Capital of Qatar, located on the east coast of the Qatar Peninsula in the Persian Gulf. More than two-fifths of Qatar’s population lives within the city’s limits. Situated on a shallow bay indented about 3 miles (5 km), Doha has long been a locally important port. Because of offshore coral reefs and shallow waters, it handled only small vessels until the completion of its deepwater port in the 1970s.
The original quarter of the city, Al-Bidaʿ, Bida in sailor’s parlance, is at the northwest; it was probably founded by members of the Sudan tribe who emigrated from the sheikhdom of Abu Dhabi. A port town that became involved in the 19th-century maritime conflicts of the Persian Gulf, Doha, then a small village, was destroyed in 1867 in the war between Bahrain (which was aided by Abu Dhabi) and Qatar.
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