Arabia, the great peninsula of southwest Asia, is limited to the north by Jordan and Iraq, to the east by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, to the south by the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Aden and to the west by Red Sea. It is one of the least densely populated areas of the planet and comprises the states of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain.
TERRITORY
The peninsula is a large plateau surrounded to the east and south by mountains that descend smoothly towards the Persian Gulf. It covers one of the largest sandy desert areas in the world, with Rub’al Khali in the south and an-Nafud in the north. The climate is extremely arid. Its current importance and its level of economic development are due to the enormous reserves of oil and natural gas in the Persian Gulf. The most important cities are Riyadh, Mecca , Medina, Aden, Jeddah, Sana, Abu Zabi and Kuwait.
STORY
Around 3500 BC, Semitic-speaking peoples emigrated to Mesopotamia, replaced the Sumerians and gave way to the Assyrian-Babylonians (Sumer). Another group of Semites left Arabia around 2500 BC and settled along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Some of these emigrants became Amorritas and Canaanites of the following periods. The southwestern parts of the Arabian peninsula most favored with water were the birthplace of three ancient kingdoms. The mineu kingdom, within the territory that is currently Yemen, knew it (see Sabbat) and that of the Himiarians.
According to Getzipcodes.org, several states are known to exist in the pre-Christian era and at the beginning of the Christian era: the Nabataean kingdom, the kingdom of Aksum and Persia. The heyday of Islam and the birth of Muhammad in Mecca were the most important events in Arabian history. From the 8th century to the beginning of the 10th century, Arabia was a province under the command of the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad. At the end of that century, the Qarmats, a new Muslim sect that came to control the entire Arabian peninsula, lost their power to several Bedouin tribes.
The Arabian peninsula, which was totally uninhabited, was divided into numerous and small states. From 1075 to 1094, Arabia recognized the spiritual leadership of the Abbasid caliph of Baghdad. In the middle of the 13th century, the Mongols conquered Baghdad and shortly after Mecca and al-Hijaz came under the control of the emirs of Egypt. In the early sixteenth century, after conquering Egypt, the Turks began to exercise important control over the rest of the Arabian peninsula. From 1750 to the present, the history of the Arabian peninsula is, to a large extent, the history of the Wahhabis. Its surface is 3 million km2 and its population, according to 1989 data, is 32 million inhabitants.
