1.
Persian language
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Persian, also known by its endonym Farsi, is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan and it is mostly written in the Persian alphabet, a modified variant of the Arabic script. Its grammar is similar to that of many contemporary European languages, Persian gets its name from its origin at the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, Persis, hence the name Persian. A Persian-speaking person may be referred to as Persophone, there are approximately 110 million Persian speakers worldwide, with the language holding official status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. For centuries, Persian has also been a cultural language in other regions of Western Asia, Central Asia. It also exerted influence on Arabic, particularly Bahrani Arabic. Persian is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-European family, other Western Iranian languages are the Kurdish languages, Gilaki, Mazanderani, Talysh, and Balochi. Persian is classified as a member of the Southwestern subgroup within Western Iranian along with Lari, Kumzari, in Persian, the language is known by several names, Western Persian, Parsi or Farsi has been the name used by all native speakers until the 20th century. Since the latter decades of the 20th century, for reasons, in English. Tajiki is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by the Tajiks, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term Persian as a language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Native Iranian Persian speakers call it Fārsi, Farsi is the Arabicized form of Pārsi, subsequent to Muslim conquest of Persia, due to a lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The origin of the name Farsi and the place of origin of the language which is Fars Province is the Arabicized form of Pārs, in English, this language has historically been known as Persian, though Farsi has also gained some currency. Farsi is encountered in some literature as a name for the language. In modern English the word Farsi refers to the language while Parsi describes Zoroastrians, some Persian language scholars such as Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, and University of Arizona professor Kamran Talattof, have also rejected the usage of Farsi in their articles. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa, as its system is mostly based on the local names. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses the name Persian for the dialect continuum spoken across Iran and Afghanistan and this consists of the individual languages Dari and Iranian Persian. Currently, Voice of America, BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty also includes a Tajik service and an Afghan service. This is also the case for the American Association of Teachers of Persian, The Centre for Promotion of Persian Language and Literature, Persian is an Iranian language belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages
2.
Western Asia
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Western Asia, West Asia, Southwestern Asia or Southwest Asia is the westernmost subregion of Asia. The concept is in limited use, as it overlaps with the Middle East. The term is used for the purposes of grouping countries in statistics. The total population of Western Asia is an estimated 300 million as of 2015, in an unrelated context, the term is also used in ancient history and archaeology to divide the Fertile Crescent into the Asiatic or Western Asian cultures as opposed to ancient Egypt. As a geographic concept, Western Asia almost always includes the Levant, Mesopotamia, the term is used pragmatically and has no correct or generally agreed-upon definition. In contrast to this definition, the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation in its 2015 yearbook also includes Armenia and Azerbaijan, unlike the UNIDO, the United Nations Statistics Division excludes Iran from Western Asia and include Turkey, Georgia, and Cyprus in the region. These four countries are listed in the European category of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, the Olympic Council of Asias multi-sport event West Asian Games are contested by athletes representing these thirteen countries. Among the regions sports organisations are the West Asia Basketball Association, West Asian Billiards and Snooker Federation, West Asian Football Federation, Western Asia was in use as a geographical term in the early 19th century, even before Near East became current as a geopolitical concept. Use of the term in the context of contemporary geopolitics or world economy appears to date from the 1960s, Western Asia is located directly south of Eastern Europe. The region is surrounded by seven major seas, the Aegean Sea, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea. The Dasht-e Kavir and Dasht-e Lut deserts in eastern Iran naturally delimit the region somewhat from Asia itself, three major tectonic plates converge on Western Asia, including the African, Eurasian, and Arabian plates. The boundaries between the plates make up the Azores-Gibraltar Ridge, extending across North Africa, the Red Sea. The Arabian Plate is moving northward into the Anatolian plate at the East Anatolian Fault, several major aquifers provide water to large portions of Western Asia. In Saudi Arabia, two large aquifers of Palaeozoic and Triassic origins are located beneath the Jabal Tuwayq mountains and areas west to the Red Sea. Cretaceous and Eocene-origin aquifers are located beneath large portions of central and eastern Saudi Arabia, including Wasia, flood or furrow irrigation, as well as sprinkler methods, are extensively used for irrigation, covering nearly 90,000 km² across Western Asia for agriculture. Western Asia is primarily arid and semi-arid, and can be subject to drought, the region consists of grasslands, rangelands, deserts, and mountains. Water shortages are a problem in parts of West Asia, with rapidly growing populations increasing demands for water. Major rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates, provide sources for water to support agriculture
3.
Body of water
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A body of water or waterbody is any significant accumulation of water, generally on a planets surface. The term most often refers to oceans, seas, and lakes, a body of water does not have to be still or contained, Rivers, streams, canals, and other geographical features where water moves from one place to another are also considered bodies of water. Most are naturally occurring geographical features, but some are artificial, there are types that can be either. For example, most reservoirs are created by engineering dams, similarly, most harbors are naturally occurring bays, but some harbors have been created through construction. Bodies of water that are navigable are known as waterways, some bodies of water collect and move water, such as rivers and streams, and others primarily hold water, such as lakes and oceans. The term body of water can also refer to a reservoir of water held by a plant, note that there are some geographical features involving water that are not bodies of water, for example waterfalls, geysers and rapids. Arm of the sea - also sea arm, used to describe a sea loch, arroyo - a usually dry creek bed or gulch that temporarily fills with water after a heavy rain, or seasonally. Artificial lake or artificial pond - see reservoir or impoundment, barachois - a lagoon separated from the ocean by a sand bar. Bay - an area of water bordered by land on three sides, similar to, but smaller than a gulf, bayou - a slow-moving stream or a marshy lake. Bight - a large and often only slightly receding bay, or a bend in any geographical feature, billabong - see Oxbow lake, a pond or still body of water created when a river changes course and some water becomes trapped. Boil - see Seep Brook - a small stream, canal - an artificial waterway, usually connected to existing lakes, rivers, or oceans. Channel - the physical confine of a river, slough or ocean consisting of a bed. See also stream bed and strait, earth scientists generally use the term to describe a circular or round inlet with a narrow entrance, though colloquially the term is sometimes used to describe any sheltered bay. Basin - a region of land where water from rain or snowmelt drains downhill into another body of water, such as a river, lake, creek - an inlet of the sea, narrower than a cove. Delta - the location where a river flows into an ocean, sea, estuary, lake, distributary or distributary channel - a stream that branches off and flows away from a main stream channel. Draw - a usually dry creek bed or gulch that temporarily fills with water after a heavy rain, fjord - a submergent landform which has occurred due to glacial activity. Glacier - a large collection of ice or a river that moves slowly down a mountain. Glacial Pothole - see Kettle Gulf - a part of a lake or ocean that extends so that it is surrounded by land on three sides, similar to, but larger than a bay, headland - an area of water bordered by land on three sides
4.
Inflow (hydrology)
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In hydrology, the inflow of a body of water is the source of the water in the body of water. It can also refer to the volume of incoming water in unit time. All bodies of water have multiple inflows, but often, one inflow may predominate, however, in many cases, no single inflow will predominate and there will be multiple primary inflows. For a lake, the inflow may be a river or stream that flows into the lake. Inflow may also be, strictly speaking, not flows, but rather precipitation, inflow can also be used to refer to groundwater recharge. The dictionary definition of inflow at Wiktionary
5.
Gulf of Oman
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The Gulf of Oman or Sea of Oman is a strait that connects the Arabian Sea with the Strait of Hormuz, which then runs to the Persian Gulf. It borders Pakistan and Iran on the north, Oman on the south, Iran Oman Pakistan United Arab Emirates Gulf of Oman desert and semi-desert The Book of Duarte Barbosa by Duarte Barbosa, Mansel Longworth Dames. ISBN 81-206-0451-2 The Natural History of Pliny. by Pliny, Henry Thomas Riley, P.117 The Countries and Tribes of the Persian Gulf by Samuel Barrett Miles -1966. P.148 The Life & Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, P.279 The Outline of History, Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind. by Herbert George Well. The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge by Johann Jakob Herzog, Philip Schaff, Albert Hauck
6.
Drainage basin
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A drainage basin or catchment area is any area of land where precipitation collects and drains off into a common outlet, such as into a river, bay, or other body of water. Drainage basins connect into other drainage basins at elevations in a hierarchical pattern, with smaller sub-drainage basins. Other terms used to describe drainage basins are catchment, catchment basin, drainage area, river basin and water basin. In closed drainage basins the water converges to a point inside the basin, known as a sink, which may be a permanent lake. The drainage basin acts as a funnel by collecting all the water within the covered by the basin. Each drainage basin is separated topographically from adjacent basins by a perimeter, drainage basins are similar but not identical to hydrologic units, which are drainage areas delineated so as to nest into a multi-level hierarchical drainage system. Hydrologic units are defined to allow multiple inlets, outlets, or sinks, in a strict sense, all drainage basins are hydrologic units but not all hydrologic units are drainage basins. Drainage basins of the oceans and seas of the world. Grey areas are endorheic basins that do not drain to the oceans, the following is a list of the major ocean basins, About 48. 7% of the worlds land drains to the Atlantic Ocean. The two major mediterranean seas of the world also flow to the Atlantic, The Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico basin includes most of the U. S. The Mediterranean Sea basin includes much of North Africa, east-central Africa, Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe, Turkey, and the areas of Israel, Lebanon. Just over 13% of the land in the world drains to the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Oceans drainage basin also comprises about 13% of Earths land. It drains the eastern coast of Africa, the coasts of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, the Indian subcontinent, Burma, antarctica comprises approximately eight percent of the Earths land. The five largest river basins, from largest to smallest, are the basins of the Amazon, the Río de la Plata, the Congo, the Nile, and the Mississippi. The three rivers that drain the most water, from most to least, are the Amazon, Ganga, endorheic drainage basins are inland basins that do not drain to an ocean. Around 18% of all land drains to endorheic lakes or seas or sinks, the largest of these consists of much of the interior of Asia, which drains into the Caspian Sea, the Aral Sea, and numerous smaller lakes. Some of these, such as the Great Basin, are not single drainage basins but collections of separate, in endorheic bodies of standing water where evaporation is the primary means of water loss, the water is typically more saline than the oceans. An extreme example of this is the Dead Sea, drainage basins have been historically important for determining territorial boundaries, particularly in regions where trade by water has been important
7.
Iran
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Iran, also known as Persia, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a sovereign state in Western Asia. Comprising a land area of 1,648,195 km2, it is the second-largest country in the Middle East, with 82.8 million inhabitants, Iran is the worlds 17th-most-populous country. It is the country with both a Caspian Sea and an Indian Ocean coastline. The countrys central location in Eurasia and Western Asia, and its proximity to the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran is the countrys capital and largest city, as well as its leading economic and cultural center. Iran is the site of to one of the worlds oldest civilizations, the area was first unified by the Iranian Medes in 625 BC, who became the dominant cultural and political power in the region. The empire collapsed in 330 BC following the conquests of Alexander the Great, under the Sassanid Dynasty, Iran again became one of the leading powers in the world for the next four centuries. Beginning in 633 AD, Arabs conquered Iran and largely displaced the indigenous faiths of Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism by Islam, Iran became a major contributor to the Islamic Golden Age that followed, producing many influential scientists, scholars, artists, and thinkers. During the 18th century, Iran reached its greatest territorial extent since the Sassanid Empire, through the late 18th and 19th centuries, a series of conflicts with Russia led to significant territorial losses and the erosion of sovereignty. Popular unrest culminated in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906, which established a monarchy and the countrys first legislative body. Following a coup instigated by the U. K. Growing dissent against foreign influence and political repression led to the 1979 Revolution, Irans rich cultural legacy is reflected in part by its 21 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the third-largest number in Asia and 11th-largest in the world. Iran is a member of the UN, ECO, NAM, OIC. Its political system is based on the 1979 Constitution which combines elements of a democracy with a theocracy governed by Islamic jurists under the concept of a Supreme Leadership. A multicultural country comprising numerous ethnic and linguistic groups, most inhabitants are Shia Muslims, the largest ethnic groups in Iran are the Persians, Azeris, Kurds and Lurs. Historically, Iran has been referred to as Persia by the West, due mainly to the writings of Greek historians who called Iran Persis, meaning land of the Persians. As the most extensive interactions the Ancient Greeks had with any outsider was with the Persians, however, Persis was originally referred to a region settled by Persians in the west shore of Lake Urmia, in the 9th century BC. The settlement was then shifted to the end of the Zagros Mountains. In 1935, Reza Shah requested the international community to refer to the country by its native name, opposition to the name change led to the reversal of the decision, and Professor Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, propagated a move to use Persia and Iran interchangeably
8.
