The strait derives its name from the dangers attending its navigation or, according to an Arab legend, from the numbers who were drowned by an earthquake that separated the Arabian Peninsula from the Horn of Africa.

Most exports of petroleum and natural gas from the Persian Gulf that transit the Suez Canal or the SUMED Pipeline pass through both the Bab el-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz.

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait is 26 kilometres (14 nautical miles) wide at its narrowest point, limiting tanker traffic to two 2-mile-wide channels for inbound and outbound shipments.

[6] This rose by 2014 to 5.1 million barrels per day (b/d) of crude oil, condensate and refined petroleum products headed toward Europe, the United States, and Asia, then an estimated 6.2 b/d by 2018.

According to Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church tradition, the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb were witness to the earliest migrations of Semitic Ge'ez speakers into Africa, occurring c. 1900 BC, roughly around the same time as the Hebrew patriarch Jacob.

Before the handover, the British government had put forward before the United Nations a proposal for the island to be internationalized[11][12] as a way to ensure the continued security of passage and navigation in the Bab-el-Mandeb, but this was refused.

[citation needed] The most significant towns and cities along both the Djiboutian and Yemeni sides of the Bab-el-Mandeb: Strait: Region: Rail (tunnel or bridge) transport: