Arab, Arabic Gulf Spoken

The Gulf Arabs of Iran are Sunni Arab fishing and seafaring communities strung along the north shore of the Persian Gulf, from about fifty Arabic-speaking villages in Bushehr province to the ports of Charak, Moqam and Lengeh and the islands of Kish and Lavan in Hormozgan. Arab tribes such as the Bani Tamim, Al Nasur, Al Haram and the Qawasim ruled these ports in the 18th and 19th centuries; most of their kin, the Huwala, moved to Dubai, Sharjah, Bahrain and Qatar by the 1930s, and the families who stayed see themselves as both Arab and Iranian. Their Shafi'i Sunni faith and Gulf Arabic speech set them apart from the Shia, Persian-speaking majority, and they keep close family ties with relatives across the water. On Kish, native Arab families still go from house to house after Eid prayers, and each host serves Arab dishes and sweets.

Kuwait's Sunni Arab citizens, about seven in ten Kuwaitis, are the people of the ruling Al Sabah family and the core of the nation. They fall into two halves that still tend to live, marry and vote apart: the hadar, descendants of the merchants, pearl divers and sailors of the old walled town, and the badu, families of the Awazim, Mutair, Ajman, Rashaida, Anizah and other desert tribes who settled and became citizens from the 1950s on and now fill the outer suburbs of Jahra, Ahmadi and Farwaniya. Most work for the state and receive free housing, healthcare and schooling paid for by oil, while foreign workers, two-thirds of the population, do the country's manual and service labour. Their social life turns on the diwaniya, a reception room where men gather each evening over coffee and tea to talk family business and politics, and in the middle of Ramadan children in traditional dress go from house to house for girgian, singing for sweets and nuts. Beside them live some 40,000 stateless Sunni Bidoon of the same desert tribes, whose families never received citizenship and who are refused papers, state schooling and most jobs.

The Bedouin of Oman are camel- and goat-herding tribes of the central desert, about a quarter of a million citizens set apart from the settled oasis Arabs by descent, dialect and a desert way of life. The Al Wahiba hold the great dune sea of the Sharqiya Sands, the Janaba the coast of Al Wusta, the Duru the plains of the Dhahirah, and the Na'im and Bani Ka'b the borderlands around Buraimi. Most are Sunni, while the Wahiba and Duru follow the Ibadi school of the north. Camels once carried dates and limes from the north to trade for dried sardines from the coast; today camel racing, date gardens, army jobs and desert tourist camps sustain families, and older women still wear the stiff indigo face mask called the burqa.

Qatar's Arab citizens, nearly nine Qataris in ten, are the people of the ruling Al Thani family and the core of a nation where citizens are barely one resident in eight. They are the descendants of the merchants, pearl divers and fishermen of the old coastal towns (hadar), of desert tribes such as the Al Murrah, Bani Hajer, Na'im and Manasir who were settled by the state in the 1960s (bedu), and of Huwala families who returned from the Persian coast; bedu and hadar still rarely marry each other. Most are Sunni, but about one in ten, from Baharna craft families of Bahrain and al-Ahsa or Ajam families of Iranian origin, are Twelver Shia who dress and live like their neighbours, mourn Imam Husayn at Ashura in a few quiet halls (husseiniyas) and settle family matters in their own Ja'fari court. Gas wealth gives them state jobs, free land and housing loans, free schooling and healthcare, while foreign workers do almost all manual labour. Each family receives guests in its majlis over Arabic coffee and dates, and on the 14th night of Ramadan children in traditional dress go from house to house singing Garangao songs for nuts and sweets.

Saudi Arabia's Gulf Arabs are the Sunni Arabs of the Eastern Province, about 640,000 people who speak the Gulf Arabic of Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar rather than the Najdi of the interior. They are the townspeople of the al-Ahsa oasis, the world's largest, whose old scholarly families taught the Maliki and other Sunni schools for centuries, and the coastal families of Dammam and al-Khobar, many of them Dawasir who crossed from Bahrain in 1923; Kuwaitis, Emiratis and Qataris living in the kingdom share their dialect and ways. Al-Ahsa's tailors are famed across the Gulf for the bisht, the gold-edged cloak worn on great occasions, and its spring-fed gardens grow Khalas dates and a local red rice. Their oases and towns are shared with Shia neighbours who form a separate community, and since the 1940s their coast has been the heart of the Saudi oil industry around Dhahran.

Emirati Arabs are the citizens of the seven emirates, a people of just over a million who make up about one resident in ten of their own country. They descend from the Bani Yas, Qawasim, Na'im, Sharqiyin and other tribes of the old Trucial Coast, from pearl divers, date farmers and merchants, and from Arab and Iranian-origin families who crossed from the Persian coast; about one in ten, mostly in Dubai and Sharjah, is a Twelver Shia. Oil wealth since the 1960s has made them a privileged minority who work mainly for the state, live in villa suburbs and leave almost all manual work to foreign residents, while families still marry largely within their kin. Hospitality in the family majlis over cardamom coffee and dates, falconry, camel racing and the Al Ayyala stick dance, performed at weddings and national days, are prized marks of Emirati identity.