Iraq
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The capital, and largest city, is Baghdad. The main ethnic groups are Arabs and Kurds, others include Assyrians, Turkmen, Shabakis, Yazidis, Armenians, Mandeans, Circassians, around 95% of the countrys 36 million citizens are Muslims, with Christianity, Yarsan, Yezidism, and Mandeanism also present. The official languages of Iraq are Arabic and Kurdish, two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, run south through Iraq and into the Shatt al-Arab near the Persian Gulf. These rivers provide Iraq with significant amounts of fertile land, the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, historically known as Mesopotamia, is often referred to as the cradle of civilisation. It was here that mankind first began to read, write, create laws, the area has been home to successive civilisations since the 6th millennium BC. Iraq was the centre of the Akkadian, Sumerian, Assyrian and it was also part of the Median, Achaemenid, Hellenistic, Parthian, Sassanid, Roman, Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, Ayyubid, Mongol, Safavid, Afsharid, and Ottoman empires. Iraqs modern borders were mostly demarcated in 1920 by the League of Nations when the Ottoman Empire was divided by the Treaty of Sèvres, Iraq was placed under the authority of the United Kingdom as the British Mandate of Mesopotamia. A monarchy was established in 1921 and the Kingdom of Iraq gained independence from Britain in 1932, in 1958, the monarchy was overthrown and the Iraqi Republic created. Iraq was controlled by the Arab Socialist Baath Party from 1968 until 2003, after an invasion by the United States and its allies in 2003, Saddam Husseins Baath Party was removed from power and multi-party parliamentary elections were held in 2005. The American presence in Iraq ended in 2011, but the Iraqi insurgency continued and intensified as fighters from the Syrian Civil War spilled into the country, the Arabic name العراق al-ʿIrāq has been in use since before the 6th century. There are several suggested origins for the name, one dates to the Sumerian city of Uruk and is thus ultimately of Sumerian origin, as Uruk was the Akkadian name for the Sumerian city of Urug, containing the Sumerian word for city, UR. An Arabic folk etymology for the name is rooted, well-watered. During the medieval period, there was a region called ʿIrāq ʿArabī for Lower Mesopotamia and ʿIrāq ʿajamī, for the region now situated in Central and Western Iran. The term historically included the south of the Hamrin Mountains. The term Sawad was also used in early Islamic times for the region of the plain of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. In English, it is either /ɪˈrɑːk/ or /ɪˈræk/, the American Heritage Dictionary, the pronunciation /aɪˈræk/ is frequently heard in U. S. media. Since approximately 10,000 BC, Iraq was one of centres of a Caucasoid Neolithic culture where agriculture, the following Neolithic period is represented by rectangular houses. At the time of the pre-pottery Neolithic, people used vessels made of stone, gypsum, finds of obsidian tools from Anatolia are evidences of early trade relations
9.
Kuwait
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Kuwait /kuːˈweɪt/, officially the State of Kuwait, is a country in Western Asia. Situated in the edge of Eastern Arabia at the tip of the Persian Gulf, it shares borders with Iraq. As of 2016, Kuwait has a population of 4.2 million people,1.3 million are Kuwaitis and 2.9 million are expatriates, expatriates account for 70% of the population. Oil reserves were discovered in 1938, from 1946 to 1982, the country underwent large-scale modernization. In the 1980s, Kuwait experienced a period of geopolitical instability, in 1990, Kuwait was invaded by Iraq. The Iraqi occupation came to an end in 1991 after military intervention by coalition forces, at the end of the war, there were extensive efforts to revive the economy and rebuild national infrastructure. Kuwait is a constitutional emirate with a political system. It has an income economy backed by the worlds sixth largest oil reserves. The Kuwaiti dinar is the highest valued currency in the world, according to the World Bank, the country has the fourth highest per capita income in the world. The Constitution was promulgated in 1962, making Kuwait the most democratic country in the region, Kuwait ranks highly in regional metrics of gender equality, as it has the regions highest Global Gender Gap ranking. During the Ubaid period, Kuwait was the site of interaction between the peoples of Mesopotamia and Neolithic Eastern Arabia, mainly centered in As-Subiya in northern Kuwait. The earliest evidence of habitation in Kuwait dates back 8000 B. C. where Mesolithic tools were found in Burgan. As-Subiya in northern Kuwait is the earliest evidence of urbanization in the whole Persian Gulf basin area, mesopotamians first settled in the Kuwaiti island of Failaka in 2000 B. C. Traders from the Sumerian city of Ur inhabited Failaka and ran a mercantile business, the island had many Mesopotamian-style buildings typical of those found in Iraq dating from around 2000 B. C. The Neolithic inhabitants of Kuwait were among the worlds earliest maritime traders, one of the worlds earliest reed-boats was discovered in northern Kuwait dating back to the Ubaid period. In 3rd century BC, the ancient Greeks colonized the bay of Kuwait under Alexander the Great, according to Strabo and Arrian, Alexander the Great named Failaka Ikaros because it resembled the Aegean island of that name in size and shape. Remains of Greek colonization include a large Hellenistic fort and Greek temples, in 224 AD, Kuwait became part of the Sassanid Empire. At the time of the Sassanid Empire, Kuwait was known as Meshan, Akkaz was a Partho-Sassanian site, the Sassanid religions tower of silence was discovered in northern Akkaz
10.
Saudi Arabia
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Saudi Arabia is bordered by Jordan and Iraq to the north, Kuwait to the northeast, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates to the east, Oman to the southeast and Yemen to the south. It is separated from Israel and Egypt by the Gulf of Aqaba and it is the only nation with both a Red Sea coast and a Persian Gulf coast and most of its terrain consists of arid desert and mountains. The area of modern-day Saudi Arabia formerly consisted of four regions, Hejaz, Najd and parts of Eastern Arabia. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded in 1932 by Ibn Saud and he united the four regions into a single state through a series of conquests beginning in 1902 with the capture of Riyadh, the ancestral home of his family, the House of Saud. Saudi Arabia has since been a monarchy, effectively a hereditary dictatorship governed along Islamic lines. The ultraconservative Wahhabi religious movement within Sunni Islam has been called the predominant feature of Saudi culture, with its global spread largely financed by the oil and gas trade. Saudi Arabia is sometimes called the Land of the Two Holy Mosques in reference to Al-Masjid al-Haram and Al-Masjid an-Nabawi, the state has a total population of 28.7 million, of which 20 million are Saudi nationals and 8 million are foreigners. The states official language is Arabic, petroleum was discovered on 3 March 1938 and followed up by several other finds in the Eastern Province. Saudi Arabia has since become the worlds largest oil producer and exporter, controlling the second largest oil reserves. The kingdom is categorized as a World Bank high-income economy with a high Human Development Index and is the only Arab country to be part of the G-20 major economies. However, the economy of Saudi Arabia is the least diversified in the Gulf Cooperation Council, the state has attracted criticism for its treatment of women and use of capital punishment. Saudi Arabia is an autocracy, has the fourth highest military expenditure in the world. Saudi Arabia is considered a regional and middle power, in addition to the GCC, it is an active member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and OPEC. Following the unification of the Hejaz and Nejd kingdoms, the new state was named al-Mamlakah al-ʻArabīyah as-Suʻūdīyah by royal decree on 23 September 1932 by its founder, Abdulaziz Al Saud. Although this is translated as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in English it literally means the Saudi Arab kingdom. Its inclusion expresses the view that the country is the possession of the royal family. Al Saud is an Arabic name formed by adding the word Al, meaning family of or House of, in the case of the Al Saud, this is the father of the dynastys 18th century founder, Muhammad bin Saud. There is evidence that human habitation in the Arabian Peninsula dates back to about 125,000 years ago
11.
Qatar
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Qatar, officially the State of Qatar, is a sovereign country located in Western Asia, occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula. Its sole land border is with Saudi Arabia to the south, with the rest of its surrounded by the Persian Gulf. A strait in the Persian Gulf separates Qatar from the island country of Bahrain, as well as sharing maritime borders with the United Arab Emirates. Following Ottoman rule, Qatar became a British protectorate in the early 20th century until gaining independence in 1971, Qatar has been ruled by the House of Thani since the early 19th century. Sheikh Jassim bin Mohammed Al Thani was the founder of the State of Qatar, Qatar is a hereditary monarchy and its head of state is Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Whether it should be regarded as a constitutional or a monarchy is a matter of opinion. In 2003, the constitution was approved in a referendum. In early 2017, Qatars total population was 2.3 million,313,000 Qatari citizens and 2.6 million expatriates, Qatar is a high income economy and is a developed country, backed by the worlds third largest natural gas reserves and oil reserves. The country has the highest per capita income in the world, Qatar is classified by the UN as a country of very high human development and is the most advanced Arab state for human development. Qatar is a significant power in the Arab world, supporting several rebel groups during the Arab Spring both financially and through its globally expanding media group, Al Jazeera Media Network. For its size, Qatar wields disproportionate influence in the world, Qatar will host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, becoming the first Arab country to do so. A century later, Ptolemy produced the first known map to depict the peninsula, the map also referenced a town named Cadara to the east of the peninsula. The term Catara was exclusively used until the 18th century, after which Katara emerged as the most commonly recognised spelling, eventually, the modern derivative Qatar was adopted as the countrys name. In Standard Arabic, the name is pronounced, while in the local dialect it is, Human habitation of Qatar dates back to 50,000 years ago. Settlements and tools dating back to the Stone Age have been unearthed in the peninsula, Mesopotamian artefacts originating from the Ubaid period have been discovered in abandoned coastal settlements. Al Daasa, a settlement located on the western coast of Qatar, is the most important Ubaid site in the country and is believed to have accommodated a small seasonal encampment. Kassite Babylonian material dating back to the second millennium BC found in Al Khor Islands attests to trade relations between the inhabitants of Qatar and the Kassites in modern-day Bahrain, among the findings were 3,000,000 crushed snail shells and Kassite potsherds. It has been suggested that Qatar is the earliest known site of shellfish dye production, in 224 AD, the Sasanian Empire gained control over the territories surrounding the Persian Gulf
12.
