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Name of the Persian Gulf
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History of Persian Gulf
Persian Gulf bordering Iran (Persia), Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi
Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Oman, with an area of 240,000
km, and a maximum depth of 90 metres, while the average depth is 50 metres. In
Western countries it is normally referred to as the Persian Gulf.
The length is 1,000 km, and the maximum width is 370 km. To the south, the
coast line is low, while the coast on the Iranian side is mountainous. The
temperatures are high, and the salt level is as high as 40%, which is the result
of higher evaporation than supply of fresh water. The main fresh water resource
is from Iraq, with the Shatt El Arab, the confluence of the rivers Euphrates,
Tigris and Karun.
Through the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf is connected
to Gulf of Oman. There have been serious incidents that have affected the
environment of the Persian Gulf in recent years. While oil
spills from the heavy traffic of oil tankers over years have been serious
enough, oil spills from 1983, during the Iran-Iraq War, and in 1991, during the
Persian Gulf War, have been catastrophic.
The Persian Gulf is a 600-mile-long arm of the Indian Ocean,
which separates the Arabian peninsula from Iran (Persia). Since the 1960s some
Arab states have referred to this body of water as the Arabian Gulf. The
Persian Gulf is surrounded by Iran (Persia), the predominant state in
terms of population, and seven Arab states: Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain,
Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. The Persian Gulf is
bounded by the Shatt al-Arab waterway in the north, which forms the frontier
between Iran and Iraq, and the Strait of Hormuz in the south, which connects it
to the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean. The strait, which is 34 miles wide at
its narrowest point, is the choke point of the Persian Gulf;
through it pass the oil tankers which fuel the world economy.
Six of the eight littoral states were created in the 20th century, and only
Iran (Persia) and Oman have long histories as separate entities. The
Persian Gulf states today contain some 118 million people, representing
many ethnic, religious, linguistic and political communities. A major cleavage
is that between Persian and Arab. Arabic, a Semitic language, is spoken in Iraq
and the states of the peninsula. Iran (Persia) has an Aryan heritage, and its
main language, Persian (Farsi), is an Indo-European language.
Muslims of the Shiite sect predominate in Iran (Persia), Iraq and Bahrain,
whereas Sunni Muslims form the majority in other Persian Gulf
states.
The Persian Gulf, while important as an international trade
route connecting the Middle East to Africa, India and China, has its own
distinct cultural identity. The Persian Gulf has historically
been an integrated region characterized by constant interchange of people,
commerce and religious movements. Before the modern era, peoples of the region
shared a maritime culture based on pearling, fishing and long-distance trade,
and many tribes moved freely back and forth. The Persian Gulf's
orientation was outward, and its seamen maintained close ties with the Indian
subcontinent and East Africa. As in many parts of the Middle East, society in
the Arabian peninsula was tribally organized and tribes were the key to forming
modern states. Until the 20th century, tribes also played an important political
role in Persia and Ottoman Iraq.
The modern strategic importance of the Persian Gulf dates
from the mid-19th century, when three great empires confronted each other there:
British India, Tsarist Russia and Ottoman Turkey. The British established
political control over much of the Persian Gulf in the early
1800s and kept it for 150 years, establishing a tradition of outside involvement
that persists today. Britain did not establish formal protectorates (as in the
case, for example, of Egypt), but did enter into treaties with local shaikhs
offering them protection in return for control over their foreign policy. In
1899 Kuwait, then considered a dependency of the Ottomans, was brought into this
system. After World War I, the political map of much of the Middle East was
redrawn as the Ottoman Empire was replaced by modern states, including Turkey,
Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The small Arab shaikhdoms on the western shore of the
Persian Gulf were under British protection until 1971 (in the
case of Kuwait, 1961). Iran (Persia) was never a colony, and for much of the
19th and 20th century Britain competed with Russia for influence there.
The present importance of the Persian Gulf stems from its
massive energy deposits. Sixty-five percent of the world's known oil reserves
are located in the Persian Gulf countries, which produce over a
third of the world's daily output. (By comparison, North America holds 8.5
percent of the world's reserves.) Saudi Arabia ranks first in reserves, with 261
billion barrels, followed by Iraq (100 billion), the U.A.E. (98 billion), Kuwait
(96.5 billion), and Iran (89 billion). The Persian Gulf is also
rich in natural gas, with Iran and Qatar holding the world's second and
third-largest reserves, respectively.
Over the past century, the traditional way of life in the Arab states has
been irrevocably changed, due in large measure to the British intervention and
the rise of the oil industry. The common bonds of the Persian Gulf
peoples have been overshadowed by political differences between the new
states. The modernization process, which lasted for centuries in the West, has
been compressed into decades, putting great stress on traditional societies.
Because of the way in which the modern states were formed and boundaries
arbitrarily delimited, in many cases tribal and family loyalties, and religious,
linguistic and ethnic identities are more important than state citizenship.
These factors, along with economic disparities, the rise and fall of oil prices,
political Islam and the influence of revolutionary Iran (Persia), as well as the
disruptive policies of Iraq, have contributed to the present-day tensions in the
region.
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