United Arab Emirates

United Arab Emirates, federation of seven emirates along the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula.

United Arab Emirates
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The largest of these emirates, Abu Dhabi (Abū Ẓaby), which comprises more than three-fourths of the federation’s total land area, is the centre of its oil industry and borders Saudi Arabia on the federation’s southern and eastern borders. The port city of Dubai, located at the base of the mountainous Musandam Peninsula, is the capital of the emirate of Dubai (Dubayy) and is one of the region’s most vital commercial and financial centres, housing hundreds of multinational corporations in a forest of skyscrapers. The smaller emirates of Sharjah (Al-Shāriqah), ʿAjman (ʿAjmān), Umm al-Quwain (Umm al-Qaywayn), and Ras al-Khaimah (Raʾs al-Khaymah) also occupy the peninsula, whose protrusion north toward Iran forms the Strait of Hormuz linking the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman. The federation’s seventh member, Fujairah (Al-Fujayrah), faces the Gulf of Oman and is the only member of the union with no frontage along the Persian Gulf.