BUBIYAN

island of Kuwait, located at the head of the Persian Gulf. It is the largest of a group of eight islands situated just southwest of the mouth of the Al-Arab River that divides Iraq and Iran. Like all of the group except Faylakah Island, about 8 miles (13 km) to the south, Bubiyan is uninhabited. Bubiyan is separated from the Kuwait mainland to the west by the narrow As-Sabiyah Channel. The island is about 25 miles (40 km) long and 15 miles (24 km) wide and covers an area of 333 square miles (863 square km). The topography of the island is flat and low; salt marshes run almost the entire length of its coast, and the northwestern coast is deeply indented swampland. There are a few intermittent wadis in the central part of the island. A storehouse was established in 1902 by the Ottoman Turks near Cape Al-Qayd, the easternmost point of the island, but was subsequently abandoned. Iraq, whose port Umm Qasr is located nearby on the Az-Zubayr Channel, unsuccessfully claimed half of the island of Bubiyan in the 1970s.