Introduction to Arabia
Arabia, a region of southwest Asia, occupying the Arabian Peninsula and nearby islands. It is bounded on the north by the Syrian Desert, on the east by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, on the south by the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Aden, and on the west by the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea. Arabia's political divisions include Bahrain (an island in the Persian Gulf), Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Geographically, Arabia includes part of Iraq and part of Jordan.
The peninsula is a vast, tilted plateau that slopes gently eastward from high ridges along the Red Sea coast. Extreme elevations exceed 12,000 feet (3,660 m), in northern Yemen. There are large expanses of desert—some are the driest, hottest, most desolate on earth. Arabia's area, roughly 1,100,000 square miles (2,800,000 km2), is nearly one-third that of the United States.
History
The Arabian Peninsula is believed to be the original home of all Semitic peoples. Because of its barrenness, many of its peoples migrated to more fertile areas in ancient times—for example, the Akkadians to Mesopotamia, the Hebrews to Palestine, and the Ethiopians to the west shore of the Red Sea. Only the southern edge of Arabia received enough rain for agriculture to develop. There highly civilized kingdoms grew up as early as 1200 B.C. The Minaean was the first of record, followed by Saba (the Biblical Sheba), Qataban, and Hadhramaut. Saba became wealthy from trade with Egypt and the Mediterranean region, supplying the frankincense, myrrh, and spices so much in demand. Caravan routes radiated in all directions from the Sabaean capital of Marib, 60 miles (97 km) east of the present city of Sana.
In the fourth century B.C. another Arabian people, the Nabataeans, founded a kingdom around their capital of Petra (in what is now Jordan), center of an important northern caravan crossroads. The Nabataeans assisted the Romans in 24 B.C. in an unsuccessful attempt to conquer Saba, which by then was ruled by the Himyarites. Early in the second century A.D. Rome conquered the Nabataean kingdom and made it the province of Arabia.
Roman ships began sailing the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and Arabia's caravan routes fell into relative disuse. As commerce declined, political life declined also, and Arabia entered upon its dark ages.
Early Muslim EraIn the early seventh century the Muslim religion, or Islam, was founded in Arabia by the prophet Mohammed. Medina and Mecca, both in what is now Hejaz in Saudi Arabia, were the first cities to be converted to the new faith. By 633, when the Muslims began their conquests outside Arabia, most of the peninsula had accepted Islam. Under the caliphs (successors of the Prophet) who ruled from Medina until 661, Arabia became politically unified. With the shift of the caliphate to Damascus in 661, the peninsula rapidly lost importance. When the Muslim seat of government was moved to Baghdad in 762, Arabia became a backwater.
As the far-flung Muslim empire broke up into petty states at times in conflict with one another, Arabian unity crumbled. The upper west coast fell under the authority of Egypt. Local dynasties arose in the south. A revolutionary Muslim sect, the Qarmatians, founded a state on the Persian Gulf in 899 and won control of most of the central area. In the 11th century Turkish-speaking hordes moved into the Middle East, occupying Arabia's northern borderlands, while the west was controlled by the Turkish Mameluke rulers of Egypt from 1250. Nominally the entire peninsula became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1517. In fact, however, most of it, especially the interior, remained in the hands of tribal chiefs.
Modern DevelopmentsDuring the 16th century Portugal had established supply and trading posts on the southeastern and eastern coasts of Arabia. The peninsula seemed to hold little that would interest the Western world, however. In the 18th century the south shore of the Persian Gulf, now known as the United Arab Emirates, became infamous for pirate activities, and Great Britain began establishing a measure of control over the coast in 1820. Aden (now southern Yemen), because of its strategic location, was seized by the British in 1839, and additional protectorates were established. Finally, in an agreement with the Ottoman Empire in 1905, Great Britain gained control of the Arabian coast from the entrance of the Red Sea to the head of the Persian Gulf.
Meanwhile, during the 1700's, the Muslim Wahhabi sect, under the leadership of the Saudi family, built a powerful kingdom in the Nejd, an interior region. In the early 1800's, the Saudis seized the Hejaz, the region containing the holy cities of Medina and Mecca, from the Ottoman Turks. By 1818, however, the Ottoman Turks had expelled the Saudis from the Hejaz.
Arabia was freed entirely of Ottoman rule during World War I. In 1916 a rebellion began in the Hejaz, and, with the help of T. E. Lawrence, the Arabs drove the Turks out. The northern part of what is now Yemen achieved independence from the Ottoman Empire at the end of the war.
In 1925, the Saudis conquered the Hejaz. The kingdoms of Nejd and Hejaz were combined and renamed Saudi Arabia in 1932.
The most important event in 1,000 years of Arabian history was the finding of oil in the Persian Gulf area. In the 1930's discoveries were made in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar. The oil resources were developed by American and British companies, and vast wealth came suddenly to the producing countries.
Arab antagonism against the West developed, however, as a result of the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973, because of Western support for Israel. Contracts were revised to give Arabian oil-producing countries control of their wells.
During the 1970's the price of oil was vastly increased and the immense oil revenues were used to finance lavish public works projects and welfare programs in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. Manufacturing industries were developed, especially in Saudi Arabia, to lessen dependence on oil revenues.