United Arab Emirates 🇦🇪

Filed under Asia and more precisely Western Asia, the United Arab Emirates is a sovereign state. Unlike most entries, its formal name adds nothing to the short one. Abu Dhabi is the capital.

Around 11.0 million people live there, placing it 86th of 250 by population — between the Dominican Republic above it and Cuba below. Within Western Asia alone it is the 9th largest of 17 and the 7th most populous.

By land area it covers 83,600 km², which ranks it 117th of the 250 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Austria and just ahead of French Guiana. Put next to a country most people can picture, it is almost exactly the same size as Austria.

Its reference point sits at 24.0° north and 54.0° east, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 2,672 km from the equator, in what geographers would call subtropical latitudes.

The Tropic of Cancer passes across it. Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include Mexico, Libya and Myanmar.

Its land neighbours number 2: Oman and Saudi Arabia. The largest of them by area is Saudi Arabia, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 40.6 million people.

Unlike its landlocked neighbours it reaches the sea directly, while also sharing land frontiers.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 131 people per square kilometre, which makes it more crowded than the typical entry on this list. The median across all 250 entries here is about 90 per square kilometre.

Someone from the United Arab Emirates is an Emirati.

Officially it is monolingual: Arabic. 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 28th of 50 by population, and it accounts for 3.6% of everyone living in Western Asia.

Put next to every other entry on this site, United Arab Emirates ranks 117th of 250 by area and 86th by population. That works out at 0.056% of the combined land area of all 250 entries and 0.13% 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 United Arab Emirates in the size ordering are Austria at 83,871 km² and French Guiana at 83,534 km², against United Arab Emirates's 83,600 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. United Arab Emirates averages 131 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it middling in density — 95th of the 248 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 United Arab Emirates sits 7th of 17 by population and 9th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Jordan just above and Azerbaijan 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.

• 🇯🇴 Jordan
• 🇦🇿 Azerbaijan
• 🇹🇷 Türkiye

The United Arab Emirates dirham (AED) is used only in United Arab Emirates among the 250 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, United Arab Emirates 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.

Money there is the United Arab Emirates dirham (د.إ, AED). It is issued for the United Arab Emirates alone.

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

Websites there use the .ae domain. To phone it from abroad you dial +971. Standard country codes: ae and ARE.

The United Arab Emirates is one of the 193 UN member states in this dataset. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 250 rather than the familiar 195.