Qatar 🇶🇦

Filed under Asia and more precisely Western Asia, Qatar is a sovereign state. The long form of the name is State of Qatar. The capital is Doha.

Some 2.9 million people call it home, placing it 139th of 249 by population — between Lithuania above it and Jamaica below. Among the 17 entries in Western Asia it ranks 14th by area and 16th by population.

Its territory runs to 11,586 km², which ranks it 165th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind the Falkland Islands and just ahead of Jamaica. For scale, it is a little larger than Jamaica.

Plotted on a globe it falls at 25.5° north, 51.3° east, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 2,839 km from the equator, in what geographers would call subtropical latitudes.

Follow that same latitude east or west and you reach Western Sahara, Bangladesh and Bhutan — places that share its distance from the equator but little else.

It borders 1 neighbour: Saudi Arabia.

With both a coast and land borders, it has the trade options a landlocked country does not.

Spread across 11,586 km², that works out at about 247 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. Half the entries in this dataset fall below roughly 91 per square kilometre.

People from Qatar are called Qataris.

Arabic is the only official language. Arabic is one of the widely shared official languages here, listed by 24 other entries including Algeria, Bahrain, Chad and the Comoros.

Inside Asia it places 44th of 50 by population, and it accounts for under 1% of everyone living in Western Asia.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Qatar ranks 165th of 249 by area and 139th by population. That works out at less than a thousandth of a percent of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 0.035% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Qatar in the size ordering are Falkland Islands at 12,173 km² and Jamaica at 10,991 km², against Qatar's 11,586 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Qatar averages 247 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it densely settled by global standards — 62nd of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

Zoom in from the world to Western Asia and Qatar sits 16th of 17 by population and 14th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Armenia just above and Bahrain just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

Türkiye is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Western Asia has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇦🇲 Armenia
• 🇧🇭 Bahrain
• 🇹🇷 Türkiye

The Qatari riyal (QAR) is used only in Qatar among the 249 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. Arabic is listed for 25 entries here, Qatar among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

It uses the Qatari riyal (ر.ق, QAR). That currency appears nowhere else on this list.

Doha is the seat of government and the answer most quizzes are looking for.

The top-level domain is .qa. Calls from overseas start with +974. Its ISO codes are qa and QAT, which is what most databases and flag files use.

It holds a seat at the United Nations, one of 192 entries here that do. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.