The Arabian Peninsula
Yemen covers 455,503 square kilometres at the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. Its coastline meets the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea, and never the Persian Gulf. That is the division this catalogue makes: peninsula states with a Gulf coast are filed under Persian Gulf, and the corner of the landmass that faces the other water is filed here.
Common questions
Questions about Arabian Peninsula
Which countries are on the Arabian Peninsula?
Seven states hold territory on it: Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. The catalogue does not file them together. The six with a Persian Gulf coast are grouped under that region, and this region holds Yemen, whose shoreline runs along the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. Both groupings describe the same land and differ over what to file it under.
Where does the Arabian Peninsula end in the north?
At a line somebody drew. The sea edges are fixed, but the peninsula and the Syrian Desert merge in the north with no natural demarcation, and Encyclopaedia Britannica records the convention of taking the northern boundaries of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as the limit there. Anything on the ground at that latitude is a border between states rather than the edge of a landmass.
Is Yemen a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council?
No. The charter was signed at Abu Dhabi on 25 May 1981 by Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and the membership has not changed since. After the boundary treaty signed at Jeddah on 12 June 2000, Yemen was admitted to council bodies covering education, labour, sport and health as a step towards full accession. That accession did not follow.
Why does the catalogue keep a region here for so few countries?
Because the regions are filing decisions rather than descriptions, and a filing decision that sorts by coast leaves this one small. The count on this page is the roster's, which is the scope of the catalogue; the grid below it shows the countries that have a record written so far, so the two disagree until the corpus is filled.