Bahrain
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Bahrain, officially the Kingdom of Bahrain, is a small Arab monarchy in the Persian Gulf. Bahrains population is 1,234,567, including 666,172 non-nationals and it is 780 km2 in size, making it the third smallest nation in Asia after the Maldives and Singapore. Bahrain is the site of the ancient Dilmun civilisation and it has been famed since antiquity for its pearl fisheries, which were considered the best in the world into the 19th century. Bahrain was one of the earliest areas to convert to Islam, following a period of Arab rule, Bahrain was occupied by the Portuguese in 1521, who in turn were expelled in 1602 by Shah Abbas I of the Safavid dynasty under the Persian Empire. In 1783, the Bani Utbah clan captured Bahrain from Nasr Al-Madhkur and it has since been ruled by the Al Khalifa royal family, in the late 1800s, following successive treaties with the British, Bahrain became a protectorate of the United Kingdom. Formerly a state, Bahrain was declared a Kingdom in 2002, in 2011, the country experienced protests inspired by the regional Arab Spring. Bahrain had the first post-oil economy in the Persian Gulf, since the late 20th century, Bahrain has invested in the banking and tourism sectors. Many large financial institutions have a presence in Manama, the countrys capital, Bahrain has a high Human Development Index and was recognised by the World Bank as a high income economy. In Arabic, Bahrayn is the form of bahr, so al-Bahrayn means the two seas, although which two seas were originally intended remains in dispute. The term appears five times in the Quran, but does not refer to the modern island—originally known to the Arabs as Awal— but rather to all of Eastern Arabia. Today, Bahrains two seas are generally taken to be the bay east and west of the island. In addition to wells, there are areas of the sea north of Bahrain where fresh water bubbles up in the middle of the water as noted by visitors since antiquity. An alternate theory with regard to Bahrains toponymy is offered by the al-Ahsa region, another supposition by al-Jawahari suggests that the more formal name Bahri would have been misunderstood and so was opted against. Until the late Middle Ages, Bahrain referred to the region of Eastern Arabia that included Southern Iraq, Kuwait, Al-Hasa, Qatif, the region stretched from Basra in Iraq to the Strait of Hormuz in Oman. This was Iqlīm al-Bahrayns Bahrayn Province, the exact date at which the term Bahrain began to refer solely to the Awal archipelago is unknown. The entire coastal strip of Eastern Arabia was known as Bahrain for a millennium, the island and kingdom were also commonly spelled Bahrein into the 1950s. Bahrain was home to the Dilmun civilization, an important Bronze Age trade centre linking Mesopotamia, Bahrain was later ruled by the Assyrians and Babylonians. From the 6th to 3rd century BC, Bahrain was part of the Persian Empire ruled by the Achaemenian dynasty, by about 250 BC, Parthia brought the Persian Gulf under its control and extended its influence as far as Oman
13.
United Arab Emirates
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In 2013, the UAEs population was 9.2 million, of which 1.4 million are Emirati citizens and 7.8 million are expatriates. The country is a federation of seven emirates, and was established on 2 December 1971, the constituent emirates are Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah and Umm al-Quwain. Each emirate is governed by a monarch, together, they jointly form the Federal Supreme Council. One of the monarchs is selected as the President of the United Arab Emirates, Islam is the official religion of the UAE and Arabic is the official language. The UAEs oil reserves are the seventh-largest in the world while its natural gas reserves are the worlds seventeenth-largest, Sheikh Zayed, ruler of Abu Dhabi and the first President of the UAE, oversaw the development of the Emirates and steered oil revenues into healthcare, education and infrastructure. The UAEs economy is the most diversified in the Gulf Cooperation Council, while its most populous city of Dubai is an important global city, nevertheless, the country remains principally reliant on its export of petroleum and natural gas. The UAE is criticised for its rights record, including the specific interpretations of Sharia used in its legal system. The UAEs rising international profile has led analysts to identify it as a regional. It appears the land of the Emirates has been occupied for thousands of years, there is no proof of contact with the outside world at that stage, although in time it developed with civilisations in Mesopotamia and Iran. This contact persisted and became wide-ranging, probably motivated by trade in copper from the Hajar Mountains, in ancient times, Al Hasa was part of Al Bahreyn and adjoined Greater Oman. Sassanid groups were present on the Batinah coast, in 637, Julfar was an important port that was used as a staging post for the Islamic invasion of the Sassanian Empire. The area of the Al Ain/Buraimi Oasis was known as Tuam and was an important trading post for camel routes between the coast and the Arabian interior. The earliest Christian site in the UAE was first discovered in the 1990s, a monastic complex on what is now known as Sir Bani Yas Island. Thought to be Nestorian and built in 600 AD, the church appears to have been abandoned peacefully in 750 AD and it forms a rare physical link to a legacy of Christianity which is thought to have spread across the peninsula from 50 to 350 AD following trade routes. Certainly, by the 5th century, Oman had a bishop named John – the last bishop of Oman being Etienne, in 676 AD. This led to a group of travelling to Medina, converting to Islam and subsequently driving a successful uprising against the unpopular Sassanids. Following the death of Prophet Muhammad, the new Islamic communities south of the Persian Gulf threatened to disintegrate, with insurrections against the Muslim leaders. The Caliph Abu Bakr sent an army from the capital Medina which completed its reconquest of the territory with the battle of Dibba in which 10,000 lives are thought to have been lost
14.
Oman
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Oman, officially the Sultanate of Oman, is an Arab country on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula. The coast is formed by the Arabian Sea on the southeast, the Madha and Musandam exclaves are surrounded by the UAE on their land borders, with the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman forming Musandams coastal boundaries. From the late 17th century, the Omani Sultanate was an empire, vying with Portugal and Britain for influence in the Persian Gulf. At its peak in the 19th century, Omani influence or control extended across the Strait of Hormuz to modern-day Iran and Pakistan, as its power declined in the 20th century, the sultanate came under the influence of the United Kingdom. Historically, Muscat was the trading port of the Persian Gulf region. Muscat was also among the most important trading ports of the Indian Ocean, the Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said has been the hereditary leader of the country since 1970. Sultan Qaboos is the current ruler in the Middle East. Oman has modest oil reserves, ranking 25th globally, nevertheless, in 2010 the UNDP ranked Oman as the most improved nation in the world in terms of development during the preceding 40 years. A significant portion of its economy is tourism and trade of fish, dates and this sets it apart from its neighbors solely oil-dependent economies. Oman is categorized as an economy and ranks as the 74th most peaceful country in the world according to the Global Peace Index. Two optically stimulated luminescence age estimates place the Arabian Nubian Complex at 106,000 years old and this supports the proposition that early human populations moved from Africa into Arabia during the Late Pleistocene. Dereaze, located in the city of Ibri, is the oldest known settlement in the area. Archaeological remains have been discovered here from the Stone Age and the Bronze Age, findings have included stone implements, animal bones, shells and fire hearths, with the latter dating back to 7615 BC as the oldest signs of human settlement in the area. Other discoveries include hand-molded pottery bearing distinguishing pre-Bronze Age marks, heavy flint implements, pointed tools, sumerian tablets refer to a country called Magan or Makan, a name believed to refer to Omans ancient copper mines. Mazoon, another used for the region, is derived from the word muzn. The present-day name of the country, Oman, is believed to originate from the Arab tribes who migrated to its territory from the Uman region of Yemen. Many such tribes settled in Oman, making a living by fishing, herding or stock breeding, from the 6th century BC to the arrival of Islam in the 7th century AD, Oman was controlled and/or influenced by three Persian dynasties, the Achaemenids, Parthians and Sassanids. A few scholars believe that in the 6th century BC, the Achaemenids exerted a strong degree of control over the Omani peninsula, Central Oman has its own indigenous so-called Late Iron Age cultural assemblage, the Samad al-Shan
15.
Musandam Governorate
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The Musandam Governorate is a governorate of Oman. It is located on the Musandam peninsula, which juts into the Strait of Hormuz, the Governorate is an exclave, separated from the rest of Oman by the United Arab Emirates. Its location gives Oman partial control, shared with Iran, of the strategic strait, in the northern section of Musandam, around Kumzar, the language is Kumzari, which is a southwestern Iranian language closely related to Larestani and Luri. The Musandam Peninsula has an area of 1,800 square kilometers, access to the peninsula was formerly difficult, with the only options being limited flights or a ten-hour drive through four immigration posts. The Shinas fast ferry service between Muscat and Musandam was launched in August 2008 to alleviate this problem and make the more accessible. The governorate is accesible by land only from the United Arab Emirates, mainland Musandam can be accessed by Ras Al Khaimah near Al Jeer and an exclave of Sharjah, Dibba Al Hisn. Oman Air provides an air link between the capital of the country, Muscat and the administrative town of the governorate. The area has great strategic importance owing to its proximity to the Strait of Hormuz, the administrative head of Governorate is the Muhafiz. The current Muhafiz is HE Al-Sayyid Khalifa Bin Murdas Bin Ahmad Al-Busaidi, the rugged coastline resembles the glacier-carved coasts of polar regions, but in this case, the coast was shaped by the movement of Earth’s crust. The Arabian plate is slowly pushing under the Eurasian plate, creating the earthquake-prone mountains of Iran, on the leading edge of the Arabian plate, the Musandam Peninsula is sinking. The higher elevation mountains remain above the water, but the sea has rushed in to fill the valleys with fingers of water, Musandam Peninsula, Oman NASA Earth Observatory
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Arabic
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Arabic is a Central Semitic language that was first spoken in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. Arabic is also the language of 1.7 billion Muslims. It is one of six languages of the United Nations. The modern written language is derived from the language of the Quran and it is widely taught in schools and universities, and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, government, and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as Literary Arabic, which is the language of 26 states. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the standards of Quranic Arabic. Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-Quranic era, Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics. As a result, many European languages have borrowed many words from it. Many words of Arabic origin are found in ancient languages like Latin. Balkan languages, including Greek, have acquired a significant number of Arabic words through contact with Ottoman Turkish. Arabic has also borrowed words from languages including Greek and Persian in medieval times. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to the Northwest Semitic languages, the Ancient South Arabian languages, the Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment of the Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include, The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation into a past tense, the conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation into a present tense. The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms in favor of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms, the development of an internal passive. These features are evidence of descent from a hypothetical ancestor. In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside of the Ancient South Arabian family were spoken and it is also believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages were also spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hijaz, Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages, in Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested
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Indian Ocean
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The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the worlds oceanic divisions, covering 70,560,000 km2. It is bounded by Asia on the north, on the west by Africa, on the east by Australia, the Indian Ocean is known as Ratnākara, the mine of gems in ancient Sanskrit literature, and as Hind Mahāsāgar, in Hindi. The northernmost extent of the Indian Ocean is approximately 30° north in the Persian Gulf, the oceans continental shelves are narrow, averaging 200 kilometres in width. An exception is found off Australias western coast, where the width exceeds 1,000 kilometres. The average depth of the ocean is 3,890 m and its deepest point is Diamantina Deep in Diamantina Trench, at 8,047 m deep, Sunda Trench has a depth of 7, 258–7,725 m. North of 50° south latitude, 86% of the basin is covered by pelagic sediments. The remaining 14% is layered with terrigenous sediments, glacial outwash dominates the extreme southern latitudes. The major choke points include Bab el Mandeb, Strait of Hormuz, the Lombok Strait, the Strait of Malacca, the Indian Ocean is artificially connected to the Mediterranean Sea through the Suez Canal, which is accessible via the Red Sea. All of the Indian Ocean is in the Eastern Hemisphere and the centre of the Eastern Hemisphere is in this ocean, marginal seas, gulfs, bays and straits of the Indian Ocean include, The climate north of the equator is affected by a monsoon climate. Strong north-east winds blow from October until April, from May until October south, in the Arabian Sea the violent Monsoon brings rain to the Indian subcontinent. In the southern hemisphere, the winds are milder. When the monsoon winds change, cyclones sometimes strike the shores of the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean is the warmest ocean in the world. Long-term ocean temperature records show a rapid, continuous warming in the Indian Ocean, Indian Ocean warming is the largest among the tropical oceans, and about 3 times faster than the warming observed in the Pacific. Research indicates that human induced greenhouse warming, and changes in the frequency, among the few large rivers flowing into the Indian Ocean are the Zambezi, Shatt al-Arab, Indus, Godavari, Krishna, Narmada, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Jubba and Irrawaddy River. The oceans currents are controlled by the monsoon. Two large gyres, one in the northern hemisphere flowing clockwise and one south of the equator moving anticlockwise, during the winter monsoon, however, currents in the north are reversed. Deep water circulation is controlled primarily by inflows from the Atlantic Ocean, the Red Sea, north of 20° south latitude the minimum surface temperature is 22 °C, exceeding 28 °C to the east. Southward of 40° south latitude, temperatures drop quickly, surface water salinity ranges from 32 to 37 parts per 1000, the highest occurring in the Arabian Sea and in a belt between southern Africa and south-western Australia
18.
