Arabian Peninsula
Pen/cape · 297,867 km²
Arabian Peninsula is a pen/cape in Asia, covering an estimated 297,867 km². It extends across Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Jordan.
The Arabian Peninsula, or simply Arabia, is a peninsula in West Asia. It accounts for the majority of the land situated on the Arabian plate. With an area of 3,237,500 km2 (1.25 million mi2), it is the world's largest peninsula—roughly comparable in size to India. Nine countries are located on the Arabian Peninsula: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, as well as the southern halves of Iraq and Jordan.
Geographically, the Arabian Peninsula is bounded by Mesopotamia and the Levant to the north and northwest and surrounded by the Indian Ocean: the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Gulf of Oman to the east and northeast; the Arabian Sea to the southeast; and the Gulf of Aden to the south, the Strait of Mandeb to the southwest, and the Red Sea to the west. Prior to the 7th century AD, Greco-Roman conceptions of "Arabia" were broader than the modern peninsula and extended into the Southern Levant, including the Sinai, the Negev, and regions of modern Jordan, as reflected in the Roman province of Arabia Petraea, whose capital was Petra.
Adapted from Wikipedia: Arabian Peninsula (CC BY-SA 4.0).
- Feature class
- Pen/cape
- Mapped extent
- 297,867 km²
- Size rank
- #33 of 231 landforms
- Region
- Asia
- Countries
- Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan
- Coordinates
- 15.0070°, 48.2200°
- Ranges:
- Hadhramaut (Asia), Ogo Mountains (Africa)
- Settlements:
- Saywun (69 km), Al Mukalla (123 km), Ash Shihr (146 km)
More about Arabian Peninsula
Geography
The Arabian Peninsula is located in the continent of Asia and is bounded by (clockwise) the Persian Gulf to the north-east, the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman to the east, the Arabian Sea to the south-east, the Gulf of Aden and the Guardafui Channel to the south, and the Bab-el-Mandeb strait to the south-west and the Red Sea to the south-west and west.
The northern portion of the peninsula transitions into the Syrian Desert with no clear borderline, although the northern boundary of the peninsula is generally considered to be the northern borders of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, as well as the southern regions of Iraq and Jordan.
History
Prehistoric Arabia is the period of the Arabian Peninsula before any written records are known, going back to when humans first began to settle in the region, until around 1000 BC, when systematic written documentation begins to appear in the archaeological record. Stone tools from the Middle Paleolithic era along with fossils of other animals discovered at Ti's al Ghadah, in north-western Saudi Arabia, might imply that hominins migrated through a "Green Arabia" between 300,000 and 500,000 years ago.
Two-hundred-thousand-year-old stone tools were discovered at Shuaib Al-Adgham in the eastern Al-Qassim Province, which would indicate that many prehistoric sites, located along a network of rivers, had once existed in the area.
Sections adapted from Wikipedia: Arabian Peninsula (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Arabian Peninsula: Key Facts
| Area | 3,200,000 km² |
|---|---|
| Highest point | Jabal an Nabi Shu'ayb |
| On | Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea |
Facts from Wikidata Q31945 (CC0).
