Eastern Arabia

Eastern Arabia, also known as Greater Bahrain or Bahrain Region (Arabic: ٱلْبَحْرَيْن, romanized: Al-Baḥrayn), is a historical region encompassing the eastern part of the Arabian Peninsula stretching from Basra to Khasab along the coast of the Persian Gulf. It includes parts of the modern-day states of Bahrain, Iraq (Basra Governorate), Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia (Eastern Province), and the United Arab Emirates. The entire coastal strip of Eastern Arabia was known as "Bahrain" for a millennium.

Until very recently, the whole of Eastern Arabia, from the Shatt al-Arab to the mountains of Oman, was a place where people moved around, settled and married unconcerned by national borders. The people of Eastern Arabia shared a culture based on the sea, as seafaring peoples.

Nowadays, Eastern Arabia is a part of the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, with all the seven modern-day countries listed as the Gulf Arab states. Most of Iraq and Saudi Arabia are not geographically a part of the historic Eastern Arabia.

In Arabic, Baḥrayn is the dual form of baḥr (Arabic: بَحْر, lit. 'sea'), so al-Baḥrayn means "the Two Seas". However, which two seas were originally intended remains in dispute. The term appears five times in the Qur'an, but does not refer to the modern island—originally known to the Arabs as “Awal”—but rather to the oases of al-Qatif and Hadjar (modern Al-Aḥsā). It is unclear when the term began to refer exclusively to the archipelago in the Gulf of Bahrain, but it was probably after the 15th century. Today, Bahrain's "two seas" are instead generally taken to be the bay east and west of the coast, the seas north and south of the island, or the salt and fresh water present above and below the ground. In addition to wells, there are places in the sea north of Bahrain where fresh water bubbles up in the middle of the salt water, noted by visitors since antiquity.

An alternate theory offered by al-Hasa was that the two seas were the Great Green Ocean and a peaceful lake on the mainland;^[which?] still another provided by al-Jawahari is that the more formal name Bahri (lit. “belonging to the sea”) would have been misunderstood and so was opted against.

The term "Gulf Arab" or "Khaleeji" refers, geographically, to inhabitants of eastern Arabia. However, today the term is often applied to the inhabitants of the GCC countries in the Arabian Peninsula. "Khaleeji" has evolved into a socio-political regional identity that distinguished the GCC inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula from the wider Arab world building on the perceived cultural homogeneity within the Gulf states and their shared history.

The inhabitants of Eastern Arabia's Gulf coast share similar cultures and music styles, such as fijiri, sawt and liwa. The most noticeable cultural trait of Eastern Arabia's Gulf Arabs is their orientation and focus towards the sea. Maritime-focused life in the small Gulf Arab states has resulted in a sea-oriented society where livelihoods have traditionally been earned in marine industries.

The Arabs of Eastern Arabia speak a dialect known as Gulf Arabic. Approximately 2 million Saudis (out of a population of 34 million) speak Gulf Arabic.