Bahrain

Bahrain, officially the Kingdom of Bahrain, is an island country in the eastern Arabian Peninsula in West Asia, near the western shore of the Persian Gulf, comprising 33 natural islands and 50 artificial ones centered on Bahrain Island, connected to Saudi Arabia by the King Fahd Causeway, with a population of 1,588,670 as of 2024, just under half Bahraini nationals, and Manama as its capital and largest city. The area was the site of the ancient Dilmun civilization and was famed since antiquity for pearl fisheries considered the world's best into the nineteenth century; Islam reached Bahrain during Muhammad's lifetime in 628, and after Portuguese rule from 1521 to 1602 and Safavid Persian rule, the Bani Utbah and allied tribes captured Bahrain in 1783, since governed by the Al Khalifa royal family. Bahrain became a British protectorate in the late nineteenth century, declared independence in 1971, and was declared a semi-constitutional monarchy in 2002, with sharia named a principal source of legislation in its constitution; the ruling Sunni Al Khalifa family has been criticized for human rights violations against dissidents and its Shia Muslim population, particularly after the 2011 Arab Spring protests. One of the Gulf's first post-oil economies, Bahrain is a high-income economy built on decades of investment in banking and tourism, hosting many of the world's largest financial institutions in Manama.