Arabian Peninsula
The Arabian Peninsula is a mainly desert peninsula in Southwest Asia at the junction of Africa and Asia and an important part of the greater Middle East.
The coastal limits of the peninsula are: on the (south)west, the Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba; on the south(eastern) coast, the Arabian Sea (part of the Indian Ocean); and on the northeast, the Gulf of Oman, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Persian Gulf.
Its northern limit is defined by the Zagros collision zone, a mountainous uplift where a continental collision between the Arabian plate and Asia is occurring. Geographically it merges with the Syrian desert with no clear line of demarcation.
Politically, the Arabian peninsula is divided among the following countries:
The country 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 and 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. Kuwait, on the border with Iraq and claimed as an Iraqi province, was invaded by Saddam Hussein during the first Persian Gulf War and is an important country strategically, forming one of the main staging grounds for coalition forces to mount the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Geologically, this region is 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 northeast Africa (forming the Red Sea) and north into the Asia 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 younger sediments that become younger towards the Persian Gulf. Perhaps the best-preserved ophiolite on Earth, Semail ophiolite, lies exposed in the mountains of the UAE and northern Oman.
The peninsula is thought to have been the original homeland of the Proto-Semitic peoples, ancestors of all the Semitic peoples in the region - the Akkadians, Arabs, Assyrians, Hebrews, etc. Linguistically, the Peninsula was the cradle of the Arabic language (spread beyond the Peninsula along with the Islamic religion during the Islamic expansion beginning in the 7th century AD) and still maintains tiny populations of speakers of South Semitic languages such as Mehri and Shehri, remnants of a language family that held greater importance in earlier historical periods when the kingdom of Sheba flourished in the southern part of the peninsula (modern-day Yemen and Oman).
Geographically, the peninsula consists of:
- a central plateau with pastures for sheep and other livestock and fertile valleys
- a range of deserts, the Nefud in the north, stony; the Rub' Al-Khali or Great Arabian Desert, a perfect Sahara, in the south, with sand estimated to extend 600 ft. below the surface; and the Dahna in between
- stretches of dry or marshy coastland with coral reefs on the Red Sea side
- ranges of mountains, primarily paralleling the Red Sea on the west (e.g. Asir province) and southeastern end (Oman). The highest, Jabal Al-Nabi Sho'aib in Yemen, is 3666 m high.
Arabia has no lakes or permanent rivers, only wadis, which are dry except during the brief rainy season. Plentiful ancient aquifers exist beneath much of the peninsula, however, and where this water surfaces, oases form (e.g. the Al-Hasa and Qatif oases) and permit agriculture. The climate being extremely hot and arid, the peninsula has no forests, alhtough desert-adapted wildlife is present throughout the region.
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