Qatar
country in West Asia
Qatar, officially the State of Qatar, is a country in West Asia. It occupies the Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it shares its sole land border with Saudi Arabia to the south, with the rest of its territory surrounded by the Persian Gulf. The Gulf of Bahrain, an inlet of the Persian Gulf, separates Qatar from nearby Bahrain. The capital is Doha, home to over 80% of the country's inhabitants. Most of the land area is made up of flat, low-lying desert.
Qatar has been ruled as a hereditary monarchy by the House of Thani since Mohammed bin Thani signed an agreement with Britain in 1868, which officially recognised its separate status. Following Ottoman rule, Qatar became a British protectorate in 1916 and gained independence in 1971. The current emir is Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who, like previous emirs, holds nearly all executive, legislative, and judicial authority in an autocratic manner under the Constitution of Qatar. He appoints the prime minister and cabinet. The Shura Council (also known as the "Consultative Assembly") has a limited ability to block legislation and dismiss ministers, but is fully appointed by the emir, who also has the last say on these decisions.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Qatar” as country in West Asia. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as country in West Asia. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q846. VIAF identifies the subject as 130142909. The Library of Congress control number is n79077269. Authority coordinates are 25.270, 51.213. 6 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1868, 1916 and 1971.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Qatar” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.