Strait of Hormuz
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The Strait of Hormuz /hɔːrˈmuːz/ Persian, تنگه هرمز Tangehyyeh Hormoz listen, Arabic, مَضيق هُرمُز Maḍīq Hurmuz) is a strait between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. It provides the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the ocean and is one of the worlds most strategically important choke points. On the north coast lies Iran, and on the south coast the United Arab Emirates and Musandam, at its narrowest, the strait has a width of 29 nautical miles. About 20% of the worlds petroleum passes through the strait, making it an important strategic location for international trade. At the upper end of this there is a market-town designated by law called Apologus, situated near Charaex Spasini. In the 10th–17th centuries AD, the Kingdom of Ormus, which seems to have given the strait its name, was located here, scholars, historians and linguists derive the name Ormuz from the local Persian word هورمغ Hur-mogh meaning date palm. In the local dialects of Hurmoz and Minab this strait is still called Hurmogh and has the aforementioned meaning, the resemblance of this word with the name of the Persian god هرمز Hormoz has resulted in the popular belief that these words are related. To reduce the risk of collision, ships moving through the Strait follow a Traffic Separation Scheme, inbound ships use one lane, outbound ships another, the lanes are separated by a two-mile-wide median. To traverse the Strait, ships pass through the waters of Iran and Oman under the transit passage provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Although not all countries have ratified the convention, most countries, Oman has a radar site Link Quality Indicator to monitor the TSS in the Strait of Hormuz. This site is on an island on the peak of Musandam Peninsula. According to the U. S. Energy Information Administration, in 2011 and this was said to represent 35% of the worlds seaborne oil shipments and 20% of oil traded worldwide. The report stated that more than 85% of these crude oil exports went to Asian markets, with Japan, India, South Korea, unlike other straits, there is no bridge or tunnel at the Strait. On 18 April 1988, the U. S. Navy waged a battle against Iranian forces in. The battle, dubbed Operation Praying Mantis by the U. S. was launched in retaliation for the USS Samuel B. Roberts striking a mine laid in the channel by Iran on 14 April. U. S. forces sank one frigate, one gunboat, on 8 January 2007, the nuclear submarine USS Newport News, traveling submerged, struck MV Mogamigawa, a 300, 000-ton Japanese-flagged very large crude tanker, south of the strait. There were no injuries, and no oil leaked from the tanker, a series of naval stand-offs between Iranian speedboats and U. S. warships in the Strait of Hormuz occurred in December 2007 and January 2008. U. S. officials accused Iran of harassing and provoking their naval vessels and this followed more ambiguous threats from Irans oil minister and other government officials that an attack on Iran would result in turmoil in the worlds oil supply
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Arabian Peninsula
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The Arabian Peninsula, simplified Arabia is a peninsula of Western Asia situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian plate. From a geological perspective, it is considered a subcontinent of Asia and it is the largest peninsula in the world, at 3,237,500 km2. The Arabian Peninsula consists of the countries Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the Arabian Peninsula plays a critical geopolitical role in the Middle East and the Arab world due to its vast reserves of oil and natural gas. Before the modern era, it was divided into four regions, Hejaz, Najd, Southern Arabia. Hejaz and Najd make up most of Saudi Arabia, Southern Arabia consists of Yemen and some parts of Saudi Arabia and Oman. Eastern Arabia consists of the coastal strip of the Persian Gulf. The most prominent feature of the peninsula is desert, but in the southwest there are mountain ranges, harrat ash Shaam is a large volcanic field that extends from the northwestern Arabian Peninsula into Jordan and southern Syria. The peninsulas constituent countries are Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the island nation of Bahrain lies off the east coast of the peninsula. Six countries form the Gulf Cooperation Council, however, this is a disputed term. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia covers the part of the peninsula. The majority of the population of the live in Saudi Arabia. The peninsula contains the worlds largest reserves of oil, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are economically the wealthiest in the region. Qatar, a peninsula in the Persian Gulf on the larger peninsula, is home of the Arabic-language television station Al Jazeera. Kuwait, on the border with Iraq, is an important country strategically, though historically lightly populated, political Arabia is noted for a high population growth rate - as the result of both very strong inflows of migrant labor as well as sustained high birth rates. The population tends to be young and heavily skewed gender ratio dominated by males. In many states, the number of South Asians exceeds that of the local citizenry, the four smallest states, which have their entire coastlines on the Persian Gulf, exhibit the worlds most extreme population growth, roughly tripling every 20 years. In 2014, the population of the Arabian Peninsula was 77,983,936. Listed here are the human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups in Arabia Haplogroup J is the most abundant component in the Arabian peninsula and its two main subclades, show opposite latitudinal gradients in the Middle East
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Shatt al-Arab
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The southern end of the river constitutes the border between Iraq and Iran down to the mouth of the river as it discharges into the Persian Gulf. The river is significant because it forms a natural border between Iran and the Arab world. It varies in width from about 232 metres at Basra to 800 metres at its mouth and it is thought that the waterway formed relatively recently in geologic time, with the Tigris and Euphrates originally emptying into the Persian Gulf via a channel further to the west. The Karun river, a tributary joins the waterway from the Iranian side, deposits large amounts of silt into the river. The area is judged to hold the largest date palm forest in the world, in the mid-1970s, the region included 17 to 18 million date palms, an estimated one-fifth of the worlds 90 million palm trees. But by 2002, war, salt, and pests had wiped out more than 14 million of the palms, many of the remaining 3 to 4 million trees are in poor condition. In Middle Persian literature and the Shahnama, the name اروند Arvand is used for the Tigris, Iranians also used this name specifically to designate the Shatt al-Arab during the later Pahlavi period, and continue to do so after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The Iranian cities of Abadan and Khorramshahr and the Iraqi city, the tribes on both sides of the lower waterway, however, are Marsh Arabs, and the Ottoman Empire claimed to represent them. Tensions between the empires that extended across a wide range of religious, cultural and political conflicts. The Second Treaty of Erzurum was signed by the two parties in 1847 after protracted negotiations, which included British and Russian delegates. A protocol between the Ottomans and the Persians was signed in Istanbul in 1913, which declared that the Ottoman-Persian frontier run along the thalweg, in 1937, Iran and Iraq signed a treaty that settled the dispute over control of the Shatt al-Arab. By the late 1960s, the build-up of Iranian power under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in April 1969, Iran abrogated the 1937 treaty over the Shatt al-Arab, and as such, Iran ceased paying tolls to Iraq when its ships used the Shatt al-Arab. Iraq threatened war over the Iranian move, but when on 24 April 1969 an Iranian tanker escorted by Iranian warships sailed down the Shatt al-Arab, Iraq being the militarily weaker state did nothing. The Iranian abrogation of the 1937 treaty marked the beginning of a period of acute Iraqi-Iranian tension that was to last until the Algiers Accords of 1975, all United Nations attempts to intervene as mediators were rebuffed. Under Saddam Hussein, Baathist Iraq claimed the entire waterway up to the Iranian shore as its territory, in response, Iran in the early 1970s became the main patron of Iraqi Kurdish groups fighting for independence from Iraq. In 1980, Hussein released a statement claiming to abrogate the treaty that he signed, international law, however, holds that in all cases no bilateral or multilateral treaty can be abrogated by one party only. The main thrust of the movement on the ground was across the waterway which was the stage for most of the military battles between the two armies. The waterway was Iraqs only outlet to the Persian Gulf, and thus, its shipping lanes were greatly affected by continuous Iranian attacks
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River delta
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A river delta is a landform that forms from deposition of sediment carried by a river as the flow leaves its mouth and enters slower-moving or standing water. This occurs where a river enters an ocean, sea, estuary, lake, reservoir, River deltas are ecologically important as they provide coastline defense, are home to many species, and can impact drinking water supply. The tidal currents also cannot be too strong, as sediment would wash out into the body faster than the river deposits it. Of course, the river must carry enough sediment to layer into deltas over time, the rivers velocity decreases rapidly, causing it to deposit the majority, if not all, of its load. This alluvium builds up to form the river delta, when the flow enters the standing water, it is no longer confined to its channel and expands in width. This flow expansion results in a decrease in the flow velocity, as a result, sediment drops out of the flow and deposits. Over time, this single channel builds a deltaic lobe, pushing its mouth into the standing water, as the deltaic lobe advances, the gradient of the river channel becomes lower because the river channel is longer but has the same change in elevation. As the slope of the channel decreases, it becomes unstable for two reasons. First, gravity makes the flow in the most direct course down slope. If the river breaches its natural levees, it out onto a new course with a shorter route to the ocean. Second, as its slope gets lower, the amount of stress on the bed decreases, which results in deposition of sediment within the channel. This makes it easier for the river to breach its levees, often when the channel does this, some of its flow remains in the abandoned channel. When these channel-switching events occur, a mature delta develops a distributary network, another way these distributary networks form is from deposition of mouth bars. When this mid-channel bar is deposited at the mouth of a river and this results in additional deposition on the upstream end of the mouth-bar, which splits the river into two distributary channels. A good example of the result of this process is the Wax Lake Delta, in both of these cases, depositional processes force redistribution of deposition from areas of high deposition to areas of low deposition. This results in the smoothing of the shape of the delta as the channels move across its surface. Because the sediment is laid down in fashion, the shape of these deltas approximates a fan. The more often the flow changes course, the shape develops as closer to an ideal fan, the Mississippi and Ural River deltas, with their birds-feet, are examples of rivers that do not avulse often enough to form a symmetrical fan shape
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Oil tanker
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An oil tanker, also known as a petroleum tanker, is a merchant ship designed for the bulk transport of oil. There are two types of oil tankers, crude tankers and product tankers. Crude tankers move large quantities of unrefined oil from its point of extraction to refineries. Product tankers, generally smaller, are designed to move refined products from refineries to points near consuming markets. Oil tankers are often classified by their size as well as their occupation, the size classes range from inland or coastal tankers of a few thousand metric tons of deadweight to the mammoth ultra large crude carriers of 550,000 DWT. Tankers move approximately 2,000,000,000 metric tons of oil every year, second only to pipelines in terms of efficiency, the average cost of oil transport by tanker amounts to only two or three United States cents per 1 US gallon. Some specialized types of oil tankers have evolved, one of these is the naval replenishment oiler, a tanker which can fuel a moving vessel. Combination ore-bulk-oil carriers and permanently moored floating storage units are two variations on the standard oil tanker design. Oil tankers have been involved in a number of damaging and high-profile oil spills, as a result, they are subject to stringent design and operational regulations. The technology of oil transportation has evolved alongside the oil industry, although anthropogenic use of oil reaches to prehistory, the first modern commercial exploitation dates back to James Youngs manufacture of paraffin in 1850. In the early 1850s, oil began to be exported from Upper Burma, the oil was moved in earthenware vessels to the river bank where it was then poured into boat holds for transportation to Britain. In the 1860s, Pennsylvania oil fields became a supplier of oil. Break-bulk boats and barges were used to transport Pennsylvania oil in 40-US-gallon wooden barrels. But transport by barrel had several problems, the first problem was weight, the standard empty barrel weighed 64 pounds, representing 20% of the total weight of a full barrel. Other problems with barrels were their expense, their tendency to leak, the expense was significant, for example, in the early years of the Russian oil industry, barrels accounted for half the cost of petroleum production. In 1863, two tankers were built on Englands River Tyne. These were followed in 1873 by the first oil-tank steamer, Vaderland, the vessels use was curtailed by U. S. and Belgian authorities citing safety concerns. By 1871, the Pennsylvania oil fields were making limited use of oil tank barges, the modern oil tanker was developed in the period from 1877 to 1885
23.
