50 Fun Facts About Persian Gulf

The 1991 Gulf War followed Iraq's invasion of which neighbouring Gulf state?

The Gulf gave the largely air- and land-based conflict its name.

Which body of water lies immediately east of the Strait of Hormuz, on the way to the open ocean?

It is the Gulf's only sea passage to the open ocean and one of the world's great choke points.

The Persian Gulf and its coastal areas are the world's largest single source of what?

Related industries dominate the region, which also supplies LPG, diesel and jet fuel.

The Persian Gulf is ultimately an arm of which of the world's great bodies of water?

It is an extension of the Arabian Sea, and technically counts as a mediterranean sea.

How many nations have a coastline on the Persian Gulf?

Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the Saudi kingdom and the UAE.

Oman touches the Persian Gulf only through which exclave at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula?

Qatar sits on a peninsula off the coast of the kingdom to its west, and Bahrain is an island nation.

How long is the Persian Gulf?

It covers about 251,000 square kilometres, roughly the size of the United Kingdom.

How wide is the Persian Gulf at its narrowest point, in the Strait of Hormuz?

Ships use a traffic separation scheme with inbound and outbound lanes each two nautical miles wide.

What is the maximum depth of the Persian Gulf?

The average is only about 50 metres, which is why most of it was dry land during the last ice age.

Which river delta forms the Persian Gulf's north-western shoreline?

It carries the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates; Iranians call it the Arvand Rud.

What is the largest island in the Persian Gulf?

It belongs to Iran and sits in the Strait of Hormuz.

The Gulf island of Tarout is administered by which country?

Bubiyan belongs to the emirate at the head of the Gulf, Dalma to the UAE and the Tunbs are held by Iran.

The World Islands, an artificial archipelago built for tourism, lie off which Gulf city?

Doha's equivalent is The Pearl Island.

How does the Gulf's saltier outflow exit through the Strait of Hormuz?

Evaporation leaves an annual deficit of about 416 cubic kilometres that the strait's currents make up.

What did the Assyrians call the Persian Gulf?

The name 'Persian Gulf' came from Greek writers after the Achaemenid Empire arose in Pars in 550 BC.

Which Greek writer's Indikê, of around 300 BC, repeatedly uses the term 'Persikon kolpos'?

He had commanded Alexander the Great's fleet on its voyage from India.

What did the Sasanian Persians call the Gulf, from an Avestan word meaning 'cleansing'?

The name is recorded in the Bundahishn.

What name does the International Hydrographic Organization use for this body of water?

Arab governments call it the Arabian Gulf, a usage that spread with Arab nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s.

Since which decade has the dispute over calling it the 'Arabian Gulf' been especially prevalent?

Britannica notes the term has not gained wide recognition outside Arab states.

During the Last Glacial Maximum, sea level was roughly how far below today's?

The exposed floodplain may have been a refuge for early humans during hyperarid spells.

Which civilisation, the world's oldest known, developed along the Persian Gulf and southern Mesopotamia?

The flooding of the Gulf in the early Holocene may have spurred Neolithic farming nearby.

The world's oldest evidence for seagoing vessels, from site H3 in the northern Gulf, dates to which millennium BC?

The Gulf was then part of a trade network linking the Ubaid settlements of Mesopotamia with the whole coast.

Which civilisation dominated the southern Gulf at the end of the fourth millennium BC?

Gerrha was later the most important settlement on the southern coast.

Which Achaemenid king boasted of digging a canal from the Nile to 'the sea that begins in Persia'?

His ships also patrolled the Tigris and the Nile.

Which Sasanian port in today's Bushehr province had established trade with China by the fourth century?

It first made contact with the Far East in AD 185.

Which European power's influence in the Persian Gulf lasted about 250 years from the early 16th century?

Afonso de Albuquerque captured the kingdom of Hormuz after Vasco da Gama's voyages opened the eastern seas.

Why did a Portuguese force under Antonio Correia invade Bahrain in 1521?

The island's pearl oysters made it wealthy.

Which Safavid shah expelled the Portuguese from Bahrain on 29 April 1602, now Iran's Persian Gulf National Day?

With British help he also took Hormuz in 1622 and diverted trade to the port he named after himself.

Which port did the Safavid shah take from the Portuguese in 1615 and name after himself?

Much of the Hormuz trade was diverted there.

Which tribe's piracy prompted the British Persian Gulf campaign of 1819?

The 1820 General Maritime Treaty followed, binding the sheikhs of the so-called 'Pirate Coast'.

By what name were the United Arab Emirates known under British protection before 1971?

Britain ran the region through the British Residency of the Persian Gulf from 1763 to 1971.

Which Ottoman governor of Baghdad brought Qatar's Al Thani rulers under Ottoman control in 1871?

The Ottomans pulled out of the area when the First World War demanded troops elsewhere.

In the Second World War, the Allies' supply route through Iran to the Soviet Union was known as what?

Britain used the Gulf as the entry point to reach the Trans-Iranian Railway.

During which war of the 1980s did both sides attack each other's oil tankers in the Gulf?

Iraq widened the 'Tanker War' in 1984 by hitting the terminal at Kharg Island.

The US military shot down Iran Air Flight 655 in 1988 after mistaking the Airbus for what?

All 290 people on board were killed.

What is the permanent British base opened in Bahrain in 2018, the first east of Suez since 1971, called?

Britain is also developing a support facility in Oman.

The Gulf holds the second most important habitat, after Australia, for which marine mammal?

Around 7,500 live in the waters off the southern Gulf states, though numbers are dwindling.

In 2017 the Gulf off Abu Dhabi was found to have the world's largest population of which animal?

Whales were once abundant in the Gulf before commercial hunting, including illegal Soviet and Japanese hunts, wiped them out.

Roughly how many fish species live in the Persian Gulf?

More than 80 percent are reef-associated, though corals are sparser than in the Red Sea.

Why are coral reefs relatively scarce in the Persian Gulf compared with the Red Sea?

The Tigris-Euphrates delta pours in sediment, and corals dislike big variations.

The kalbaensis subspecies of which bird had only three viable nesting sites left in the UAE and Oman in 2006?

Sharjah ignored a UN plan to protect the mangroves and dredged a channel through the wetland.

What is the world's largest offshore oilfield, located in the Persian Gulf?

Related industries dominate the whole region.

Qatar's North Field gas field is called what on the Iranian side?

Qatar has built a huge LNG and petrochemical industry on it.

In 2002 the Persian Gulf nations held roughly what share of the world's crude oil reserves?

They produced about 25 percent of the world's oil and held about 35 percent of its gas reserves.

Roughly what share of global LNG exports came from the Gulf in the mid-2020s?

Qatar alone shipped about a fifth of the world's LNG; the region is also a key supplier of LPG, diesel and jet fuel.

The Gulf region accounts for roughly 30 to 35 percent of world exports of which fertiliser?

Up to 30 percent of internationally traded fertilisers normally pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

During 2023–2025, what share of the world's seaborne oil trade passed through the Strait of Hormuz?

It is the only maritime route for several Gulf countries, including Qatar, Bahrain and Iraq.

How long is the Strait of Hormuz?

Its width varies from about 97 km down to 39 km.

The Persian Gulf Basin owes its origin to the Arabian plate being subducted beneath which mountain range?

The current flooding of the basin began about 15,000 years ago as ice-age seas rose.

What is the Iranian name for the Shatt al-Arab, the river delta at the Gulf's western end?

The name means 'Swift River'; the delta carries the waters of the Euphrates and Tigris.