United Arab Emirates

Coordinates: 24°N 54°E / 24°N 54°E / 24; 54

The United Arab Emirates ⁱ/juːˌnaɪtᵻd ˌærəb ˈɛmɪrᵻts/ (Arabic: دولة الإمارات العربية المتحدة‎ Dawlat al-Imārāt al-‘Arabīyah al-Muttaḥidah), sometimes simply called the Emirates or the UAE, is a country located in the southeast end of the Arabian Peninsula on the Persian Gulf, bordering Oman to the east and Saudi Arabia to the south, as well as sharing sea borders with Qatar and Iran. In 2013, the UAE's total population was 9.2 million, of which 1.4 million are Emirati citizens and 7.8 million are expatriates.

Established in December 1971, the country is a federation of seven emirates. The constituent emirates are Abu Dhabi (which serves as the capital), Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah, and Umm al-Quwain. Each emirate is governed by an absolute monarch; together, they jointly form the Federal Supreme Council. One of the monarchs is selected as the President of the United Arab Emirates. Islam is the official religion of the UAE, and Arabic is the official language, although English is widely used.

Civil code

A civil code is a systematic collection of laws designed to comprehensively deal with the core areas of private law such as for dealing with business and negligence lawsuits and practices. A jurisdiction that has a civil code generally also has a code of civil procedure. In some jurisdictions with a civil code, a number of the core areas of private law that would otherwise typically be codified in a civil code may instead be codified in a commercial code.

History

The concept of codification dates back to ancient Babylon. The earliest surviving civil code is the Code of Ur-Nammu, in . 2100–2050 BC. The most famous ancient civil code, however, is the Corpus Juris Civilis, a codification of Roman law produced between 529-534 AD by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, which forms the basis of civil law legal systems.

Other civil codes used since ancient times include various texts used in religious laws, such as the Law of Manu in Hindu law, the Mishnah in Jewish Halakha law, the Canons of the Apostles in Christian Canon law, and the Qur'an and Sunnah in Islamic Sharia law to some extent.

Arabs

Arabs (/ˈærəbz/; Arabic: عرب‎, ‘arab) are a major panethnic group whose native language is Arabic, comprising the majority of the Arab world. They primarily inhabit Western Asia, North Africa, and parts of the Horn of Africa. Before the spread of Islam, Arab referred to any of the largely nomadic Semitic tribes inhabiting the northern and central Arabian Peninsula. In modern usage Arab refers to a heterogeneous collection of Arabic-speaking peoples in the Middle East and North Africa. The ties that bind Arabs are linguistic, cultural, and political, and to a lesser extent genetic, with Arabized Arabs displaying genetic admixture from the Arabian peninsula as well as indigenous elements. As such, Arab identity is based on one or more of genealogical, linguistic or cultural grounds, although with competing identities often taking a more prominent role, based on considerations including regional, national, clan, kin, sect, and tribe affiliations and relationships. Not all people who could be considered Arab identify as such. If the Arab panethnicity is regarded as a single population, then it constitutes the world's second largest group of people after the Han Chinese.

Arab world

The Arab world (Arabic: العالم العربي‎ al-ʿālam al-ʿarabī; formally: الوطن العربي al-wațan al-ʿarabī), also known as the Arab nation (الأمة العربية al-ʾummah al-ʿarabīah), consists of the 22 Arabic-speaking countries of the Arab League.

The standard definition of the Arab world comprises the 22 countries and territories of the Arab League. These Arab states occupy an area stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean in the southeast. The Arab world has a combined population of around 422 million people, with over half under 25 years of age.

The sentiment of Arab nationalism arose in the second half of the 19th century along with other nationalist movements within the Ottoman Empire. The Arab League was formed in 1945 to represent the interests of the Arabs, and especially to pursue the political unification of the Arab countries, a project known as Pan-Arabism.

Middle East

The Middle East (also called the Mid East) is a transcontinental region centered on Western Asia and Egypt. The corresponding adjective is Middle-Eastern and the derived noun is Middle-Easterner. Formerly, the Eurocentric synonym Near East (as opposed to Far East) was commonly used. Arabs, Azeris, Kurds, Persians, and Turks constitute the largest ethnic groups in the region by population, while Armenians, Assyrians, Circassians, Copts, Druze, Jews, Maronites, Somalis, and other ethnic and ethno-religious groups form significant minorities.

The History of the Middle East dates back to ancient times, with the (geo-political) importance of the region being recognized for millennia. Several major religions have their origins in the Middle East, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; the Baha'i faith, Mandaeism, Unitarian Druze, and numerous other belief systems were also established within the region. The Middle East generally has a hot, arid climate, with several major rivers providing irrigation to support agriculture in limited areas such as the Nile Delta in Egypt, the Tigris and Euphrates watersheds of Mesopotamia, and most of what is known as the Fertile Crescent. Most of the countries that border the Persian Gulf have vast reserves of crude oil, with the dictatorships of the Arabian Peninsula in particular benefiting from petroleum exports. In modern times the Middle East remains a strategically, economically, politically, culturally and religiously sensitive region.