, in the local pronunciation Giṭar, a peninsula of some 4,000 square miles in area which juts out into the Arabian Gulf. It is about 115 miles long and 55 miles broad at its widest part. The discoveries of the Danish archaeological expeditions from 1956 to 1964 show that Ḳaṭar had been inhabited since prehistoric times, the earliest object found, a pair of hand-axes, dating from about 4,000 B.C. The earliest Arabic prose source to mention it is the Kitāb al-masālik wa’ l-mamālik of Ibn K̲h̲urradād̲h̲bih. who notes it briefly as one of the stops on the route from Baṣra to ʿUmā…