Difference between revisions of "Arabian Peninsula" - New World Encyclopedia
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Revision as of 16:45, 18 December 2007
The Arabian Peninsula is a land form in the farthest southwestern corner of Asia that effectively connects the continents of Africa and Asia. The peninsula is bordered on the west by the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba, on the southeast by the Arabian Sea, and on the northeastern side by the Gulf of Oman, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Persian Gulf. The northernmost edge of the penninsula is marked by a long mountain formation, or uplift. Many geologists feel that the uplift was caused through a series of continental collisions.
The area is considered a vitally important political region for the global political scene, as it contains vast reserves of oil and natural gas. As a political unit the region includes:
Geography
The climate of the Arabian Peninsula is extrememly dry and arid. As is endemic in the neighboring area, the Arabian Peninsula recieves very little annual rainfall. Compounding the lack of precipitation, the Arabian Peninsula also has few lakes or permanent rivers, two facts which combine to produce an extremely dry landscape that is not conducive to settled civilizations. The few rivers that do exist in the region, refered to as wadis, are only full during the wet seasons. During any other period of time the wadis are dry. The dry climate, combined with lack of available water, does not permit large scale agricultural development. The only place where cultivation can occur is near the oases, but these are very few locations for a desert so large.
Geographically, the terrain of the Arabian Peninsula consists of a large central plateau, a variety of deserts, marshy coast lands, and stretches of mountains. The main feature of the peninsula is the central plateau, which reaches a breathtaking height of 2,500 feet. Unlike many plateaus, the central plateau of the Arabian Peninsula is not flat; it slowly slopes towards the Gulf. The region as a whole is distinguished by a large variety of geographic variance, ranging from the central plateau to the stony deserts in the north, and the coastlands that are resplendent with coral reefs in the Red Sea. The Arabian Peninsula also boasts the largest uninterrupted sand dune in the world, called the Empty Quarter. The Empty Quarter runs for 40 kilometers and features linear sand dunes.
Some geologists claim that the Arabian Peninsula shoudl be more accurately classified as a subcontinent, due to the fact that the Arabian Peninsula is placed on a tectonic plate that is completely seperate from any neighboring continents. To support this theory, the geologists claim that the tectonic plate that the Arabian Peninsula is on is slowly moving away from the plate under northeast Africa.
Economy
The primary exports of the Arabian Peninsula are oil and natural gas, both of which are found abundantly in the region. Because these commodities are desired by industrialized nations around the world, the Arabian Peninsula can its its natural resources as a means to direct political action. The influx of wealth from the oil industry also provides many of the necessary services for governments in the region, such as the funds for construction projects or the financial service sector.
History
The earliest inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula were nomadic herdsmen, who passed through the area seeking fresh pastures for their livestock. It is through the movements of the earliest nomadic people in the Arabian Peninsula that it is possible to reconstruct an image of the historic desert area, most particularly through the accounts of Semitic speaking people of Akkadian that passed through the Arabian Peninsula when seeking the Tigris and Euphrates River Valley.[1]
.... The better-watered, higher portions of the extreme south-west portion of the Arabian Peninsula supported three early kingdoms. The first, the Minaean, was centered in the interior of what is now Yemen, but probably embraced most of southern Arabia. Although dating is difficult, it is generally believed that the Minaean Kingdom existed from 1200 to 650 B.C.E. The second kingdom, the Sabaean (see Sheba), was founded around 930 B.C.E. and lasted until around 115 B.C.E.; it probably supplanted the Minaean Kingdom and occupied substantially the same territory. The Sabaean capital and chief city, Ma’rib, probably flourished as did no other city of ancient Arabia, partly because of its controlling position on the caravan routes linking the seaports of the Mediterranean with the frankincense-growing region of the Hadhramaut and partly because a large nearby dam provided water for irrigation. The Sabaean Kingdom was widely referred to as Saba, and it has been suggested that the Queen of Sheba mentioned in the Bible and the Quran, who visited King Solomon of Israel in Jerusalem in the 10th century B.C.E., was Sabaean. The Himyarites followed the Sabaeans as the leaders in southern Arabia; the Himyarite Kingdom lasted from around 115 B.C.E. to around AD 525. In 24 B.C.E. the Roman emperor Augustus sent the prefect of Egypt, Aelius Gallus, against the Himyarites, but his army of 10,000, which was unsuccessful, returned to Egypt. The Himyarites prospered in the frankincense, myrrh, and spice trade until the Romans began to open the sea routes through the Red Sea.
