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Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia that occupies the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula. Covering a land area of approximately 2,149,690 km2 (830,000 sq mi), it is the fifth-largest country in Asia and the twelfth-largest in the world. It is bordered by the Red Sea to the west, Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait to the north, the Persian Gulf, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates to the east, Oman to the southeast, and Yemen to the south. The Gulf of Aqaba in the northwest separates it from Egypt and Israel. Riyadh is the capital and largest city, while other major centers include Jeddah and the two holiest cities in Islam, Mecca and Medina.
Pre-Islamic Arabia, the territory that constitutes Saudi Arabia, was the site of several ancient cultures and civilizations; the archaeological study of the prehistory of Saudi Arabia has identified some of the earliest traces of human activity outside Africa. Islam emerged in what is now Saudi Arabia in the early seventh century. Islamic prophet Muhammad united the population of the Arabian Peninsula and created a single Islamic religious polity. Following his death in 632, his followers expanded Muslim rule beyond Arabia, conquering territories in North Africa, Central, South Asia and Iberia within decades. Arab dynasties originating from modern-day Saudi Arabia founded the Rashidun (632–661), Umayyad (661–750), Zubayrid (683–692), Abbasid (750–1258), and Fatimid (909–1171) caliphates, as well as numerous other Muslim states in Asia, Africa, and Europe.
Saudi Arabia was founded in 1932 by King Abdulaziz, who united Hejaz, Najd, parts of Eastern Arabia and South Arabia into a single state through a series of military and political campaigns beginning in 1902. The Kingdom is the Third Saudi State and the successor to the First Saudi State (1727–1818) and the Second Saudi State (1824–1891). The country has since been governed as an absolute monarchy under the House of Saud. In its Basic Law, Saudi Arabia defines itself as a sovereign Arab Islamic state with Islam as its official religion and Arabic as its official language. The ultraconservative Wahhabi religious movement within Sunni Islam was the prevailing political and cultural force until the 2000s. The Saudi government has attracted criticism for various policies such as its intervention in the Yemeni Civil War, restrictions on political and civil liberties, and poor human rights record. Since the mid-2010s, Saudi Arabia has instituted limited and gradual reforms to liberalize social, cultural, and religious life.
Saudi Arabia is considered both a regional and middle power, in addition to being a major non-NATO ally of the United States. Since petroleum was discovered in the country in 1938, the kingdom has become the world's second-largest oil producer and leading oil exporter, controlling the world's second-largest oil reserves and sixth-largest gas reserves. Saudi Arabia is categorized as a World Bank high-income economy and is the only Arab country among the G20 major economies. The Saudi economy is the largest in the Middle East and the world's nineteenth-largest by nominal GDP and seventeenth-largest by PPP. Ranking very high in the Human Development Index, Saudi Arabia offers free university tuition, no personal income tax, and free universal health care. With its dependence on foreign labour, Saudi Arabia has the world's third-largest immigrant population, with foreign-born residents comprising roughly 40% of the population. Saudi Arabians are among the world's youngest people, with approximately half being under 25 years old. Saudi Arabia is a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, United Nations, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, Arab League, and OPEC, as well as a dialogue partner of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.
Following the amalgamation of the Kingdom of Hejaz and Nejd, Abdulaziz issued a royal decree on 23 September 1932 naming the new state al-Mamlaka al-ʿArabiyya as-Suʿūdiyya (Arabic المملكة العربية السعودية), which is normally translated as "the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia" in English, but literally means "the Saudi Arab Kingdom", or "the Saudi Kingdom of Arabia" (compare the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan).
The word "Saudi" is derived from the element as-Suʿūdīyya in the Arabic name of the country, which is a type of adjective known as a nisba, formed from the dynastic name of the Saudi royal family, the Al Saud (Arabic: آل سعود). Its inclusion expresses the view that the country is the personal possession of the royal family. Al Saud is an Arabic name formed by adding the word Al, meaning "family of" or "House of", to the personal name of an ancestor. In the case of Al Saud, this is Saud ibn Muhammad ibn Muqrin, the father of the dynasty's 18th-century founder, Muhammad bin Saud.
There is evidence that human habitation in the Arabian Peninsula dates back to about 125,000 years ago. A 2011 study found that the first modern humans to spread east across Asia left Africa about 75,000 years ago across the Bab-el-Mandeb connecting the Horn of Africa and Arabia. The Arabian Peninsula is regarded as central to the understanding of evolution and dispersals of humanity. Arabia underwent an extreme environmental fluctuation in the Quaternary that led to profound evolutionary and demographic changes. Arabia's rich Lower Paleolithic record, marked by numerous Oldowan-like sites, indicates a significant role in the early hominin colonization of Eurasia.