Gulf War
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The Iraqi Armys occupation of Kuwait that began 2 August 1990 was met with international condemnation, and brought immediate economic sanctions against Iraq by members of the UN Security Council. US President George H. W. Bush deployed US forces into Saudi Arabia, an array of nations joined the coalition, the largest military alliance since World War II. The great majority of the military forces were from the US, with Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia paid around US$32 billion of the US$60 billion cost, the war was marked by the introduction of live news broadcasts from the front lines of the battle, principally by the US network CNN. The war has also earned the nickname Video Game War after the daily broadcast of images from cameras on board US bombers during Operation Desert Storm. The initial conflict to expel Iraqi troops from Kuwait began with an aerial and naval bombardment on 17 January 1991 and this was followed by a ground assault on 24 February. This was a victory for the coalition forces, who liberated Kuwait. The coalition ceased its advance, and declared a ceasefire 100 hours after the campaign started. Aerial and ground combat was confined to Iraq, Kuwait, Iraq launched Scud missiles against coalition military targets in Saudi Arabia and against Israel. The following names have been used to describe the conflict itself, Gulf War, a problem with these terms is that the usage is ambiguous, having now been applied to at least three conflicts, see Gulf War. The use of the term Persian Gulf is also disputed, see Persian Gulf naming dispute, with no consensus of naming, various publications have attempted to refine the name. Other language terms include French, la Guerre du Golfe and German, Golfkrieg, German, Zweiter Golfkrieg, French, most of the coalition states used various names for their operations and the wars operational phases. Operation Desert Storm was the US name of the conflict from 17 January 1991. Operation Desert Sabre was the US name for the offensive against the Iraqi Army in the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations from 24–28 February 1991, in itself. Operation Desert Farewell was the given to the return of US units and equipment to the US in 1991 after Kuwaits liberation. Operation Granby was the British name for British military activities during the operations, Opération Daguet was the French name for French military activities in the conflict. Operation Friction was the name of the Canadian operations Operazione Locusta was the Italian name for the operations, in addition, various phases of each operation may have a unique operational name. The US divided the conflict into three campaigns, Defense of Saudi Arabian country for the period 2 August 1990, through 16 January 1991
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Reef
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A reef is a bar of rock, sand, coral or similar material, lying beneath the surface of water. Reefs may be up to 261 feet below the surface, artificial reefs such as shipwrecks are sometimes created to enhance physical complexity on generally featureless sand bottoms in order to attract a diverse assemblage of organisms, especially fish. There is a variety of reef types, including oyster reefs. These biotic reef types take on additional names depending upon how the reef lies in relation to the land, Reef types include fringing reef, barrier reefs, as well as atolls. A fringing reef is a reef that is attached to an island, a barrier reef forms a calcareous barrier around an island resulting in a lagoon between the shore and the reef. An atoll is a reef with no land present. The reef front is a high energy locale whereas the internal lagoon will be at an energy with fine grained sediments. One useful definition distinguishes reefs from mounds as follows, reefs are held up by a macroscopic skeletal framework. Coral reefs are an excellent example of this kind, corals and calcareous algae grow on top of one another and form a three-dimensional framework that is modified in various ways by other organisms and inorganic processes. By contrast, mounds lack a macroscopic skeletal framework, mounds are built by microorganisms or by organisms that dont grow a skeletal framework. A microbial mound might be built exclusively or primarily by cyanobacteria, excellent examples of biostromes formed by cyanobacteria occur in the Great Salt Lake of Utah, and in Shark Bay, Western Australia. Cyanobacteria do not have skeletons and individuals are microscopic, cyanobacteria encourage the precipitation or accumulation of calcium carbonate and can produce distinct sediment bodies in composition that have relief on the seafloor. Cyanobacterial mounds were most abundant before the evolution of shelly macroscopic organisms, bryozoans and crinoids, common contributors to marine sediments during the Mississippian, produced a very different kind of mound. Bryozoans are small and the skeletons of crinoids disintegrate, however, bryozoan and crinoid meadows can persist over time and produce compositionally distinct bodies of sediment with depositional relief. The Proterozoic Belt Supergroup contains evidence of microbial mat and dome structures similar to stromatolite reef complexes. Ancient reefs buried within stratigraphic sections are of considerable interest to geologists because they provide information about the location in Earths history. Corals, including some major extinct groups Rugosa and Tabulata, have been important reef builders through much of the Phanerozoic since the Ordovician Period. However, other groups, such as calcifying algae, especially members of the red algae Rhodophyta
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Coral reef
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Coral reefs are diverse underwater ecosystems held together by calcium carbonate structures secreted by corals. Coral reefs are built by colonies of tiny animals found in waters that contain few nutrients. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, which in turn consist of polyps that cluster in groups, the polyps belong to a group of animals known as Cnidaria, which also includes sea anemones and jellyfish. Unlike sea anemones, corals secrete hard carbonate exoskeletons which support, most reefs grow best in warm, shallow, clear, sunny and agitated waters. Often called rainforests of the sea, shallow coral reefs form some of the most diverse ecosystems on Earth, paradoxically, coral reefs flourish even though they are surrounded by ocean waters that provide few nutrients. They are most commonly found at depths in tropical waters. Coral reefs deliver ecosystem services to tourism, fisheries and shoreline protection, the annual global economic value of coral reefs is estimated between US$29. 8-375 billion. However, coral reefs are fragile ecosystems, partly because they are sensitive to water temperature. Most of the coral reefs we can see today were formed after the last glacial period when melting ice caused the sea level to rise and this means that most modern coral reefs are less than 10,000 years old. As communities established themselves on the shelves, the reefs grew upwards, Reefs that rose too slowly could become drowned reefs. They are covered by so much water there was insufficient light. Coral reefs are found in the sea away from continental shelves, around oceanic islands. The vast majority of islands are volcanic in origin. The few exceptions have tectonic origins where plate movements have lifted the deep ocean floor on the surface. In 1842 in his first monograph, The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs, Charles Darwin set out his theory of the formation of atoll reefs and he theorized uplift and subsidence of the Earths crust under the oceans formed the atolls. Darwin’s theory sets out a sequence of three stages in atoll formation and it starts with a fringing reef forming around an extinct volcanic island as the island and ocean floor subsides. As the subsidence continues, the reef becomes a barrier reef. Darwin predicted that underneath each lagoon would be a bed rock base, where the level of the underlying earth allows, the corals grow around the coast to form what he called fringing reefs, and can eventually grow out from the shore to become a barrier reef
26.
Pinctada
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Pinctada is a genus of saltwater oysters, marine bivalve molluscs in the family Pteriidae, the pearl oysters. These oysters have an inner shell layer composed of nacre. Pearl oysters are not closely related to either the edible oysters of family Ostreidae or the pearl mussels of the families Unionidae and Margaritiferidae. P. margaritifera and P. maxima are used for culturing South Sea and they are cultured widely primarily in the central and eastern Indo-Pacific. A pearl oyster can be seen on the side of the 1. All species within the genus produce pearls, attempts have been made to harvest pearls commercially from many Pinctada species. Pearls are also obtained in commercial quantities from some species of the related winged oyster genus Pteria. Pearls are also produced from freshwater mussel species unrelated to pearl oysters and these freshwater species include Hyriopsis cumingii, Hyriopsis schlegelii, and a hybrid of the two species. At danger from the demand for pearls, the typical lifespan of a pearl oyster is usually around 3 years to 14 years. Pinctada maxima are seeded at about 2 years of age and take 2 years to develop a pearl. They can be reseeded up to 3 or 4 times, akoya pearls are harvested after about 9 to 16 months. He analyzed historical records and used information about the biology of these and other species to explain its rapid disappearance
27.
Oil spill
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An oil spill is the release of a liquid petroleum hydrocarbon into the environment, especially marine areas, due to human activity, and is a form of pollution. The term is applied to marine oil spills, where oil is released into the ocean or coastal waters. Cleanup and recovery from an oil spill is difficult and depends upon factors, including the type of oil spilled, the temperature of the water. Spills may take weeks, months or even years to clean up, oil spills can have disastrous consequences for society, economically, environmentally, and socially. The quantity of oil spilled during accidents has ranged from a few hundred tons to several hundred thousand tons, but volume is a limited barometer of damage or impact. Oil spills at sea are generally much more damaging than those on land and these can kill seabirds, mammals, shellfish and other organisms they coat. Oil spills on land are more readily containable if an earth dam can be rapidly bulldozed around the spill site before most of the oil escapes. An oil spill represents an immediate fire hazard, the Kuwaiti oil fires produced air pollution that caused respiratory distress. The Deepwater Horizon explosion killed eleven oil rig workers, the fire resulting from the Lac-Mégantic derailment killed 47 and destroyed half of the towns centre. Spilled oil can contaminate drinking water supplies. For example, in 2013 two different oil spills contaminated water supplies for 300,000 in Miri, Malaysia,80,000 people in Coca, in 2000, springs were contaminated by an oil spill in Clark County, Kentucky. Contamination can have an impact on tourism and marine resource extraction industries. For example, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill impacted beach tourism and fishing along the Gulf Coast, in general, sрilled oil can affect animals and plants in twо ways, dirесt from the oil and from the respоnsе or cleаnup process. There is no relationship between the amount of oil in the aquatic environment and the likely impact on biodiversity. A smaller spill at the wrong time/wrong season and in an environment may prove much more harmful than a larger spill at another time of the year in another or even the same environment. Animals who rely on scent to find their babies or mothers cannot due to the scent of the oil. This causes a baby to be rejected and abandoned, leaving the babies to starve, oil can impair a birds ability to fly, preventing it from foraging or escaping from predators. As they preen, birds may ingest the oil coating their feathers, irritating the digestive tract, altering liver function, together with their diminished foraging capacity, this can rapidly result in dehydration and metabolic imbalance
28.