In the 3rd century, The East African Christian Kingdom of Aksum began interfering in South Arabian affairs, controlling at times the western Tihama region among other areas. The Kingdom of Aksum at its height extended its territory in Arabia across most of Yemen and southern and western Saudi Arabia before being eventually driven out by the Persians. There is evidence of a Sabaean inscription about the alliance between the Himyarite king Shamir Yuhahmid and Aksum under King `DBH in the first quarter of the 3rd century AD. They have been living alongside the Sabaeans who lived across the Red Sea from them for many centuries:
Shamir of Dhu-Raydan and Himyar had called in the help of the clans of Habashat for war against the kings of Saba; but Ilmuqah granted . . . the submission of Shamir of Dhu-Raydan and the clans of Habashat.[2]
The ruins of Siraf, a legendary ancient port, are located on the north shore of the Iranian coast on the Persian Gulf. The Persian Gulf was a boat route between the Arabian Peninsula and India made feasible for small boats by staying close to the coast with land always in sight.[3] The historical importance of 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.[4]
There is a lost city in The Empty Quarter known as Iram of the Pillars. It is estimated that it lasted from around 3000 B.C.E. to the first century AD.
Medieval history
Modern history
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia covers the greater part of the peninsula. The majority of the population of the peninsula lives in Saudi Arabia and in Yemen. The peninsula contains the world's largest reserves of oil. It is home to the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina, both of which are in Saudi Arabia. The UAE and Saudi Arabia are economically the wealthiest in the region. Qatar, a small peninsula in the Persian Gulf on the larger peninsula, is home of the famous Arabic-language television station Al Jazeera and its English-language subsidiary Al Jazeera English. Kuwait, on the border with Iraq, was claimed as an Iraqi province and invaded by Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War; it is an important country strategically, forming one of the main staging grounds for coalition forces mounting the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The peninsula is one of the possible original homelands of the Proto-Semitic language ancestors of all the Semitic-speaking peoples in the region — the Akkadians, Arabs, Assyrians, Hebrews, etc. Linguistically, the peninsula was the cradle of the Arabic language (spread beyond the peninsula with the Islamic religion during the expansion of Islam beginning in the 7th century AD) and still maintains tiny populations of speakers of Southern East Semitic languages such as Mehri and Shehri, remnants of the language family that was spoken in earlier historical periods to the East of the kingdoms of Sheba and Hadramout which flourished in the southern part of the peninsula (modern-day Yemen and Oman).
Notes
- ↑ http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/MESO/AKKAD.HTM
- ↑ Stuart Munro-Hay. Aksum: A Civilization of Late Antiquity. Edinburgh: University Press. 1991. pp. 66.
- ↑ The Seas of Sindbad. Retrieved 2006-12-11.
- ↑ Foreign Experts Talk of Siraf History. Cultural Heritage News Agency. Retrieved 2006-12-11.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Clark, Arthur P., Muhammad A. Tahlawi, William Facey, and Thomas A. Pledge. 2006. A land transformed the Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Aramco. Dhahran, Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabian Oil Co. (Saudi Aramco). ISBN 9780960116409
- Edgell, H. Stewart. 2006. Arabian deserts nature, origin and evolution. Dordrecht: Springer. ISBN 9781402039690
- Linzee Gordon, Frances. 2004. Arabian Peninsula. Footscray, Vic: Lonely Planet. ISBN 9781741042948
External links
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