In the Neolithic period, prominent cultures such as Al-Magar, whose centre lay in modern-day southwestern Najd, flourished. Al-Magar could be considered a "Neolithic Revolution" in human knowledge and handicraft skills. The culture is characterized as being one of the world's first to involve the widespread domestication of animals, particularly the horse. Al-Magar statues were made from local stone, and it seems that the statues were fixed in a central building that might have had a significant role in the social and religious life of the inhabitants.
In 2017, hunting scenes showing images of most likely domesticated dogs (resembling the Canaan Dog) were discovered in northwestern Saudi Arabia. These rock engravings date back more than 8,000 years, making them the earliest depictions of dogs in the world.
At the end of the 4th millennium BCE, Arabia entered the Bronze Age; metals were widely used, and the period was characterized by its 2 m high burials which were simultaneously followed by the existence of numerous temples that included many free-standing sculptures originally painted with red colours.
In May 2021, archaeologists announced that a 350,000-year-old Acheulean site named An Nasim in the Hail region could be the oldest human habitation site in northern Saudi Arabia. Paleolithic artefacts are similar to material remains uncovered at the Acheulean sites in the Nefud Desert.
The earliest sedentary culture in Saudi Arabia dates to the Ubaid period at Dosariyah. Climatic change and the onset of aridity may have brought about the end of this phase of settlement, as little archaeological evidence exists from the succeeding millennium. The settlement of the region picks up again in the period of Dilmun in the early 3rd millennium. Known records from Uruk refer to a place called Dilmun, associated on several occasions with copper, and in later periods it was a source of imported woods in southern Mesopotamia. Scholars have suggested that Dilmun originally designated the Eastern Province, notably linked with the major Dilmunite settlements of Umm an-Nussi and Umm ar-Ramadh in the interior and Tarout on the coast. It is likely that Tarout Island was the main port and the capital of Dilmun. Mesopotamian inscribed clay tablets suggest that, in the early period of Dilmun, a hierarchical organized political structure existed. In 1966, an earthwork in Tarout exposed an ancient burial field that yielded a large statue dating to the Dilmunite period (mid 3rd millennium BCE). The statue was locally made under the strong Mesopotamian influence on the artistic principle of Dilmun.
By 2200 BCE, the centre of Dilmun shifted for unknown reasons from Tarout and the Saudi Arabian mainland to the island of Bahrain, and a highly developed settlement emerged there, where a laborious temple complex and thousands of burial mounds dating to this period were discovered.
By the late Bronze Age, a historically recorded people and land (Midian and the Midianites) in the north-western portion of Saudi Arabia are well-documented in the Bible. Centred in Tabouk, it stretched from Wadi Arabah in the north to the area of al-Wajh in the south. The capital of Midian was Qurayyah, it consists of a large, fortified citadel encompassing 35 hectares and below it lies a walled settlement of 15 hectares. The city hosted as many as 12,000 inhabitants. The Bible recounts Israel's two wars with Midian, in the early 11th century BCE. Politically, the Midianites were described as having a decentralized structure headed by five kings (Evi, Rekem, Tsur, Hur, and Reba); the names appear to be toponyms of important Midianite settlements. It is common to view that Midian designated a confederation of tribes, the sedentary element settled in the Hijaz while its nomadic affiliates pastured and sometimes pillaged as far away as Palestine. The nomadic Midianites were one of the earliest exploiters of the domestication of camels that enabled them to navigate through the harsh terrains of the region.
At the end of the 7th century BCE, an emerging kingdom appeared in north-western Arabia. It started as a sheikdom of Dedan, which developed into the kingdom of Lihyan. During this period, Dedan transformed into a kingdom that encompassed a much wider domain. In the early 3rd century BCE, with bustling economic activity between the south and north, Lihyan acquired large influence suitable to its strategic position on the caravan road. The Lihyanites ruled over a large domain from Yathrib in the south and parts of the Levant in the north. In antiquity, Gulf of Aqaba used to be called Gulf of Lihyan, a testimony to the extensive influence that Lihyan acquired.
The Lihyanites fell into the hands of the Nabataeans around 65 BCE upon their seizure of Hegra then marching to Tayma, and to their capital Dedan in 9 BCE. The Nabataeans ruled large portions of north Arabia until their domain was annexed by the Roman Empire, which renamed it Arabia Petraea, and remained under the rule of the Romans until 630.
