Nine Cities from the Hejaz Highlands to the Alborz Foothills

Taif sits at about 1,879 meters in the Sarawat Mountains of Saudi Arabia, which gives it a cooler climate than the lowlands around Mecca and Jeddah. It is known for rose gardens that supply rosewater and rose oil, and its recorded population is 563,282.

Dubai grew from a modest trading and pearling port on a creek of the Persian Gulf into a hub for finance, tourism and air travel. Its recorded founding year is 1822, and as of 2025 about four million people live there, 92 percent of them expatriates.

Sharjah is the third most populous city in the United Arab Emirates, with 1,872,000 residents in 2024 across 235.5 square kilometers. The Al Qasimi dynasty has ruled it since the eighteenth century, and it was UNESCO World Book Capital in 2019.

Al Ain is the largest inland city in the Emirates, at an elevation of 292 meters, and it borders the Omani town of Al-Buraimi to the east. Its freeways to Abu Dhabi and Dubai form a triangle with sides of roughly 130 kilometers, and its population was 846,787 in 2021.

Kirkuk in northern Iraq lies at 350 meters and had about 1.25 million people in 2024, a mix of Kurds, Iraqi Turkmens and Arabs. It sits above major oil reserves near the Baba Gurgur field, and its constitutional status has been disputed since a referendum was called in 2007.

Erbil, also called Hawler, is the capital of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, with about 1.2 million people. Its citadel is recognized by UNESCO as one of the oldest continuously occupied settlements in the world.

Sulaymaniyah was founded in 1784 by Ibrahim Pasha Baban, who named it for his father Sulayman Pasha, and it served as capital of the Baban principality until 1850. Mountains ring it on several sides, and its estimated 2025 population of 847,000 is the eighth largest in Iraq.

Qom lies 140 kilometers south of Tehran on the Qom River and is Iran's seventh largest city, with 1,201,158 residents at the 2016 census. The Fatima Masumeh Shrine draws an estimated 20 million pilgrims a year, and the city is regarded as the world's largest center of Shia scholarship.

Karaj, capital of Alborz province, lies just west of Tehran at 1,312 meters at the foot of the Alborz Mountains, with evidence of habitation from the Bronze Age. Its recorded 2025 population of 1,592,492 reflects rapid growth into an industrial and residential neighbor of the Tehran metropolis.