48 Fun Facts About Persian Gulf

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

Iraq invaded Kuwait on 2 August 1990, and a US-led coalition drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait in February 1991.

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

The Strait of Hormuz opens eastward into the Gulf of Oman, which in turn leads on to the Arabian Sea.

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

Petroleum dominates the region: oil was first struck at Masjed Soleyman in 1908, and Gulf fields export crude plus LPG, diesel and jet fuel worldwide.

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

The Persian Gulf drains through the Strait of Hormuz into the Arabian Sea, which is a northern arm of the Indian Ocean.

How many nations have a coastline on the Persian Gulf?

Eight: Iran lines the whole north-eastern shore, while seven Arab states, from Iraq at the head round to Oman at the Strait of Hormuz, share the rest.

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

The Musandam Peninsula, cut off from the rest of Oman by UAE territory, juts into the Strait of Hormuz and gives Oman its only Gulf shoreline.

How long is the Persian Gulf?

The Gulf is 989 km long, from the Iraqi coast at its head to the Strait of Hormuz, with an area of about 251,000 square kilometres.

Which island handles most of Iran's crude oil exports from the Persian Gulf?

Kharg Island, about 25 km off Iran's Bushehr coast in the northern Gulf, hosts the deep-water terminal through which the great majority of Iran's crude exports pass.

What is the maximum depth of the Persian Gulf?

Its maximum depth is only about 90 metres and the average about 50 metres, so most of the basin 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?

Qeshm, an Iranian island of about 1,490 square kilometres lying just inside the Strait of Hormuz, is well over twice the size of Bahrain's main island.

The Gulf island of Tarout is administered by which country?

Tarout lies just off Qatif in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, joined to the mainland by a causeway, and has been settled for thousands of years.

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

The World, built by developer Nakheel from 2003 about 4 km off the Dubai coast, is a cluster of reclaimed sand islands laid out as a map of the continents.

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

Dense, salty Gulf water sinks and exits the Strait of Hormuz along the bottom, while fresher ocean water flows in on top to replace what evaporation removes.

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

Nearchus, who commanded Alexander the Great's fleet on its voyage from the Indus to Susa in 325-324 BC, wrote the Indike that Arrian later drew on.

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

Pudig, the Sasanian name recorded in the Bundahishn, comes from the Avestan Puitika, the 'purifying' sea through which waters pass in Zoroastrian cosmology.

What name did the IHO's 1953 Limits of Oceans and Seas give this body of water?

The IHO's 1953 Limits of Oceans and Seas heads the area 'Gulf of Iran (Persian Gulf)', so Gulf of Iran is its formal listing.

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

The 'Arabian Gulf' label gained currency in the 1960s on the back of pan-Arab nationalism, and Iran has contested it from the outset.

At the Last Glacial Maximum, when the Gulf lay dry, how much lower was sea level?

Sea level stood about 125 metres lower at the Last Glacial Maximum, some 20,000 years ago, so the shallow Gulf basin was a dry river valley, perhaps a refuge for early humans.

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

Sumer, with cities such as Ur and Uruk in southern Mesopotamia, arose in the fourth millennium BC beside a Gulf shoreline that then reached far further inland.

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

Bitumen-coated reed-bundle fragments and a clay boat model from site H3 at As-Sabiyah, near the head of the Gulf, date to about 5500-5000 BC, the sixth millennium.

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

Dilmun, centred on Bahrain and the facing Arabian coast, dominated the southern Gulf from the late fourth millennium BC as an entrepot for Mesopotamian trade.

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

Darius the Great's Suez inscriptions record the canal he had dug from the Nile to the Red Sea so ships could sail 'to the sea that begins in Persia'.

Which Sasanian-era port in today's Bushehr province became a great medieval entrepot for China trade?

Siraf, on the Bushehr coast, was a Sasanian port that by the ninth and tenth centuries was the Gulf's richest entrepot, its merchants sailing to India and China.

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?