Arab League
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The Arab League, formally the League of Arab States, is a regional organization of Arab countries in and around North Africa, the Horn of Africa and Arabia. It was formed in Cairo on 22 March 1945 with six members, Kingdom of Egypt, Kingdom of Iraq, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen joined as a member on 5 May 1945. Currently, the League has 22 members, but Syrias participation has been suspended since November 2011, the League has served as a platform for the drafting and conclusion of many landmark documents promoting economic integration. One example is the Joint Arab Economic Action Charter, which outlines the principles for economic activities in the region, each member state has one vote in the League Council, and decisions are binding only for those states that have voted for them. Furthermore, the signing of an agreement on Joint Defence and Economic Cooperation on 13 April 1950 committed the signatories to coordination of military defence measures. In March 2015, the Arab League General Secretary announced the establishment of a Joint Arab Force with the aim of counteracting extremism, the decision was reached while Operation Decisive Storm was intensifying in Yemen. Participation in the project is voluntary, and the army intervenes only at the request of one of the member states. The growing militarization of the region and the increase in violent civil wars as well as terrorist movements are the reason behind the creation of the JAF, financed by the rich Gulf countries. In the early 1970s, the Economic Council of the League of Arab States put forward a proposal to create the Joint Arab Chambers of Commerce across the European states and that led, under the decree of the League of Arab States no. Following adoption of the Alexandria Protocol in 1944, the Arab League was founded on 22 March 1945 and it aimed to be a regional organisation of Arab states with a focus to developing the economy, resolving disputes and coordinating political aims. Other countries later joined the league, each country was given one vote in the council. It was followed by the creation of a defence treaty two years later. A common market was established in 1965, the Arab League member states cover over 13,000,000 km2 and straddles two continents, Africa and Asia. The area largely consists of deserts, such as the Sahara. The area comprises deep forests in southern Arabia and parts of the worlds longest river, the Charter of the Arab League, also known as the Pact of the League of Arab States, is the founding treaty of the Arab League. Adopted in 1945, it stipulates that the League of Arab States shall be composed of the, starting with only six members in 1945, the Arab League now occupies an area spanning around 14 million km² and counts 22 members, and 4 observer states. The 22 members today include three of the largest African countries and the largest country in the Middle East, there was a continual increase in membership during the second half of the 20th century, with an additional 15 Arab states being admitted. Syria was suspended following the 2011 uprising, as of 2016, there are a total of 22 member states
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International Hydrographic Organization
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The International Hydrographic Organization is the inter-governmental organisation representing hydrography. A principal aim of the IHO is to ensure that the seas, oceans. It does this through the setting of standards, the co-ordination of the endeavours of the worlds national hydrographic offices. The IHO enjoys observer status at the United Nations where it is the competent authority on hydrographic surveying. When referring to hydrography and nautical charting in Conventions and similar Instruments, it is the IHO standards, the IHO was established in 1921 as the International Hydrographic Bureau. The present name was adopted in 1970 as part of a new international Convention on the IHO adopted by the member nations. The former name International Hydrographic Bureau was retained to describe the IHO secretariat until 8 November 2016, there were substantial differences in hydrographic procedures charts, and publications. In 1889, an International Maritime Conference was held at Washington, D. C. similar proposals were made at the sessions of the International Congress of Navigation held at Saint Petersburg in 1908 and the International Maritime Conference held at Saint Petersburg in 1912. In 1919 the hydrographers of Great Britain and France cooperated in taking the steps to convene an international conference of hydrographers. London was selected as the most suitable place for this conference, and on 24 July 1919 and this is still the major purpose of the IHO. As a result of the conference, a permanent organization was formed, the IHB, now the IHO, began its activities in 1921 with 18 nations as members. The Principality of Monaco was selected as the seat of the organization as a result of the offer of Albert I, the IHO develops hydrographic and nautical charting standards. These standards are adopted and used by its 86 member countries and others in their surveys, nautical charts. Much has been done in the field of standardisation since the Bureau was founded, the IHO has encouraged the formation of Regional Hydrographic Commissions. Each RHC coordinates the national surveying and charting activities of countries within each region, the 15 RHCs plus the IHO Hydrographic Commission on Antarctica effectively cover the world. The IHO, in partnership with the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, directs the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans programme, in 2010 the IHO introduced a new, contemporary hydrographic geospatial standard for modelling marine data and information, known as S-100. S-100 and any dependent product specifications are underpinned by an on-line registry accessible via the IHO website, S-100 is aligned with the ISO19100 series of geographic standards, thereby making it fully compatible with contemporary geospatial data standards. Because S-100 is based on ISO19100, it can be used by other providers for their maritime-related data
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Eastern Arabia
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Eastern Arabia was historically known as Bahrain until the 18th century. This region stretched from the south of Basra along the Persian Gulf coast and included the regions of Bahrain, Kuwait, Al-Hasa, Qatif, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Southern Iraq, the entire coastal strip of Eastern Arabia was known as “Bahrain” for ten centuries. Until very recently, the whole of Eastern Arabia, from southern Iraq to the mountains of Oman, was a place where people moved around, the people of Eastern Arabia shared a culture based on the sea, they are seafaring peoples. The Arab states of the Persian Gulf are solely Eastern Arabia, the modern-day states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and UAE are the archetypal Gulf Arab states. Saudi Arabia is often considered a Gulf Arab state although most Saudis do not live in Eastern Arabia, in Arabic, Bahrayn is the dual form of bahr, so al-Bahrayn means the Two Seas. However, which two seas were originally intended remains in dispute, the term appears five times in the Quran, but does not refer to the modern island—originally known to the Arabs as “Awal”—but rather to the oases of al-Katif and Hadjar. It is unclear when the term began to refer exclusively to the Awal islands, in addition to wells, there are places in the sea north of Bahrain where fresh water bubbles up in the middle of the salt water, noted by visitors since antiquity. The term Gulf Arab solely refers, geographically, to inhabitants of eastern Arabia, the term Khaleejis is often misused to identify all the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula. The inhabitants of Eastern Arabias Gulf coast share similar cultures and music such as fijiri, sawt. The most noticeable trait of Eastern Arabias Gulf Arabs is their orientation. Maritime-focused life in the small Gulf Arab states has resulted in a society where livelihoods have traditionally been earned in marine industries. The Arabs of Eastern Arabia speak a dialect known as Gulf Arabic, most Saudis do not speak Gulf Arabic because most Saudis do not live in Eastern Arabia. There are approximately 2 million Gulf Arabic speakers in Saudi Arabia, before the GCC was formed in 1981, the term “Khaleeji” was solely used to refer to the inhabitants of Eastern Arabia. In pre-Islamic times, the population of Eastern Arabia consisted of partially Christianized Arabs, Arab Zoroastrians, Jews, some sedentary dialects of Eastern Arabia exhibit Akkadian, Aramaic and Syriac features. The sedentary people of pre-Islamic Bahrain were Aramaic speakers and to some degree Persian speakers, Dilmun appears first in Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets dated to the end of fourth millennium BC, found in the temple of goddess Inanna, in the city of Uruk. The adjective Dilmun is used to describe a type of axe and one specific official, Dilmun was mentioned in two letters dated to the reign of Burna-Buriash II recovered from Nippur, during the Kassite dynasty of Babylon. These letters were from an official, Ilī-ippašra, in Dilmun to his friend Enlil-kidinni in Mesopotamia. The names referred to are Akkadian and these letters and other documents, hint at an administrative relationship between Dilmun and Babylon at that time
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Arab states of the Persian Gulf
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The Arab states of the Persian Gulf are the seven Arab states which border the Persian Gulf, namely Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. This excludes the non-Arab state of Iran, all of these nations except Iraq are part of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Soap operas are important national pastimes in the Persian Gulf Arab region and they are most popular during the time of Ramadan, when families gather to break their fast. Most of these operas are based in Kuwait. Kuwaiti soap operas are the most-watched soap operas in the Persian Gulf region, although usually performed in the Kuwaiti dialect, they have been shown with success as far away as Tunisia. Kuwaiti popular culture, in the form of theatre, radio and television soap opera, darb El Zalag, Khalti Gmasha, and Ruqayya wa Sabika are among the most important television productions in the Gulf region. The inhabitants of Eastern Arabias coast share similar cultures and music such as fijiri, sawt. The most noticeable trait of Eastern Arabias Arabs is their orientation. Maritime-focused life in the small Arab states has resulted in a society where livelihoods have traditionally been earned in marine industries. Before the GCC was formed in 1981, the term Khaleeji was solely used to refer to the inhabitants of Eastern Arabia, historically, Khaleeji meant descendants of Ichthyophagi, the coast-dwelling fish eaters. Geographically, the Arabic-speaking is solely Eastern Arabia, some states are constitutional monarchies with elected parliaments. Bahrain and Kuwait have legislatures with members elected by the population, the Sultanate of Oman also has an advisory council that is popularly elected. Saudi Arabia remains a monarchy with limited political representation. In Qatar, a national parliament has been mooted and is written into the new constitution. Both organizations rank Kuwaits press as the most free of all Arab states of the Persian Gulf and, in fact, Qatar and Oman come in second and third respectively within the regional ranks. All of these Arab states have significant revenues from petroleum, the United Arab Emirates has been successfully diversifying the economy. 79% of UAEs total GDP comes from non-oil sectors, oil accounts for only 2% of Dubais GDP. Bahrain has the Persian Gulfs first post-oil economy because the Bahraini economy does not rely on oil, since the late 20th century, Bahrain has heavily invested in the banking and tourism sectors
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Euphrates
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The Euphrates is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia, originating in eastern Turkey, the Euphrates flows through Syria and Iraq to join the Tigris in the Shatt al-Arab, which empties into the Persian Gulf. The Ancient Greek form Euphrátēs was borrowed from Old Persian Ufrātu, the Elamite name is ultimately derived from the Sumerian Buranuna, possibly through the Akkadian name. In Akkadian the river was similarly called Purattu, which has been perpetuated in Semitic languages, the Elamite, Akkadian, and possibly Sumerian forms are suggested to be from an unrecorded substrate language. The earliest references to the Euphrates come from texts found in Shuruppak and pre-Sargonic Nippur in southern Iraq. In these texts, written in Sumerian, the Euphrates is called Buranuna, the name could also be written KIB. NUN. or dKIB. NUN, with the prefix d indicating that the river was a divinity. In Sumerian, the name of the city of Sippar in modern-day Iraq was also a written UD. KIB. NUN, the Euphrates is the longest river of Western Asia. It emerges from the confluence of the Kara Su or Western Euphrates, the same figures are given by Isaev and Mikhailova. The length of the Shatt al-Arab, which connects the Euphrates, both the Kara Su and the Murat Su rise northwest from Lake Van at elevations of 3,290 metres and 3,520 metres amsl, respectively. At the location of the Keban Dam, the two rivers, now combined into the Euphrates, have dropped to an elevation of 693 metres amsl, from Keban to the Syrian–Turkish border, the river drops another 368 metres over a distance of less than 600 kilometres. The Euphrates receives most of its water in the form of rainfall and melting snow, discharge in these two months accounts for 36 percent of the total annual discharge of the Euphrates, or even 60–70 percent according to one source, while low runoff occurs in summer and autumn. The discharge regime of the Euphrates has changed dramatically since the construction of the first dams in the 1970s, data on Euphrates discharge collected after 1990 show the impact of the construction of the numerous dams in the Euphrates and of the increased withdrawal of water for irrigation. Average discharge at Hīt after 1990 has dropped to 356 cubic metres per second, the seasonal variability has equally changed. The pre-1990 peak volume recorded at Hīt was 7,510 cubic metres per second, the minimum volume at Hīt remained relatively unchanged, rising from 55 cubic metres per second before 1990 to 58 cubic metres per second afterward. In Syria, three rivers add their water to the Euphrates, the Sajur, the Balikh and the Khabur and these rivers rise in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains along the Syro–Turkish border and add comparatively little water to the Euphrates. The Sajur is the smallest of these tributaries, emerging from two streams near Gaziantep and draining the plain around Manbij before emptying into the reservoir of the Tishrin Dam. The Balikh receives most of its water from a spring near Ayn al-Arus. In terms of length, drainage basin and discharge, the Khabur is the largest of these three and its main karstic springs are located around Ras al-Ayn, from where the Khabur flows southeast past Al-Hasakah, where the river turns south and drains into the Euphrates near Busayrah