Shortly before the advent of Islam, apart from urban trading settlements (such as Mecca and Medina), much of what was to become Saudi Arabia was populated by nomadic pastoral tribal societies. Muhammad was born in Mecca in about 570 CE. In the early 7th century, Muhammad united the various tribes of the peninsula and created a single Islamic religious polity. Following his death in 632, his followers expanded the territory under Muslim rule beyond Arabia, conquering territory in the Iberian Peninsula in the west, to parts of Central and South Asia in the east, in a matter of decades. Arabia became a more politically peripheral region of the Muslim world as the focus shifted to the newly conquered lands.
Arabs originating from modern-day Saudi Arabia, the Hejaz in particular, founded the Rashidun (632–661), Umayyad (661–750), Abbasid (750–1517), and the Fatimid (909–1171) caliphates. From the 10th century to the early 20th century, Mecca and Medina were under the control of a local Arab ruler known as the Sharif of Mecca, but at most times the Sharif owed allegiance to the ruler of one of the major Islamic empires based in Baghdad, Cairo or Istanbul. Most of the remainder of what became Saudi Arabia reverted to traditional tribal rule.
For much of the 10th century, the Isma'ili-Shi'ite Qarmatians were the most powerful force in the Persian Gulf. In 930, the Qarmatians pillaged Mecca, outraging the Muslim world, particularly with their theft of the Black Stone. In 1077–1078, an Arab sheikh named Abdullah bin Ali Al Uyuni defeated the Qarmatians in Bahrain and al-Hasa with the help of the Seljuq Empire and founded the Uyunid dynasty. The Uyunid Emirate later underwent expansion, with its territory stretching from Najd to the Syrian Desert. They were overthrown by the Usfurids in 1253. Usfurid rule was weakened after Persian rulers of Hormuz captured Bahrain and Qatif in 1320. The vassals of Ormuz, the Shia Jarwanid dynasty came to rule eastern Arabia in the 14th century. The Jabrids took control of the region after overthrowing the Jarwanids in the 15th century and clashed with Hormuz for more than two decades over the region for its economic revenues, until finally agreeing to pay tribute in 1507. Al-Muntafiq tribe later took over the region and came under Ottoman suzerainty. The Bani Khalid tribe later revolted against them in the 17th century and took control. Their rule extended from Iraq to Oman at its height, and they too came under Ottoman suzerainty.
In the 16th century, the Ottomans added the Red Sea and Persian Gulf coast (the Hejaz, Aseer and Al-Ahsa) to the empire and claimed suzerainty over the interior. One reason was to thwart Portuguese attempts to attack the Red Sea (hence the Hejaz) and the Indian Ocean. The Ottoman degree of control over these lands varied over the next four centuries with the fluctuating strength or weakness of the empire's central authority. These changes contributed to later uncertainties, such as the dispute with Transjordan over the inclusion of the sanjak of Ma'an, including the cities of Ma'an and Aqaba.
The emergence of what was to become the Saudi royal family, known as the Al Saud, began at the town of Diriyah in central Arabia with the accession as emir of Muhammad bin Saud on 22 February 1727. In 1744, he joined forces with the religious leader Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabi movement, a strict puritanical form of Sunni Islam. This alliance provided the ideological impetus to Saudi expansion and remains the basis of Saudi Arabian dynastic rule today.
The Emirate of Diriyah established in the area around Riyadh rapidly expanded and briefly controlled most of the present-day territory of Saudi Arabia, sacking Karbala in 1802, and capturing Mecca in 1803. In 1818, it was destroyed by the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt, Mohammed Ali Pasha. The much smaller Emirate of Nejd was established in 1824. Throughout the rest of the 19th century, the Al Saud contested control of the interior of what was to become Saudi Arabia with another Arabian ruling family, the Al Rashid, who ruled the Emirate of Jabal Shammar. By 1891, the Al Rashid were victorious and the Al Saud were driven into exile in Kuwait.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire continued to control or have a suzerainty over most of the peninsula. Subject to this suzerainty, Arabia was ruled by a patchwork of tribal rulers, with the Sharif of Mecca having pre-eminence and ruling the Hejaz. In 1902, Abdul Rahman's son, Abdulaziz—later known as Ibn Saud—recaptured control of Riyadh bringing the Al Saud back to Nejd, creating the third "Saudi state". Ibn Saud gained the support of the Ikhwan, a tribal army inspired by Wahhabism and led by Faisal Al-Dawish, and which had grown quickly after its foundation in 1912. With the aid of the Ikhwan, Ibn Saud captured Al-Ahsa from the Ottomans in 1913.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Saudi Arabia”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.