The Persian Gulf is a region where various civilizations have long since arisen. As early as the end of the 4th millennium BC, on the shores of the bay, at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates (then these rivers flowed into the bay separately), numerous Sumerian cities grew, according to one version, which came here from the islands located in the bay. Later, the Elamite state, the Median kingdom, arose on the coast.
Finally, a huge Achaemenid empire grew out of a small coastal region of Persia, later crushed by the hoplites of Alexander the Great. The "Persian kingdom", as the Greeks and Macedonians called the empire, stretched from Asia Minor and the Bosporus to India, covering the northern coast of the Persian Gulf. The Persians were not interested in the interior of the Arabian Peninsula - there was little natural we alth there, and oil at that time was not of strategic importance.
The Persians have established perfect order and iron discipline on the territory of a gigantic empire. According to the figurative remark of contemporaries,a virgin with a bag of gold on her back could go through the empire from end to end without fear for her honor or property. But the Achaemenid Empire, inhabited by a large number of peoples belonging to completely different cultures, could not be stable for a long time. Nomadic Sakas and Hellenes from the policies of the coast of Asia Minor, hegemons-Persians and related to them, but having a lower social status Medes, remembering the former greatness of the Egyptians and Indians, who always gravitated more towards related civilizations of Hindustan.
Small but superbly united mono-national army of Alexander the Great in a few years to smithereens defeated the Persian army, which had disproportionately larger human and economic resources.
The Persian Gulf has repeatedly become the arena of the struggle of local residents and various conquerors - not only Greeks and Macedonians, but also Saks, and Arabs, Assyrians and Babylonians, and many others. In the end, the northeast coast remained with the Iranian-speaking peoples, who later formed a single Persian ethnic group, and the Arabs firmly entrenched in the southwest.
By the beginning of the 19th century, the Gulf coast was controlled by the states of the second and even the third echelon - the decrepit Ottoman Empire, Iran and petty Arab theocratic monarchies. The Persian Gulf would have remained in the margins of world history and politics, if not for the giant hydrocarbon deposits. Oil was used in ancient times, but the boom in production began at the end of the 19th century, when in Europe, and then in Americathe first internal combustion engines appeared.
Since that time, the Persian Gulf has acquired strategic importance and has become a zone of close attention of the leading world powers. It has repeatedly been an arena of confrontation between various forces, and sometimes the confrontation from the “cold” phase turned into a “hot” one. There is hardly a person who associates the words "Persian Gulf" primarily with the nature of the tropical sea, and not with oil production.
Meanwhile, the Persian Gulf, whose photos can decorate any exhibition of the beauties of nature, is a place where magnificent world-class resorts are located. Tropical holiday lovers are not stopped even by the fact that they are in orthodox Muslim countries (United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait), which sometimes set a dress code even for appearing on the street. Not to mention drinking alcohol.