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Tigris
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The Tigris is the eastern member of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of southeastern Turkey through Iraq, the Tigris is 1,850 km long, rising in the Taurus Mountains of eastern Turkey about 25 km southeast of the city of Elazig and about 30 km from the headwaters of the Euphrates. The river then flows for 400 km through Turkish territory before becoming the border between Syria and Turkey and this stretch of 44 km is the only part of the river that is located in Syria. Close to its confluence with the Euphrates, the Tigris splits into several channels, First, the artificial Shatt al-Hayy branches off, to join the Euphrates near Nasiriyah. Second, the Shatt al-Muminah and Majar-al-Kabir branch off to feed the Central Marshes, further downstream, two other distributary channels branch off, which feed the Hawizeh Marshes. The main channel continues southwards and is joined by the Al-Kassarah, finally, the Tigris joins the Euphrates near al-Qurnah to form the Shatt-al-Arab. According to Pliny and other ancient historians, the Euphrates originally had its outlet into the sea separate from that of the Tigris, Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, stands on the banks of the Tigris. The port city of Basra straddles the Shatt al-Arab, in ancient times, many of the great cities of Mesopotamia stood on or near the Tigris, drawing water from it to irrigate the civilization of the Sumerians. Notable Tigris-side cities included Nineveh, Ctesiphon, and Seleucia, while the city of Lagash was irrigated by the Tigris via a canal dug around 2400 B. C, the Tigris has long been an important transport route in a largely desert country. Shallow-draft vessels can go as far as Baghdad, but rafts are needed for transport upstream to Mosul, General Francis Rawdon Chesney hauled two steamers overland through Syria in 1836 to explore the possibility of an overland and river route to India. One steamer, the Tigris, was wrecked in a storm which sank, Chesney proved the river navigable to powered craft. Later, the Euphrates and Tigris Steam Navigation Company was established in 1861 by the Lynch Brothers trading company and they had 2 steamers in service. By 1908 ten steamers were on the river, tourists boarded steam yachts to venture inland as this was the first age of archaeological tourism, and the sites of Ur and Ctesiphon became popular to European travelers. In the First World War, during the British conquest of Ottoman Mesopotamia, Indian, see Siege of Kut and the Fall of Baghdad. The Tigris Flotilla included vessels Clio, Espiegle, Lawrence, Odin, armed tug Comet, armed launches Lewis Pelly, Miner, Shaitan, Sumana, and stern wheelers Muzaffari/Mozaffir. These were joined by Royal Navy Fly-class gunboats Butterfly, Cranefly, Dragonfly, Mayfly, Sawfly, Snakefly, and Mantis, Moth, the Ancient Greek form Tigris was borrowed from Old Persian Tigrā, itself from Elamite Tigra, itself from Sumerian Idigna. The Sumerian form was borrowed into Akkadian as Idiqlat, and from there into the other Semitic languages, another name for the Tigris used in Middle Persian was Arvand Rud, literally swift river. Today, however, Arvand Rud refers to the confluence of the Euphrates, in Kurdish, it is also known as Ava Mezin, the Great Water
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Peninsula
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A peninsula is a piece of land surrounded by water on the majority of its border, while being connected to a mainland from which it extends out. Examples include the upper and lower peninsulas of the state of Michigan, the surrounding water is usually understood to be continuous, though not necessarily named as a single body of water. Peninsulas are not always named as such, one can also be a headland, cape, island promontory, bill, point, a point is generally considered a tapering piece of land projecting into a body of water that is less prominent than a cape. A river which courses through a very tight meander is also said to form a peninsula within the loop of water. In English, the plural of peninsula is peninsulas or, less commonly, peninsulas can be found on coastlines and in smaller bodies of water throughout the world, ranging in scale from square meters to millions of square kilometers. Theres the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe, and in Southern Europe theres the Iberian Peninsula, the Italian Peninsula, south America has the Brunswick Peninsula, and Antarctica has the Antarctic Peninsula. In Africa, theres the Horn of Africa, and in Australia, asia has the 3 largest peninsulas in the world, the Arabian Peninsula, the Indian Peninsula, and the Indochinese Peninsula
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Territorial disputes in the Persian Gulf
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This article deals with territorial disputes between states of in and around the Persian Gulf in Southwestern Asia. These states include Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, before the oil era, the Persian Gulf states made little effort to delineate their territories. Members of Arab tribes felt loyalty to their tribe or shaykh, official boundaries meant little, and the concept of allegiance to a distinct political unit was absent. Organized authority was confined to ports and oases, superintended by the British, the boundaries of Kuwait, Iraq and the province of Al-Hasa were delineated at Uqair in 1922. The signing of the first oil concessions in the 1930s brought a fresh impetus to the process, inland boundaries were never properly demarcated, leaving opportunities for contention, especially in areas of the most valuable oil deposits. Until 1971, British-led forces maintained peace and order in the Gulf, after the withdrawal of these forces and officials, old territorial claims and suppressed tribal animosities resurfaced. Iran in return reserved two seats for Bahrain in her parliament, from 1906 to 1971, as her 14th province, the last shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, raised the Bahrain issue with the British when they withdrew from areas east of the Suez Canal by 1971. Iran agreed to a limited, UN-sponsored opinion poll to decide the fate of Bahrain, the UN declared the limited public opinion to have favored independence. Iran recognized the outcome, and Bahrain was officially declared independent, in 1971, after the British left the area Iranian forces reclaimed the islands of Abu Musa, Greater Tunb, and Lesser Tunb, located at the mouth of the Persian Gulf between Iran and the UAE. The Iranians reasserted their claims to the islands, although the Iranians had been dislodged by the British in the late nineteenth century. However, Britain had also agreed to give authority to the Iranians in return for Irans withdrawal of its claim on Bahrain. By late 1992, Sharjah and Iran had reached agreement with regard to Abu Musa, starting in 1936, Qatar and Bahrain were involved in territorial disputes over the Hawar Islands, Fasht Al Azm, Fasht Dibal, al-Jaradah, and Zubarah. The most substantial dispute was over Fasht Dibal, in 1985 after Bahrain began constructing fortifications on the island. Qatar considered the construction to be a violation of an agreement made in 1978. In April 1986, Qatari troops arrived on the island via helicopter and they seized several Bahraini officials and 29 construction workers hired by the Dutch contracting company Ballast Nedam. On 12 May 1986, following protests by the Netherlands and mediation by several GCC member states, Bahrain and Qatar reached a settlement, Qatari troops evacuated the island on 15 June. In 1991 the dispute flared up again after Qatar instituted proceedings to let the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, the two countries exchanged complaints that their respective naval vessels had harassed the others shipping in disputed waters. In 1996, Bahrain boycotted the GCC summit hosted in Qatar and they also cited the 1986 Qatari incursion in Fasht Dibal as a reason for not attending
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Petroleum
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Petroleum is a naturally occurring, yellow-to-black liquid found in geological formations beneath the Earths surface, which is commonly refined into various types of fuels. Components of petroleum are separated using a technique called fractional distillation and it consists of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other organic compounds. The name petroleum covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crude oil and petroleum products that are made up of refined crude oil. A fossil fuel, petroleum is formed when large quantities of dead organisms, usually zooplankton and algae, are buried underneath sedimentary rock, Petroleum has mostly been recovered by oil drilling. Drilling is carried out studies of structural geology, sedimentary basin analysis. Petroleum is used in manufacturing a variety of materials. Concern over the depletion of the earths finite reserves of oil, the burning of fossil fuels plays the major role in the current episode of global warming. The word petroleum comes from Greek, πέτρα for rocks and Greek, the term was found in 10th-century Old English sources. It was used in the treatise De Natura Fossilium, published in 1546 by the German mineralogist Georg Bauer, Petroleum, in one form or another, has been used since ancient times, and is now important across society, including in economy, politics and technology. Great quantities of it were found on the banks of the river Issus, ancient Persian tablets indicate the medicinal and lighting uses of petroleum in the upper levels of their society. By 347 AD, oil was produced from bamboo-drilled wells in China, early British explorers to Myanmar documented a flourishing oil extraction industry based in Yenangyaung that, in 1795, had hundreds of hand-dug wells under production. The mythological origins of the oil fields at Yenangyaung, and its hereditary monopoly control by 24 families, Pechelbronn is said to be the first European site where petroleum has been explored and used. The still active Erdpechquelle, a spring where petroleum appears mixed with water has been used since 1498, Oil sands have been mined since the 18th century. In Wietze in lower Saxony, natural asphalt/bitumen has been explored since the 18th century, both in Pechelbronn as in Wietze, the coal industry dominated the petroleum technologies. In 1848 Young set up a small business refining the crude oil, Young eventually succeeded, by distilling cannel coal at a low heat, in creating a fluid resembling petroleum, which when treated in the same way as the seep oil gave similar products. The production of oils and solid paraffin wax from coal formed the subject of his patent dated 17 October 1850. In 1850 Young & Meldrum and Edward William Binney entered into partnership under the title of E. W. Binney & Co. at Bathgate in West Lothian, the worlds first oil refinery was built in 1856 by Ignacy Łukasiewicz. The demand for petroleum as a fuel for lighting in North America, edwin Drakes 1859 well near Titusville, Pennsylvania, is popularly considered the first modern well
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Natural gas
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It is formed when layers of decomposing plant and animal matter are exposed to intense heat and pressure under the surface of the Earth over millions of years. The energy that the plants originally obtained from the sun is stored in the form of bonds in the gas. Natural gas is a fuel used as a source of energy for heating, cooking. It is also used as fuel for vehicles and as a feedstock in the manufacture of plastics. Natural gas is found in underground rock formations or associated with other hydrocarbon reservoirs in coal beds. Petroleum is another resource and fossil fuel found in proximity to. Most natural gas was created over time by two mechanisms, biogenic and thermogenic, biogenic gas is created by methanogenic organisms in marshes, bogs, landfills, and shallow sediments. Deeper in the earth, at temperature and pressure, thermogenic gas is created from buried organic material. In petroleum production gas is burnt as flare gas. The World Bank estimates that over 150 cubic kilometers of gas are flared or vented annually. Before natural gas can be used as a fuel, most, Natural gas is often informally referred to simply as gas, especially when compared to other energy sources such as oil or coal. However, it is not to be confused with gasoline, especially in North America, Natural gas was used by the Chinese in about 500 BCE. They discovered a way to transport gas seeping from the ground in crude pipelines of bamboo to where it was used to salt water to extract the salt. The worlds first industrial extraction of gas started at Fredonia, New York. By 2009,66000 km³ had been used out of the total 850000 km³ of estimated remaining reserves of natural gas. An annual increase in usage of 2–3% could result in currently recoverable reserves lasting significantly less, unwanted natural gas was a disposal problem in the active oil fields. If there was not a market for natural gas near the wellhead it was expensive to pipe to the end user. In the 19th century and early 20th century, unwanted gas was burned off at oil fields
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Safaniya Oil Field
