Which strait's name means 'gate of tears' in Arabic?

Bab-el-Mandeb, between Djibouti and Yemen, about 30 kilometres wide - and the name is usually explained by the dangers of the crossing, or by a legend of an earthquake separating Arabia from Africa and drowning those caught between.

It is one of the world's genuine chokepoints. Everything moving between Europe and Asia through the Suez Canal passes through it - something around twelve per cent of global trade and a large share of seaborne oil and gas - in a channel narrow enough to be threatened from the shore, which is what happened from 2023 when shipping began diverting around the Cape of Good Hope at a cost of roughly ten extra days per voyage.

It was also, most likely, the way we left Africa. The southern route hypothesis has modern humans crossing here around 60,000 years ago, when lower sea levels made the gap narrower and the intervening islands more accessible - and genetic evidence from populations along the Arabian and South Asian coasts broadly supports a coastal expansion. If so, almost everyone outside Africa is descended from people who went through the gate of tears.