Bahrain

Bahrain is a country made of islands.

The warm sea is all around. Most of the land is flat, dry desert. The capital city is Manama.

Bahrain is a small country made of Bahrain Island and about 30 smaller islands in the Persian Gulf. Its name comes from Arabic words meaning two seas. Saudi Arabia lies to the west and Qatar to the east, and a causeway, a long road over the sea, 24 kilometers long, links Bahrain to Saudi Arabia.

The capital, Manama, is on the northeastern tip of Bahrain Island. About 1.6 million people lived in Bahrain in 2025, and about half of them were born in other countries.

Bahrain is a small Arab state in a bay on the southwestern coast of the Persian Gulf: Bahrain Island and some 30 smaller islands, its name from the Arabic al-bahrayn, two seas. Its land area is slightly greater than Singapore's. The King Fahd Causeway, 24 km long, links it to Saudi Arabia across the Gulf of Bahrain, and the Qatar peninsula lies to the east.

Located in one of the world's chief oil-producing regions, Bahrain has only small petroleum reserves; its economy has long relied on refining crude from neighbors and increasingly on finance, commercial services, communications and tourism. The World Bank put the population at 1,600,366 in 2025. About half of residents are foreign-born, mostly from Iran, India, Pakistan, Britain and the United States, and about one-fifth are under 15.

Manama is a modern city by the sea.

It has tall towers and an old market. Muharraq has narrow, winding streets. Long ago, people built thousands of small hills. Scientists study them today.

Manama is Bahrain's largest city, with a port, banks, hotels and a traditional market called a souk. Muharraq, joined to Bahrain Island by a causeway, has narrow, winding streets. Its old merchants' houses and three oyster beds in the sea are part of a World Heritage Site about pearl diving.

Qal'at al-Bahrain is a huge mound built up by people living on the same spot for about 4,500 years, with a Portuguese fort on top. It was the capital of Dilmun. In the west of the island are thousands of Dilmun burial mounds, about 4,000 years old.

More than one-third of the population lives in Manama and Al-Muharraq. Manama, with its port of Mina Salman, holds the government offices, the business and financial district and a traditional souk; Muharraq is densely built, with narrow winding streets. UNESCO's Pearling, Testimony of an Island Economy (2012) includes seventeen buildings in Muharraq, three offshore oyster beds, part of the seashore and the Qal'at Bu Mahir fortress, from which boats left for the beds.

Qal'at al-Bahrain (UNESCO, 2005) is a 300 × 600 m tell, 12 m high, occupied from about 2300 BCE to the 16th century; about a quarter has been excavated, and a Portuguese fort crowns it. It was the capital of Dilmun, previously known only from Sumerian texts. The Dilmun Burial Mounds (UNESCO, 2019), built between about 2200 and 1750 BCE, number about 11,774 mounds across 21 sites in the west of the island, including royal mounds in the village of A'ali.

Gazelles and hares live in the desert.

Lizards and little jerboas live in the sand. In spring and autumn, many birds stop to rest. Oysters grow on the sea floor.

The desert limits which animals can live in Bahrain, but gazelles and hares still live there, and lizards and jerboas, small desert rodents, are common. About 200 kinds of desert plants grow on the bare land.

In spring and autumn, many kinds of birds stop to rest on their long migrations. Al-Areen Park is one of the main wildlife conservation areas in the Gulf region, with oryx, gazelles and many waterbirds. Under the sea, beds of pearl oysters supported Bahrain's pearl divers for centuries.

Some 200 species of desert plants grow in the arid parts of the archipelago, while irrigated land supports fruit trees, fodder crops and vegetables. Britannica notes that desert conditions limit animal variety: gazelles and hares survive, lizards and jerboas are common, and the mongoose, probably imported from India, lives in irrigated areas. Birdlife is sparse except in spring and autumn, when many migratory species rest in Bahrain while traveling to and from higher temperate latitudes.

Al-Areen Park, one of the principal wildlife conservation areas of the Gulf, holds indigenous mammals such as the oryx and gazelle and is visited by many waterfowl. Offshore, the oyster beds of the Pearling World Heritage Site preserve the marine resource that shaped the island's economy for millennia; Britannica reports that pollution, much of it from oil spills during the 1990–91 Persian Gulf War, has killed off valuable marine life such as shrimp.

About 1.6 million people live in Bahrain.

People speak Arabic, and many speak English too. Many meals have fish, rice and dates. Coffee is offered to guests.

About half of the people in Bahrain were born there, and about half came from other countries, such as India, Pakistan, Iran, Britain and the United States. Arabic is the official language, and English is taught in every school. Persian, Urdu, Hindi and Tagalog are spoken too.

Meals often have fish, shrimp, meat, rice and dates. Machbous is fish or meat served with rice. Coffee flavored with cardamom and saffron is offered to welcome guests. Villages are known for crafts such as pottery and baskets woven from palm leaves, and boat builders still make sailing boats called dhows.

Roughly half the population is Arab, mostly native-born Bahrainis; foreign-born residents, about half the total, make up about three-fifths of the labor force. Arabic is official, English is a compulsory second language in all schools, Persian is common at home, and expatriates speak Urdu, Hindi and Tagalog among others. Most people are Muslim, with Shi'a in the majority and a Sunni ruling family; Christians, Jews, Hindus and Baha'is form smaller groups.

Most people live in towns; villages with flat-roofed stone or concrete houses lie among the irrigated gardens of the north. Cuisine features fish, shrimp, meat, rice and dates, with machbous and muhammar, sweet brown rice with sugar or dates; coffee with cardamom and saffron signals hospitality. A'ali is known for ceramics and Karbabad for palm-leaf baskets, dhows are still built at Manama and Muharraq, and fidjeri, songs once sung by pearl divers, are still heard. Football is the most popular modern sport, and horse racing remains a national pastime.