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Safaniya Oil Field, operated and owned by Saudi Aramco, is the largest offshore oil field in the world. It is located about 265 kilometres north of the headquarters in Dhahran in the Persian Gulf. Measuring 50 by 15 kilometres, the field has a capability of more than 1.2 million barrels per day. The oil field was discovered in 1951 and it is considered the largest offshore oil field in the world. When it was first put in production in 1957, it flowed 50,000 barrels per day of oil from 18 wells. At the beginning of 1962 it possessed the facilities to handle 350,000 barrels per day from 25 wells and this sevenfold increase had evolved in just four years and nine months. Its reserve amount to around 37 billion barrels of oil and 5,360 billion cubic feet of natural gas, the main producing reservoir is the Safaniya which is a cretaceous sandstone in the Wasia formation. Most Geologist believe that the Safaniya field and the neutral Zone Khafji field share the same aquifer that continues toward Kuwaits Burgan field, the Safaniya field has several separate geologic production potential at depths between 4,000 and 7,000 feet. It was brought into production in 1957 at about 25,000 barrels per day, by 1993, there were a total of 624 wells in the field. The Safaniya is also Saudi Arabias primary supplier of oil at an average API gravity of 27. The Safaniya Field is the largest offshore oil field in the world and is located in the Persian Gulf, the field is an anticline structure with production area of about 65 km long and 15 km wide. It is a series of structures trending NW-SE caused by uplift movement due to the Zagros reverse fault, regional tectonic events such as compression occurred along eastern part of the Zagros belt during the Campanian which caused uplift and minor erosion of the Wasia Formation. The eroded units included the Mishrif Member and most of the Rumaila Member and this caused the Aruma unconformity to form. Because of the impact of the tectonic events during this time hydrocarbon traps started to form. Burial stage resumed and deposited the Aruma Formation at the end of the Campanian until the end of the Middle Eocene, in between Middle Eocene to Miocene, there was a stop in deposition events due to structural growth and non-deposition in the area. The last major event in the history of the area was Plio-Pleistocene Zagros orogeny which resulted in folding with NW-SE trends. The main petroleum system of the Safaniya reservoir is the Mesozoic Petroleum System, the Mesozoic Petroleum System can be divided into two smaller petroleum systems, the Jurassic Petroleum System and Cretaceous Petroleum System. The seal is not well developed along the eastern and northeastern part of Saudi Arabia and this allows Jurassic oils to mix with Cretaceous oils and causes the production of Cretaceous oils with a Jurassic oils to be limited to the eastern and northeastern part of Saudi Arabia
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Oilfield
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An oil field or oilfield is a region with an abundance of oil wells extracting petroleum from below ground. Because the oil reservoirs typically extend over an area, possibly several hundred kilometres across. In addition, there may be exploratory wells probing the edges, pipelines to transport the oil elsewhere, because an oil field may be remote from civilization, establishing a field is often an extremely complicated exercise in logistics. This goes beyond requirements for drilling, to include associated infrastructure, for instance, workers require housing to allow them to work onsite for months or years. In turn, housing and equipment require electricity and water, in cold regions, pipelines may need to be heated. Also, excess gas may be burned off if there is no way to make use of it—which requires a furnace, chimney. More than 40,000 oil fields are scattered around the globe, on land, the largest are the Ghawar Field in Saudi Arabia and the Burgan Field in Kuwait, with more than 60 billion barrels estimated in each. Most oil fields are much smaller, according to the US Department of Energy, as of 2003 the US alone had over 30,000 oil fields. In the modern age, the location of oil fields with oil reserves is a key underlying factor in many geopolitical conflicts. The term oilfield is also used as a shorthand to refer to the petroleum industry. However, it is accurate to divide the oil industry into three sectors, upstream, midstream and downstream. Oil Fields from Space - nighttime satellite images showing fields around the world
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Liquefied natural gas
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Liquefied natural gas is natural gas that has been converted to liquid form for ease of storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the volume of gas in the gaseous state. It is odorless, colorless, toxic and non-corrosive, hazards include flammability after vaporization into a gaseous state, freezing and asphyxia. The liquefaction process involves removal of certain components, such as dust, acid gases, helium, water, and heavy hydrocarbons, which could cause difficulty downstream. The natural gas is condensed into a liquid at close to atmospheric pressure by cooling it to approximately −162 °C. LNG achieves a reduction in volume than compressed natural gas so that the energy density of LNG is 2.4 times greater than that of CNG or 60 percent that of diesel fuel. This makes LNG cost efficient to transport long distances where pipelines do not exist. Specially designed cryogenic sea vessels or cryogenic road tankers are used for its transport, LNG is principally used for transporting natural gas to markets, where it is regasified and distributed as pipeline natural gas. It can be used in natural gas vehicles, although it is common to design vehicles to use compressed natural gas. Its relatively high cost of production and the need to store it in expensive cryogenic tanks have hindered widespread commercial use, despite these drawbacks, on energy basis LNG production is expected to hit 10% of the global crude production by 2020. The heating value depends on the source of gas that is used, the range of heating value can span +/-10 to 15 percent. A typical value of the heating value of LNG is approximately 50 MJ/kg or 21,500 BTU/lb. A typical value of the heating value of LNG is 45 MJ/kg or 19,350 BTU/lb. For the purpose of comparison of different fuels the heating value may be expressed in terms of energy per volume which is known as the energy density expressed in MJ/liter. The density of LNG is roughly 0.41 kg/liter to 0.5 kg/liter, depending on temperature, pressure, using the median value of 0.45 kg/liter, the typical energy density values are 22.5 MJ/liter or 20.3 MJ/liter. The energy density of LNG is approximately 2.4 times greater than that of CNG which makes it economical to transport natural gas by ship in the form of LNG. The energy density of LNG is comparable to propane and ethanol but is only 60 percent that of diesel and 70 percent that of gasoline, experiments on the properties of gases started early in the seventeenth century. By the middle of the seventeenth century Robert Boyle had derived the relationship between the pressure and the volume of gases
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Arabian Sea
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The Arabian Sea is a region of the northern Indian Ocean bounded on the north by Pakistan and Iran, on the west by northeastern Somalia and the Arabian Peninsula, and on the east by India. Historically the sea has been known by names including the Erythraean Sea. Its total area is 3,862,000 km2 and its depth is 4,652 metres. The Gulf of Aden is in the southwest, connecting the Arabian Sea to the Red Sea through the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, the Arabian Sea has been crossed by important marine trade routes since the third or second millennium BCE. Major seaports include Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai, the Port of Karachi and the Gwadar Port in Pakistan, other important ports include in India, Kandla Port, and Mormugao in Goa. The largest islands in the Arabian Sea include Socotra, Masirah Island, Astola Island, the Arabian Seas surface area is about 3,862,000 km2. The maximum width of the Sea is approximately 2,400 km, the biggest river flowing into the Sea is the Indus River. There are also the gulfs of Khambhat and Kutch on the Indian coast, the countries with coastlines on the Arabian Sea are Somalia, Djibouti, Yemen, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Pakistan, India and the Maldives. There are several cities on the seas coast including Mumbai, Surat, Karachi, Gwadar, Pasni, Ormara, Aden, Muscat, Keti Bandar, Salalah, Duqm. International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Arabian Sea as follows, the Eastern limit of the Gulf of Aden. A line joining Ràs al Hadd, East point of Arabia, a line running from the South extremity of Addu Atoll, to the Eastern extreme of Ràs Hafun. The Western limit of the Laccadive Sea, by the time of Julius Caesar, several well-established combined land-sea trade routes depended upon water transport through the Sea around the rough inland terrain features to its north. Each major route involved transhipping to pack animal caravan, travel through country and risk of bandits. Later the kingdom of Axum arose in Ethiopia to rule a mercantile empire rooted in the trade with Europe via Alexandria, Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai is the largest port in the Arabian Sea, and the largest container port in India. The Port of Karachi is Pakistans largest and busiest seaport, handling about 60% of the nations cargo and it is located between the Karachi towns of Kiamari and Saddar, close to the main business district and several industrial areas. The geographic position of the places it in close proximity to major shipping routes such as the Strait of Hormuz. The history of the port is intertwined with that of the city of Karachi, several ancient ports have been attributed in the area including Krokola, Morontobara, Barbarikon (the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, and Debal. It warns sailors about whirlpools and advises them to safety in Kaurashi harbour if they found themselves drifting dangerously
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Achaemenid Empire
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The Achaemenid Empire, also called the Persian Empire, was an empire based in Western Asia, founded by Cyrus the Great. The empires successes inspired similar systems in later empires and it is noted in Western history as the antagonist of the Greek city-states during the Greco-Persian Wars and for the emancipation of the Jewish exiles in Babylon. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was built in a Hellenistic style in the empire as well. By the 7th century BC, the Persians had settled in the portion of the Iranian Plateau in the region of Persis. From this region, Cyrus the Great advanced to defeat the Medes, Lydia, Alexander, an avid admirer of Cyrus the Great, conquered the empire in its entirety by 330 BC. Upon his death, most of the former territory came under the rule of the Ptolemaic Kingdom and Seleucid Empire. The Persian population of the central plateau reclaimed power by the second century BC under the Parthian Empire, the historical mark of the Achaemenid Empire went far beyond its territorial and military influences and included cultural, social, technological and religious influences as well. Many Athenians adopted Achaemenid customs in their lives in a reciprocal cultural exchange. The impact of Cyruss edict is mentioned in Judeo-Christian texts, the empire also set the tone for the politics, heritage and history of modern Iran. Astronomical year numbering Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details Due to the duration of their reigns, Smerdis, Xerxes II. The Persian nation contains a number of tribes as listed here, the Pasargadae, Maraphii, and Maspii, upon which all the other tribes are dependent. Of these, the Pasargadae are the most distinguished, they contain the clan of the Achaemenids from which spring the Perseid kings. Other tribes are the Panthialaei, Derusiaei, Germanii, all of which are attached to the soil, the Achaemenid Empire was created by nomadic Persians. The Achaemenid Empire was not the first Iranian empire, as by 6th century BC another group of ancient Iranian peoples had established the short lived Median Empire. The Iranian peoples had arrived in the region of what is today Iran c.1000 BC and had for a number of centuries fallen under the domination of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, based in northern Mesopotamia. However, the Medes and Persians, Cimmerians, Persians and Chaldeans played a role in the overthrow of the Assyrian empire. The term Achaemenid means of the family of the Achaemenis/Achaemenes, despite the derivation of the name, Achaemenes was himself a minor seventh-century ruler of the Anshan in southwestern Iran, and a vassal of Assyria. At some point in 550 BC, Cyrus rose in rebellion against the Medes, eventually conquering the Medes and creating the first Persian empire
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Persis
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Persis, better known as Persia, or Persia proper, was originally a name of a region near the Zagros mountains at Lake Urmia. The country name Persia was derived directly from the Old Persian Parsa, over time, the area of settlement shifted to the southwest of modern Iran. The ruins of Persepolis and Pasargadae, two of the four capitals of the Achaemenid Empire, are located in Fars, the Achaemenid Empire was defeated by Alexander the Great in 333 BC, incorporating most of their vast empire. Shortly after this the Seleucid Empire was established, however it never extended its power beyond the main trade routes in Fars, and by the reign of Antiochus I or possibly later Persis emerged as an independent state that minted its own coins. The Seleucid Empire was subsequently defeated by the Parthians in 238 BC, by 205 BC, Antiochus III had extended his authority into Persis and it ceased to be an independent state. Babak was the ruler of a town called Kheir. Babaks efforts in gaining power at the time escaped the attention of Artabanus IV. Babak and his eldest son Shapur managed to expand their power all of Persis. The subsequent events are unclear, due to the nature of the sources. It is however certain that following the death of Babak around 220, Ardashir who at the time was the governor of Darabgird, the sources tell us that in 222, Shapur was killed when the roof of a building collapsed on him. At this point, Ardashir moved his capital further to the south of Persis, Artabanus marched a second time against Ardashir I in 224. Their armies clashed at Hormizdegan, where Artabanus IV was killed, the Sassanids ruled for 425 years, until the Muslim armies conquered the empire. Afterwards, the Persians started to convert to Islam, this making it easier for the new Muslim empire to continue the expansion of Islam. The ruins of Bishapur, Persepolis, and Firouzabad are all reminders of this, arab invaders brought about a decline of Zoroastrian rule and made Islam ascendant from the 7th century
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