Bahrain
Bahrain (officially Kingdom of Bahrain) is a country in Western Asia, with its capital at Manama, and is home to roughly 1.6M people.
Arabic is the official language; the currency in circulation is Bahraini dinar (.د.ب); people from here are called Bahraini.
- »Bahrain was the first Gulf state to strike oil, in 1932, and among the first to see it run low.
Its territory comes in pieces: one mainland carrying 85% of the area, plus three further landmasses large enough to show up at map scale.
Bahrain shares no land border with anything, so every approach is by sea or air. The closest other territories on file are Qatar (104 km), United Arab Emirates (448 km) and Kuwait (467 km), measured centre to centre.
Manama's name comes from the Arabic for 'place of rest'. The city sits on an island that has been a trading centre since the Dilmun civilisation.
689 km² (266 sq mi), 176th largest of 198 countries and territories on file, almost exactly the size of Dominica.
Population 1,588,670, 152nd of 198 on file. That averages 2,306 per km² (5,972 per sq mi).
The five white points of the serrated edge stand for the five pillars of Islam. Red and white were common to the Gulf treaty states.