Saudi Arabia Wikipedia. Saudi Arabiac   listen,   listen, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia KSA,d is a sovereign. Arab state in Western Asia constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula. With a land area of approximately 2,1. Saudi Arabia is geographically the fifth largest state in Asia and second largest state in the Arab world after Algeria. Saudi Arabia is bordered by Jordan and Iraq to the north, Kuwait to the northeast, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates to the east, Oman to the southeast and Yemen to the south. It is separated from Israel and Egypt by the Gulf of Aqaba. It is the only nation with both a Red Sea coast and a Persian Gulf coast and most of its terrain consists of arid desert and mountains. The area of modern day Saudi Arabia formerly consisted of four distinct regions Hejaz, Najd and parts of Eastern Arabia Al Ahsa and Southern Arabia Asir. 7 The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded in 1. Ibn Saud. He united the four regions into a single state through a series of conquests beginning in 1. Riyadh, the ancestral home of his family, the House of Saud. Saudi Arabia has since been an absolute monarchy, effectively a hereditary dictatorship governed along Islamic lines. 89 The ultraconservative Wahhabi religious movement within Sunni Islam has been called the predominant feature of Saudi culture, with its global spread largely financed by the oil and gas trade. 89 Saudi Arabia is sometimes called the Land of the Two Holy Mosques in reference to Al Masjid al Haram in Mecca and Al Masjid an Nabawi in Medina, the two holiest places in Islam. The state has a total population of 2. Saudi nationals and 8 million are foreigners. 1. The states official language is Arabic. Petroleum was discovered on 3 March 1. Eastern Province. 1. Saudi Arabia has since become the worlds largest oil producer and exporter, controlling the worlds second largest oil reserves and the sixth largest gas reserves. 1. The kingdom is categorized as a World Bank high income economy with a high Human Development Index1. Arab country to be part of the G 2. However, the economy of Saudi Arabia is the least diversified in the Gulf Cooperation Council, lacking any significant service or production sector apart from the extraction of resources. 1. The state has attracted criticism for its treatment of women and use of capital punishment. 1. Saudi Arabia is a monarchical autocracy,1. SIPRI found that Saudi Arabia was the worlds second largest arms importer in 2. Saudi Arabia is considered a regional and middle power. 2. Saudi Arabia s d i r e b i listen, s a listen, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia KSA, is a sovereign Arab state in. This reference list was compiled by Robert Hare for personal use. Most, but not all, of the articles listed on these pages discuss or evaluate the PCLR, the PCLSV. In addition to the GCC, it is an active member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and OPEC. 2. Etymology. Following the unification of the Hejaz and Nejd kingdoms, the new state was named al Mamlakah al Arabyah as Sudyah a transliteration of in Arabic by royal decree on 2. September 1. 93. 2 by its founder, Abdulaziz Al Saud Ibn Saud. Although this is normally translated as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in English,2. Saudi Arab kingdom,2. Arab Saudi Kingdom. 2. The word Saudi is derived from the element as Sudyah 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. Its inclusion expresses the view that the country is the personal possession of the royal family. 2. Al Saud is an Arabic name formed by adding the word Al, meaning family of or House of,2. In the case of the Al Saud, this is the father of the dynastys 1. Muhammad bin Saud. 3. History. There is evidence that human habitation in the Arabian Peninsula dates back to about 1. It is now believed that the first modern humans to spread east across Asia left Africa about 7. Bab el Mandib connecting Horn of Africa and Arabia. 3. Before the foundation of Saudi Arabia. In ancient times the Arabian peninsula served as a corridor for trade and exhibited several civilizations. The history before the foundation of Saudi Arabia divided into two phases pre Islam and after Islam. Pre Islamic Arabia. Religions of the people of the Arabian Peninsula before Islam consisted of indigenous polytheistic beliefs, Arabian Christianity, Nestorian Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism. 3. Al Magar Civilization. Al Magar is prehistoric civilisation that was founded in the center of the Arabian Peninsula, particularly in Najd. Al Magar is where the first domestication of animals occurred, particularly the horse, during the Neolithic period. 3. Aramaic inscription from the ancient city of Tayma 6th century BC. Correspondence between Il ippara, the governor of Dilmun, and Enlil kidinni, the governor of Nippur, c. BC. Fragment of a wall painting showing a Kindite king, 1st century CE. Head of a man from the ancient capital Qaryat al Faw 1st century BCEDilmun Civilization. Dilmun is one of the ancient civilizations in the Middle East and in the Arabian Peninsula. 3. It was a major trading centre, and, at the height of its power, controlled the Persian Gulf trading routes. 3. The Dilmun encompassed the east large side of the Arabian Peninsula, particularly in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. One of the earliest inscriptions naming Dilmun is that of King Ur Nanshe of Lagash c. BC discovered in a door socket The ships of Dilmun brought him wood as tribute from foreign lands4. Thamud Civilization. Thamud is the name of an ancient civilization in the Hejaz known from the 1st millennium BC to near the time of Muhammad. More than 9,0. 00 Thamudic inscriptions were recorded in south west Saudi Arabia. 4. Nabatean Kingdom. The Nabataeans, also Nabateans Arabic al Anb , compare to Ancient Greek, Latin Nabatus, were an Arab4. Arabia and the Southern Levant, and whose settlements, most prominently the assumed capital city of Raqmu, now called Petra,4. CE 3. 7  c. 1. 00, gave the name of Nabatene to the borderland between Arabia and Syria, from the Euphrates to the Red Sea. Their loosely controlled trading network, which centered on strings of oases that they controlled, where agriculture was intensively practiced in limited areas, and on the routes that linked them, had no securely defined boundaries in the surrounding desert. Trajan conquered the Nabataean kingdom, annexing it to the Roman Empire, where their individual culture, easily identified by their characteristic finely potted painted ceramics, was adopted into the larger Greco Roman culture. They were later converted to Christianity. Jane Taylor, a writer, describes them as one of the most gifted peoples of the ancient world. 4. Kingdom of Lihyan. The kingdom of Lihyan Arabic or Dedan is an Ancient North Arabian kingdom. It was located in northwestern of the now day Saudi Arabia, and is known for its Ancient North Arabian inscriptions dating to ca. BC. 4. 4Kindah Kingdom. Kindah was a tribal kingdom that was established in the Najd in central Arabia. Its kings exercised an influence over a number of associated tribes more by personal prestige than by coercive settled authority. Their first capital was Qaryat Dht Khil, today known as Qaryat al Fw. 4. Middle Ages and rise of Islam. 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. 4. The Islamic prophet. Muhammad, however, was born in Mecca in about 5. Bleacher Report Sports. Highlights. News.