Arabia

Arabia, also Arabian peninsula, is a peninsula in southwestern Asia. It is the most westerly peninsula of Asia and the largest in the world, being one-third the size of the whole of Europe. Arabia is largely a desert lying between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, bounded on the north by Jordan and Iraq. It is the original homeland of Arabs, and historically the center of Islam. It is comprised of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.

Arab consists of a central plateau with pastures for cattle, and fertile valleys. There is a ring of deserts, the Nefud in the north, stony, the Great Arabian, a perfect Sahara; in the south, sandy, said sometimes to be 600 ft. deep, and the Dahna between. There are stretches of coast land too, generally fertile on the west and south.

It is divided into eight territories; has no lakes or rivers, only wadies, oftenest dry; the climate being hot and arid, has no forests, and therefore few wild animals; a trading country with no roads or railways until the nineteenth century, only caravan routes, yet the birthland of a race that threatened at one time to sweep the globe, and of a religion that has been a life-guidance to wide-scattered millions of human beings for over twelve centuries of time.