50 free Persian Gulf trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Persian Gulf trivia covers a shallow, salty, 989-kilometre sea that is dry land for most of the last ice age, the cradle of the world's oldest civilisation, the source of a fifth of the planet's LNG and a quarter of its seaborne oil, and the subject of a naming argument that has run since the 1960s. Everything in and out passes through the Strait of Hormuz, only 56 kilometres wide at its narrowest. This quiz covers the geography (the eight coastal states, Qeshm, Bahrain, Bubiyan and the artificial islands of Dubai and Doha, the 90-metre maximum depth, the Shatt al-Arab), the oceanography (why salty water leaves along the bottom), the names (the Assyrians' 'Bitter Sea', Nearchus, the Sasanian Pudig, 'Gulf of Iran' at the IHO), the history (Dilmun, the H3 boats in Kuwait, Darius's canal, Siraf, Albuquerque and Hormuz, Shah Abbas expelling the Portuguese from Bahrain in 1602, the Al Qasimi pirates and the 1820 treaty, the Trucial States, the Persian Corridor, the Tanker War, Iran Air 655 and HMS Jufair), the wildlife (dugongs, humpback dolphins, kalbaensis kingfishers, 700 fish species) and the economy (Safaniya, the North Field and South Pars, urea and ammonia). Easy questions suit anyone who can find it on a map; the expert tier assumes you know the annual evaporation deficit. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The 1991 Gulf War followed Iraq's invasion of which neighbouring Gulf state?
Kuwait
The Gulf gave the largely air- and land-based conflict its name.
Q 02Which body of water lies immediately east of the Strait of Hormuz, on the way to the open ocean?
The Gulf of Oman
It is the Gulf's only sea passage to the open ocean and one of the world's great choke points.
Q 03The Persian Gulf and its coastal areas are the world's largest single source of what?
Petroleum
Related industries dominate the region, which also supplies LPG, diesel and jet fuel.
Q 04The Persian Gulf is ultimately an arm of which of the world's great bodies of water?
The Indian Ocean
It is an extension of the Arabian Sea, and technically counts as a mediterranean sea.
Q 05How many nations have a coastline on the Persian Gulf?
Eight
Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the Saudi kingdom and the UAE.
Q 06Oman touches the Persian Gulf only through which exclave at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula?
Musandam
Qatar sits on a peninsula off the coast of the kingdom to its west, and Bahrain is an island nation.
Q 07How long is the Persian Gulf?
989 km
It covers about 251,000 square kilometres, roughly the size of the United Kingdom.
Q 08How wide is the Persian Gulf at its narrowest point, in the Strait of Hormuz?
About 56 km
Ships use a traffic separation scheme with inbound and outbound lanes each two nautical miles wide.
Q 09What is the maximum depth of the Persian Gulf?
90 metres
The average is only about 50 metres, which is why most of it was dry land during the last ice age.
Q 10Which river delta forms the Persian Gulf's north-western shoreline?
The Shatt al-Arab
It carries the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates; Iranians call it the Arvand Rud.
Q 11What is the largest island in the Persian Gulf?
Qeshm
It belongs to Iran and sits in the Strait of Hormuz.
Q 12The Gulf island of Tarout is administered by which country?
Saudi Arabia
Bubiyan belongs to the emirate at the head of the Gulf, Dalma to the UAE and the Tunbs are held by Iran.
Q 13The World Islands, an artificial archipelago built for tourism, lie off which Gulf city?
Dubai
Doha's equivalent is The Pearl Island.
Q 14How does the Gulf's saltier outflow exit through the Strait of Hormuz?
Q 21Which civilisation, the world's oldest known, developed along the Persian Gulf and southern Mesopotamia?
Sumer
The flooding of the Gulf in the early Holocene may have spurred Neolithic farming nearby.
Q 22The world's oldest evidence for seagoing vessels, from site H3 in the northern Gulf, dates to which millennium BC?
The sixth
The Gulf was then part of a trade network linking the Ubaid settlements of Mesopotamia with the whole coast.
Q 23Which civilisation dominated the southern Gulf at the end of the fourth millennium BC?
Dilmun
Gerrha was later the most important settlement on the southern coast.
Along the bottom, while fresher ocean water flows in on top
Evaporation leaves an annual deficit of about 416 cubic kilometres that the strait's currents make up.
Q 15What did the Assyrians call the Persian Gulf?
The Bitter Sea
The name 'Persian Gulf' came from Greek writers after the Achaemenid Empire arose in Pars in 550 BC.
Q 16Which Greek writer's Indikê, of around 300 BC, repeatedly uses the term 'Persikon kolpos'?
Nearchus
He had commanded Alexander the Great's fleet on its voyage from India.
Q 17What did the Sasanian Persians call the Gulf, from an Avestan word meaning 'cleansing'?
Pudig
The name is recorded in the Bundahishn.
Q 18What name does the International Hydrographic Organization use for this body of water?
Gulf of Iran
Arab governments call it the Arabian Gulf, a usage that spread with Arab nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s.
Q 19Since which decade has the dispute over calling it the 'Arabian Gulf' been especially prevalent?
The 1960s
Britannica notes the term has not gained wide recognition outside Arab states.
Q 20During the Last Glacial Maximum, sea level was roughly how far below today's?
125 metres
The exposed floodplain may have been a refuge for early humans during hyperarid spells.
Q 24Which Achaemenid king boasted of digging a canal from the Nile to 'the sea that begins in Persia'?
Darius the Great
His ships also patrolled the Tigris and the Nile.
Q 25Which Sasanian port in today's Bushehr province had established trade with China by the fourth century?
Siraf
It first made contact with the Far East in AD 185.
Q 26Which European power's influence in the Persian Gulf lasted about 250 years from the early 16th century?
Portugal
Afonso de Albuquerque captured the kingdom of Hormuz after Vasco da Gama's voyages opened the eastern seas.
Q 27Why did a Portuguese force under Antonio Correia invade Bahrain in 1521?
To seize its pearl industry
The island's pearl oysters made it wealthy.
Q 28Which Safavid shah expelled the Portuguese from Bahrain on 29 April 1602, now Iran's Persian Gulf National Day?
Abbas I
With British help he also took Hormuz in 1622 and diverted trade to the port he named after himself.
Q 29Which port did the Safavid shah take from the Portuguese in 1615 and name after himself?
Bandar Abbas
Much of the Hormuz trade was diverted there.
Q 30Which tribe's piracy prompted the British Persian Gulf campaign of 1819?
The Al Qasimi
The 1820 General Maritime Treaty followed, binding the sheikhs of the so-called 'Pirate Coast'.