Authors Amplified: Why This Part of the Middle East Is ‘The Center of the World’ 

For those of a certain age and generation, mention of the Persian Gulf conjures images of war — or at least the threat of conflict breaking out in what has become a turbulent neighborhood in recent years. 

But for most of its history, this sliver of water has been more of s bridge for commerce and culture than  a boundary between regional powers. Now known as the preserve of petro-states and a fault line between Saudi Arabia and Iran, it was historically a melting pot where diverse religions and worldviews coexisted as a result of economic interdependence, says Georgia State University associate professor Allen Fromherz. 

Trace it back far enough, Dr. Fromherz writes, and this corner of what’s now known as the Middle East has a bold claim to being the epicenter of world history. 

“If you just look at a map of Eurasia, which is where the majority of the human population has lived over human history, you see that the Persian Gulf is really this hypotenuse,” Dr. Fromherz told Global Atlanta in an interview as part of the Authors Amplified series presented by the Atlanta Global Studies Center. 

Dr. Fromherz lays out his argument in “The Center of the World,” a new book that tracks the Gulf’s history by looking at the port cities and trading entrepôts that emerged there, starting in the Stone Age and working up to present-day Dubai, a glittering manifestation of a cosmopolitan ethic that came about in pre-Islamic times. 

A harsh inland geography marked by distinct regions of desert, marsh and mountains favored small city-states and made it hard for empires, from the Babylonians to the Persians and beyond, to dominate the Gulf, despite their aspirations to control its lucrative harbors.  

“The empires that developed around this region, they needed to use the Gulf, but they couldn’t completely control the Gulf,” said Dr. Fromherz, also the director of the Middle East Studies Center at GSU.

Fueled by predictable monsoon winds from the East, the Gulf became a nexus for water-borne trade from the Indian Ocean, with ships from China linking with overland caravans from the Middle East and Africa that were connected with the Mediterranean sphere. 

Called the Bitter Sea by the ancient Sumerians due to its high salt content, today’s Arabic name, Al-Khaleej, connotes more of a river or a canal connecting two points than the separate implied by the word “gulf” in English, Dr. Fromherz said. 

“A theme of this book is the connectivity that was brought about by this water, by this space, and how it was a bridge as much more than it was a gulf,” Dr. Fromherz said. “What I would really argue is that it’s a global Gulf, because you have even more than just Arabs and Persians traversing this space. Over the long-term history of the Gulf, you have people from Africa, people all the way from Indonesia, even connecting to China from India. You have the world really coming through this space as the crossroads.”

While historical cities like Dilmun, Siraf and Hormuz don’t get much attention today, they adopted thousands of years ago an economic model strikingly similar to the one the global economy runs on today. 

“Today, many parts of the world exist in an economic system similar to the one the Gulf has known for millennia: Diversified, service centered and connected to global networks, not dependent on agriculture as the primary industry,” Dr. Fromherz writes. 

Understanding how these places worked, and studying both the ancient and modern history of this region, can unlock insight on modern-day issues. 

Dr. Fromherz pointed to the Hamas Oct. 7 attacks and ensuing war between Israel and Gaza which many have linked to Iran’s desire to slow normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. 

“As a historian, if you look into the past, oftentimes the root cause is some place outside of where the battle is going on,” he said. 

While prioritized in the U.S. for its (historically) recent emergence as pivotal source oil and gas, the Gulf was a key crossroads for international trade long before their discovery in the 20th century. 

Pearls, Dr. Fromherz said, were the hot commodity before oil, yet their exploitation was much more collegial than drilling for crude, which correlated with hardened national boundaries and helped solidify erstwhile tribal leaders as royalty. 

Dr. Fromherz hopes readers, particularly from the business community, will come away from reading his book with an appreciation of regional nuances and the deep cultural heritage that existed long before Dubai’s massive malls, Qatar’s gleaming airport or Saudi Arabia’s futuristic master-planned cities. 

“What I would really argue is that it’s a global gulf. You have the world really coming through this space as a crossroads.”

Allen fromherz

“I hope that they see that there’s a much deeper history here,” he said. “You can easily be blinded by the extraordinary newness of the place and all the amazing new modern architecture that’s coming up and just feel like you’re in an air-conditioned bubble.”

He advises visitors (and students) to find historical monuments, visit museums, read about archaeological finds and attend cultural festivals to see how people surrounding the Gulf have learned over thousands of years to blend a strong local identity with unrivaled hospitality and openness to the world. 

“I don’t think it’s an either-or, and this is what the Gulf really shows,” Dr. Fromherz said. “That is, I think, one of the reasons why the Gulf has been successful as the center of the world, because it allows for people to feel like they are in the world, but also to have their own distinctive identity and background.”

Or, as he writes in the introduction: 

Studying the Gulf over the long term can help answer some of the most pressing questions of our own global age. 

Are we humans able, through cosmopolitanism, to grasp and feel part of a wider sense of humanity? Do we need a sense of tribe, clan and identity? The Gulf has always contained these contradictions: In port cities from ancient Dilmun on Bahrain through medieval Islamic Basra and Siraf to Muscat, Hormuz and Dubai, distinctive communities have greater a globally connected Gulf culture, dependent on the free flow of people, commerce and ideas. 

Buy the book here: