The Persian Gulf

The Persian Gulf is a crescent-shape groove which has demonstrated the encroachment of the Indian Ocean waters (also known as Gulf of Oman) in an span of 900 km long and 240 km wide in the inferior folds of southern Zagros mountains. The Persian Gulf and its neighboring countries constitute almost one ninth of the 44 million square km span of the Asian continent (1). The Persian Gulf has been a valuable waterway since the beginning of history and as the venue of the collision of great civilizations of the ancient East, it has a background of several millenniums (2). Since centuries ago, the Ilamites used the Port of Bushehr and the Khârg Island for dwelling, shipping and ruling over the coasts of the Persian Gulf as well as transaction with the West Indies and the Nile Valley (3). In the Latin American geography books the Persian Gulf has been referred to as More Persicum or the Sea of Pars (4).

The Latin term "Sinus Persicus" is equivalent to "Persicher golf" in French, "Persico qof" in Italian, "Persidskizalir" in Russian and "Perusha Wan" that all mean "Pars" (5).

Prior to the stationing of the Aryan Iranians on Iran's Plateau, the Assyrians named the sea in their inscriptions as the "bitter sea" and this is the oldest name that was used for the Persian Gulf (6).
An inscription of Darius the Great found in the Suez Canal, used a phrase with a mention of river Pars which points to the same Persian Gulf.

There are undeniable legal evidences and documents in confirmation of the genuineness of the term Persian Gulf. From 1507 to 1560 in all the agreements that Portuguese, Spanish, British, Dutch, French and Germans concluded with the Iranian government or in any other political event everywhere there is a mention of the name Persian Gulf (7).


Even in agreements with the participation of Arabs there is a mention of "Al-Khalij al-Farsi" in the Arabic texts and "Persian Gulf" in English texts, such as the document for the independence of Kuwait which was signed between the emir of Kuwait and representatives of the British government in the Persian Gulf. The document, which was signed on June 19, 1961 by Abdullah As-Salem As-Sabah, has been registered in the Secretariat of the United Nations according to article 102 of the U.N. Charter and can be invoked at any U.N. office (8).


Besides all the disputes that have been made over the name of the Persian Gulf, the United Nations with its 22 Arab member countries has on two occasions officially declared the unalterable name of the sea between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula as the Persian Gulf. The first announcement was made through the document UNAD, 311/Qen on March 5, 1971 and the second was UNLA 45.8.2 (C) on August 10, 1984. Moreover, the annual U.N. conference for coordination on the geographical names has emphatically repeated the name "Persian Gulf" each year (9).


Footnotes:

1- Institute of Political and International Studies, selected Persian Gulf documents, volume 1, page5
2- Ibid, page 5.
3- Mehdi Azimi, "Persian Gulf Political History", Port and Sea, Nos. 41-41, page 2
4- Institute of Political and International Studies, series of articles of seminar on Persian Gulf issues, page 135
5- Institute for Political and International Studies, selected Persian Gulf documents, volume 1, page 18, Institute of Political and International Studies, series of articles of seminar on Persian Gulf issues, page 136
6- Seyed Hassan Mousavi, "A brief discussion on historical-political geography of the Persian Gulf...", sociology and humanities of Shiraz University, page 118.
7- Institute of Political and International Studies, series of articles of seminar on Persian Gulf issues, page 148.
8- Institute of Political and International Studies, ibid, page 149.
9- Pirouz Mojtahedzadeh, "Persian Gulf in return for history", Nos. 105-106, page 28.