian peninsula has long been accepted as the original Urheimat of the Semitic languages by a majority of scholars.[16][17][18][19]

"Shamir of Dhu-Raydan and Himyar had called in the help of the clans of Habashat for against the kings of Saba; but Ilmuqah granted... the submission of Shamir of Dhu-Raydan and the clans of Habashat."[20]
The historical importance of the Persian Sassanid port, Siraf to ancient trade is only now being realised. Discovered there in past archaeological excavations are ivory objects from east Africa, pieces of stone from India, and lapis from Afghanistan. Sirif dates back to the Parthian era.[21]

Pre-Islam history

There were many civilizations in the Arab Peninsula before Islam. The ancient South Arabian Kingdom of Saba was located in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Also, the kingdom of Kinda was located in the south of the Saudi capital Riyadh in the 4th, 5th and early 6th centuries AD. Dilmun may have been located here. The Nabataean Kingdom was located between the Sinai Peninsula and the Arabian Peninsula.

The Rise of Islam

Main articles: Muslim conquests and Islamic Golden Age

The seventh century saw the introduction of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula. The Islamic prophet Muhammad, was born in Mecca in about 570 and first began preaching in the city in 610, but migrated to Medina in 622. From there he and his companions united the tribes of Arabia under the banner of Islam and created a single Arab Muslim religious polity in the Arabian peninsula. He established a new unified polity in the Arabian peninsula which under the subsequent Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates saw a century of rapid expansion of Arab power well beyond the Arabian peninsula in the form of a vast Muslim Arab Empire with an area of influence that stretched from the northwest Indian subcontinent, across Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, southern Italy, and the Iberian Peninsula, to the Pyrenees.



Nevertheless, Mecca and Medina remained the spiritually most important places in the Muslim world. The Qu'ran requires every able-bodied Muslim who can afford it, as one of the five pillars of Islam, to make a pilgrimage, or Hajj, to Mecca during the Islamic month of Dhu al-Hijjah at least once in his or her lifetime.[25] The Masjid al-Haram (the Grand Mosque) in Mecca is the location of the Kaaba, Islam's holiest site, and the Masjid al-Nabawi (the Prophet's Mosque) in Medina is the location of Muhammad tomb; as a result, from the 7th century, Mecca and Medina became the pilgrimage destinations for large numbers of Muslims from across the Islamic world.[26]

The Middle Ages



Modern history

The provincial Ottoman Army for Arabia (Arabistan Ordusu) was headquartered in Syria, which included Lebanon, Palestine, and the Transjordan region. It was put in charge of Syria, Cilicia, Iraq, and the remainder of the Arabian Peninsula.[28][29] The Ottomans never had any control over central Arabia, also known as the Najd region.



Late Ottoman rule and the Hejaz Railway


The Hejaz Railway was a narrow gauge railway (1050 mm) that ran from Damascus to Medina, through the Hejaz region of Arabia. It was a part of the Ottoman railway network and was built in order to extend the previously existing line between Istanbul and Damascus (which began from the Haydarpaşa Terminal) all the way to the holy city of Mecca (eventually being able to reach only Medina due to the interruption of the construction works caused by the outbreak of World War I).


The Arab Revolt and the unification of Saudi Arabia


These events were followed by the unification of Saudi Arabia under King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud. In 1902 Ibn Saud had captured Riyadh. Continuing his conquests, Abdul Aziz subdued Al-Hasa, the rest of Nejd, and the Hejaz between 1913 and 1926, defeating the Sherif Hussein ibn Ali, and founded the modern state of Saudi Arabia. Ibn Saud was not the first Saudi ruler to control much of Arabia. The house of Saud had been ruling parts of Arabia since the 17th century AD. Two Saudi states were formed and controlled much of Arabia before Ibn Saud was even born. Ibn Saud however, established the third Saudi state.

Oil reserves


Civil war in Yemen

The North Yemen Civil War was fought in North Yemen between royalists of the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen and factions of the Yemen Arab Republic from 1962 to 1970. The war began with a coup d'etat carried out by the republican leader, Abdullah as-Sallal, which dethroned the newly crowned Imam Al-Badr and declared Yemen a republic under his presidency. The Imam escaped to the Saudi Arabian border and rallied popular support.



Kuwait and the Gulf War

The British proposed a treaty with the Ottoman Empire in 1913 to establish Kuwait as an autonomous kaza. It was a district of the vilayet of Basra. The treaty was never ratified due to the outbreak of World War I. In 1990 Iraq made claims upon Kuwaiti territory, and insisted that the borders had never been properly delimited by the British in 1951.[34]

The invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi forces led to the 1990–91 Gulf War. Egypt, Qatar, Syria and Saudi Arabia joined a multinational coalition that opposed Iraq. Displays of support for Iraq by Jordan and the Palestinians resulted in strained relations between many of the Arab states. After the war, a so-called "Damascus Declaration" formalized an alliance for future joint Arab defensive actions between Egypt, Syria, and the GCC member states.[35]

Transport and industry


See also


  1. Hourani (2003), p.22
  2. Lapidus (2002), p.32
  3. Madelung (1996), p.43
  4. Tabatabaei (1979), p.30–50

External links

  • High resolution scan of old map of Arabia
  • The Coast of Arabia the Red Sea, and Persian Sea of Bassora Past the Straits of Hormuz to India, Gujarat and Cape Comorin from the World Digital Library, depicts a map from 1707.
  • Travels in Arabia, 1892