Antonio Correia's 1521 expedition was sent to seize its pearl industry, the oyster fishery that had made Bahrain wealthy and a prized tributary of Hormuz.

Which Safavid shah drove the Portuguese from Bahrain in 1602 and from Hormuz in 1622?

Abbas I retook Bahrain from the Portuguese in 1602 and, with English East India Company ships, captured Hormuz from them in 1622.

Which Gulf port, taken from the Portuguese in 1615, replaced Hormuz as Persia's main trade outlet?

Bandar Abbas, the former Gamrun or Gombroon, was taken in 1615 and renamed for the shah; after 1622 it absorbed most of the Hormuz trade as the Safavids' chief Gulf port.

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

The Al Qasimi (Qawasim) of Ras al-Khaimah were the target: a British expedition burned their fleet and fort in December 1819, and the 1820 General Maritime Treaty followed.

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

The Trucial States took their name from the maritime truces the sheikhdoms signed with Britain from 1820, and became the United Arab Emirates at independence in 1971.

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

Midhat Pasha, the reforming Ottoman governor of Baghdad, pushed Ottoman authority down the Gulf coast in 1871, and the Al Thani accepted Ottoman suzerainty over Qatar.

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

The Persian Corridor ran from Gulf ports such as Khorramshahr up the Trans-Iranian Railway, carrying more than four million tons of Lend-Lease supplies to the Soviet Union.

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

In the Iran–Iraq War's 'Tanker War' phase, from 1984 Iraq struck tankers loading Iranian crude and Iran retaliated against ships trading with Iraq's Gulf backers.

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

The cruiser USS Vincennes misidentified the Airbus A300 as an Iranian F-14 Tomcat attacking the ship on 3 July 1988 and fired two missiles, killing all 290 aboard.

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

HMS Jufair, the UK Naval Support Facility at Bahrain's Mina Salman port, formally opened in April 2018, reviving the name of the base Britain gave up in 1971.

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

The dugong, a seagrass-grazing sirenian, has its second-largest population, roughly 7,000 animals, in the shallow waters between Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE.

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

A 2017 Environment Agency Abu Dhabi survey counted several hundred Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins in the emirate's waters, the largest population recorded anywhere.

Roughly how many fish species live in the Persian Gulf?

Over 700 fish species have been recorded in the Gulf, most of them native, and more than 80 percent of them live around reefs.

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

River sediment and swings in temperature and salinity rule out most reef-building corals: the Tigris-Euphrates clouds the water and the shallow Gulf ranges from the low teens to the mid-30s Celsius.

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

The collared kingfisher's kalbaensis race nests only in old Avicennia mangroves around Khor Kalba on the UAE-Oman border, and by 2006 just three viable sites remained.

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

Safaniya, discovered in 1951 in Gulf waters north of Jubail, is the world's largest offshore oilfield and one of Aramco's biggest producers.

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

South Pars is the Iranian portion of the shared reservoir; together with Qatar's North Field it forms the world's largest natural gas field.

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

The seven Gulf producers held nearly two-thirds of the world's proven crude reserves in 2002, most of it in the giant fields of eastern Arabia, Iran and Iraq.

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

Urea is the one: nitrogen plants in Qatar, Iran, Oman and their Gulf neighbours ship roughly a third of world urea exports, nearly all of it through the Strait of Hormuz.

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

About 25% of seaborne oil trade, some 20 million barrels a day in 2023-2025, passed through Hormuz, the only sea route out for Iraq, Qatar and Bahrain.

How long is the Strait of Hormuz?

The Strait of Hormuz is about 167 km long, and its width narrows from roughly 96 km at its eastern mouth to about 39 km at the tightest point.

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

The Zagros, thrown up where the Arabian plate pushes under the Iranian plate, loads and bends the Arabian crust, creating the foreland basin the Gulf now fills.

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

Arvand Rud, 'swift river', is the Persian name for the waterway; the 1975 Algiers Accord fixed the Iran-Iraq border along its deepest channel.