The Persian Gulf is a region where various civilizations have long arisen. At the end of the 4th millennium BC, on the banks of the Gulf, at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates (then these rivers flowed into the bay separately), numerous Sumerian cities grew, according to one version that came here from the islands located in the bay. Later, the Elamite state, the Median kingdom, arose on the coast.
Finally, from the small coastal region of Persia, a huge Achaemenid empire grew, later crushed by the hoplites of Alexander of Macedon. The “Persian kingdom, ” as the Greeks and Macedonians called the empire, extended from Asia Minor and the Bosphorus to India, encompassing the northern coast of the Persian Gulf. The Persians were not interested in the interior of the Arabian Peninsula - there was little natural wealth there, and oil at that time did not have strategic significance.
The Persians established perfect order and iron discipline in the territory of the gigantic empire. According to the figurative remark of contemporaries, a virgin with a bag of gold behind her back could pass 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 Saks and Hellenes from the policies of the coast of Asia Minor, Persian hegemons and related to them, but Medes having a lower social status, remembering the former greatness of the Egyptians and Indians, always more gravitating to the kindred civilizations of Hindustan.
The small, but superbly unified mono-ethnic army of Alexander of Macedon over several years defeated the Persian army, which had disproportionately larger human and economic resources.
The Persian Gulf has repeatedly become the scene of the struggle of local residents and various conquerors - not only Greeks and Macedonians, but also Saks, Arabs, Assyrians and Babylonians, and many others. In the end, the north-east coast remained behind the Iranian-speaking peoples, who later formed a single Persian ethnic group, and the Arabs firmly established themselves on the south-west.
By the beginning of the 19th century, the coast of the gulf was controlled by the states of the second and even third echelons — the decrepit Ottoman Empire, Iran, and small Arab theocratic monarchies. The Persian Gulf would have remained at the margins of world history and politics, if not for giant hydrocarbon deposits. Oil was used in ancient times, but the boom in production began at the end of the 19th century, when the first internal combustion engines appeared in Europe and then in America.
Since that time, the Persian Gulf has acquired strategic importance and has become a zone of close attention of leading world powers. It has repeatedly been the scene of the confrontation of various forces, and sometimes the confrontation from the "cold" phase turned into a "hot" one. It is unlikely that there will be a person whose words “Persian Gulf” are associated primarily with the nature of the tropical sea, and not with oil production.
Meanwhile, the Persian Gulf, whose photo can decorate any exhibition of the beauties of nature, is a place where magnificent world-class resorts are located. Fans of tropical vacations are not even stopped by the fact that they are in orthodox Muslim countries (the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait), which set a dress code sometimes even for appearing on the street. Not to mention the use of alcohol.
