Bahrain in the context of "Portuguese–Safavid wars"

A microstate or ministate is a sovereign state having a very small population or land area, usually both. However, the meanings of "state" and "very small" are not well-defined in international law. Some recent attempts to define microstates have focused on identifying qualitative features that are linked to their size and population, such as partial delegation of their sovereignty to larger states, such as for international defense.

Commonly accepted examples of microstates include five historic European microstates: Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, and Vatican City. Malta and Luxembourg are sometimes included in that list but are generally considered too populous to be genuine microstates. Other examples are small, isolated island states in the Pacific Ocean: Nauru, Palau, Niue, Cook Islands and Tuvalu. Some small Caribbean countries such as Saint Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines may be considered microstates by some but are often not included due to them being grouped together as small island countries. Singapore and Bahrain are sometimes considered microstates but some argue are too populous, self reliant or powerful to be considered true microstates and their island status can play an important factor too.The smallest political entity recognized as a sovereign state is Vatican City, with fewer than 1,000 residents and an area of only 49 hectares (120 acres). Some microstates – such as Singapore, Monaco and Vatican City – are city-states consisting of a single municipality.

The Arabian Peninsula (Arabic: شبه الجزيرة العربية, romanized: shibh al-jazīra al-ʿarabiyya, or جزيرة العرب, jazīrat al-ʿarab, 'the Island of Arabs'), or simply Arabia, is a peninsula in West Asia, situated north-east of Africa on the Arabian plate. At 3,237,500 km (1.25 million sq mi), comparable in size to India, the Arabian Peninsula is the largest peninsula in the world.

Geographically, the Arabian Peninsula comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Yemen, as well as southern Iraq and Jordan. The largest of these is Saudi Arabia. In ancient antiquity, particularly from the 9th century BC to the 7th century AD, the Sinai Peninsula was also considered a part of Arabia.

Old Persian is one of two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of the Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native speakers as ariya (Iranian). Old Persian is close to both Avestan and Vedic Sanskrit, and all three languages are highly inflected.

Old Persian appears primarily in the inscriptions, clay tablets and seals of the Achaemenid era (c. 600 BCE to 300 BCE). Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now Iran, Romania (Gherla), Armenia, Bahrain, Iraq, Turkey and Egypt, with the most important attestation by far being the contents of the Behistun Inscription (dated to 522 BCE).

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.

Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the center of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about 2,150,000 km (830,000 sq mi), making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the largest in the Middle East, and the twelfth-largest in the world. It is bordered by the Red Sea to the west; Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait to the north; the Persian Gulf, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to the east; Oman to the southeast; and Yemen to the south. The Gulf of Aqaba in the northwest separates Saudi Arabia from Egypt and Israel. Saudi Arabia is the only country with a coastline along both the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and most of its terrain consists of arid desert, lowland, steppe, and mountains. The capital and largest city is Riyadh; other major cities include Jeddah and the two holiest cities in Islam, Mecca and Medina. With a population of almost 32.2 million, Saudi Arabia is the fourth most populous country in the Arab world.

Pre-Islamic Arabia, the territory that constitutes modern-day Saudi Arabia, was the site of several ancient cultures and civilizations; the prehistory of Saudi Arabia shows some of the earliest traces of human activity outside Africa. Islam emerged in what is now Saudi Arabia in the early seventh century. Islamic prophet Muhammad united the population of the Arabian Peninsula and created a single Islamic religious polity. Following his death in 632, his followers expanded Muslim rule beyond Arabia, conquering territories in North Africa, Central, South Asia and Iberia within decades. Arab dynasties originating from modern-day Saudi Arabia founded the Rashidun (632–661), Umayyad (661–750), Abbasid (750–1517), and Fatimid (909–1171) caliphates, as well as numerous other Muslim states in Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Qatar, officially the State of Qatar, is a country in West Asia. It occupies the Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it shares its sole land border with Saudi Arabia to the south, with the rest of its territory surrounded by the Persian Gulf. The Gulf of Bahrain, an inlet of the Persian Gulf, separates Qatar from nearby Bahrain. The capital is Doha, home to over 80% of the country's inhabitants. Most of the land area is made up of flat, low-lying desert.

Qatar has been ruled as a hereditary monarchy by the House of Thani since Mohammed bin Thani signed an agreement with Britain in 1868 that recognised its separate status. Following Ottoman rule, Qatar became a British protectorate in 1916 and gained independence in 1971. The current emir is Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who, like previous emirs, holds nearly all executive, legislative, and judicial authority in an autocratic manner under the Constitution of Qatar. He appoints the prime minister and cabinet. The Consultative Assembly (also known as the "Shura Council") can block legislation and has a limited ability to dismiss ministers, but is fully appointed by the emir. While Qatar held a partial Shura Council election in 2021, with two thirds of seats elected, in 2024 it moved to abolish those elections altogether, and reverted to a fully appointed Assembly.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA), also referred to as West Asia and North Africa (WANA) or South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA), is a geographic region which comprises the Middle East (also called West Asia) and North Africa together. It exists as an alternative to the concept of the Greater Middle East, which comprises the bulk of the Muslim world. The region has no standardized definition and groupings may vary, but the term typically includes countries like Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

As a regional identifier, the term "MENA" is often used in academia, military planning, disaster relief, media planning (as a broadcast region), and business writing. Moreover, it shares a number of cultural, economic, and environmental similarities across the countries that it spans; for example, some of the most extreme impacts of climate change will be felt in MENA.

Constitutional monarchy, also known as limited monarchy, parliamentary monarchy or democratic monarchy, is a form of monarchy in which the monarch exercises their authority in accordance with a constitution and is not alone in making decisions. Constitutional monarchies differ from absolute monarchies (in which a monarch is the only decision-maker) in that they are bound to exercise powers and authorities within limits prescribed by an established legal framework. A constitutional monarch in a parliamentary democracy is a hereditary symbolic head of state (who may be an emperor, king or queen, prince or grand duke) who mainly performs representative and civic roles but does not exercise executive or policy-making power.

Constitutional monarchies range from countries such as Liechtenstein, Monaco, Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain and Bhutan, where the constitution grants substantial discretionary powers to the sovereign, to countries such as the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Lesotho, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Japan, where the monarch retains significantly less, if any, personal discretion in the exercise of their authority. On the surface level, this distinction may be hard to establish, with numerous liberal democracies restraining monarchic power in practice rather than written law, e.g., the constitution of the United Kingdom, which affords the monarch substantial, if limited, legislative and executive powers.