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48 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 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The 1991 Gulf War followed Iraq's invasion of which neighbouring Gulf state?
Kuwait
Iraq invaded Kuwait on 2 August 1990, and a US-led coalition drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait in February 1991.
Q 02Which body of water lies immediately east of the Strait of Hormuz, on the way to the open ocean?
The Gulf of Oman
The Strait of Hormuz opens eastward into the Gulf of Oman, which in turn leads on to the Arabian Sea.
Q 03The Persian Gulf and its coastal areas are the world's largest single source of what?
Petroleum
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.
Q 04The Persian Gulf is ultimately an arm of which of the world's great bodies of water?
The Indian Ocean
The Persian Gulf drains through the Strait of Hormuz into the Arabian Sea, which is a northern arm of the Indian Ocean.
Q 05How many nations have a coastline on the Persian Gulf?
Eight
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.
Q 06Oman touches the Persian Gulf only through which exclave at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula?
Musandam
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.
Q 07How long is the Persian Gulf?
989 km
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.
Q 08Which island handles most of Iran's crude oil exports from the Persian Gulf?
Kharg Island
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.
Q 09What is the maximum depth of the Persian Gulf?
90 metres
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.
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
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.
Q 12The Gulf island of Tarout is administered by which country?
Saudi Arabia
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.
Q 13The World Islands, an artificial archipelago built for tourism, lie off which Gulf city?
Dubai
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.
Q 21The world's oldest evidence for seagoing vessels, from site H3 in the northern Gulf, dates to which millennium BC?
The sixth
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.
Q 22Which civilisation dominated the southern Gulf at the end of the fourth millennium BC?
Dilmun
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.
Q 23Which Achaemenid king boasted of digging a canal from the Nile to 'the sea that begins in Persia'?
Darius the Great
Q 14How does the Gulf's saltier outflow exit through the Strait of Hormuz?
Along the bottom, while fresher ocean water flows in on top
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.
Q 15Which Greek writer's Indikê, of around 300 BC, repeatedly uses the term 'Persikon kolpos'?
Nearchus
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.
Q 16What did the Sasanian Persians call the Gulf, from an Avestan word meaning 'cleansing'?
Pudig
Pudig, the Sasanian name recorded in the Bundahishn, comes from the Avestan Puitika, the 'purifying' sea through which waters pass in Zoroastrian cosmology.
Q 17What name did the IHO's 1953 Limits of Oceans and Seas give this body of water?
Gulf of Iran
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.
Q 18Since which decade has the dispute over calling it the 'Arabian Gulf' been especially prevalent?
The 1960s
The 'Arabian Gulf' label gained currency in the 1960s on the back of pan-Arab nationalism, and Iran has contested it from the outset.
Q 19At the Last Glacial Maximum, when the Gulf lay dry, how much lower was sea level?
125 metres
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.
Q 20Which civilisation, the world's oldest known, developed along the Persian Gulf and southern Mesopotamia?
Sumer
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.
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'.
Q 24Which Sasanian-era port in today's Bushehr province became a great medieval entrepot for China trade?
Siraf
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.
Q 25Which 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 26Why did a Portuguese force under Antonio Correia invade Bahrain in 1521?
To seize its pearl industry
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.
Q 27Which Safavid shah drove the Portuguese from Bahrain in 1602 and from Hormuz in 1622?
Abbas I
Abbas I retook Bahrain from the Portuguese in 1602 and, with English East India Company ships, captured Hormuz from them in 1622.
Q 28Which Gulf port, taken from the Portuguese in 1615, replaced Hormuz as Persia's main trade outlet?
Bandar Abbas
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.
Q 29Which tribe's piracy prompted the British Persian Gulf campaign of 1819?
The Al Qasimi
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.
Q 30By what name were the United Arab Emirates known under British protection before 1971?
The Trucial States
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.