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نبذة عن المملكة السعودية Info. about Saudi Arabia

Geography

Saudi Arabia occupies most of the Arabian Peninsula, with the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba to the west, and the Arabian Gulf to the east. Neighboring countries are Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the Sultanate of Oman, Yemen, and Bahrain, connected to the Saudi mainland by a causeway. Saudi Arabia contains the world's largest continuous sand desert, the Rub Al-Khali, or Empty Quarter. Its oil region lies primarily in the eastern province along the Arabian Gulf.

Government

Saudi Arabia was an absolute monarchy until 1992, at which time the Sa'ud royal family introduced the country's first constitution. The legal system is based on the sharia (Islamic law).

History

Saudi Arabia is not only the homeland of the Arab peoples—it is thought that the first Arabs originated on the Arabian peninsula—but the homeland of Islam, the world's second-largest religion. Muhammad founded Islam there, and it is the location of the two holy pilgrimage cities of Mecca and Medina. The Islamic calendar begins in 622, the year of the hegira, or Muhammad's flight from Mecca. A succession of invaders attempted to control the peninsula, but by 1517 the Ottoman Empire dominated, and in the middle of the 18th century, it was divided into separate principalities. In 1745 Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab began calling for the purification and reform of Islam, and the Wahhabi movement swept across Arabia. By 1811, Wahhabi leaders had waged a jihad—a holy war—against other forms of Islam on the peninsula, and succeeded in uniting much of it. By 1818, however, the Wahhabis had been driven out of power again by the Ottomans and their Egyptian allies.

The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is almost entirely the creation of King Ibn Saud (1882?953). A descendant of Wahhabi leaders, he seized Riyadh in 1901 and set himself up as leader of the Arab nationalist movement. By 1906 he had established Wahhabi dominance in Nejd and conquered Hejaz in 1924?5. Hejaz and Nejd were merged to form the kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932, which was an absolute monarchy ruled by sharia, Islamic law. A year later the region of Asir was incorporated into the kingdom.

Oil was discovered in 1936, and commercial production began during World War II. Its wealth allowed the country to provide free health care and education while not collecting any taxes from its people. Saudi Arabia was neutral until nearly the end of the war, but it was permitted to be a charter member of the United Nations. The country joined the Arab League in 1945 and took part in the 1948?9 war against Israel. Saudi Arabia still does not recognize the state of Israel. On Ibn Saud's death in 1953, his eldest son, Saud, began an 11-year reign marked by an increasing hostility toward the radical Arabism of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser. In 1964, the ailing Saud was deposed and replaced by the premier, Crown Prince Faisal, who gave vocal support but no military help to Egypt in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Faisal's assassination by a deranged kinsman in 1975 shook the Middle East, but it failed to alter his kingdom's course. His successor was his brother, Prince Khalid. Khalid gave influential support to Egypt during negotiations on Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Desert. King Khalid died of a heart attack in 1982, and was succeeded by his half-brother, Prince Fahd bin 'Abdulaziz, who had exercised the real power throughout Khalid's reign. King Fahd, a pro-Western modernist, chose his 58-year-old half-brother, Abdullah, as crown prince.

Saudi Arabia and the smaller, oil-rich Arab states on the Persian Gulf, fearful that they might become Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's next targets if Iran conquered Iraq, made large financial contributions to the Iraqi war effort during the 1980s. At the same time, cheating by other members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), competition from nonmember oil producers, and conservation efforts by consuming nations combined to drive down the world price of oil. Saudi Arabia has one-third of all known oil reserves, but falling

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

National name:
Al-Mamlaka al-'Arabiya as-Sa'udiya

Sovereign:
King Fahd bin 'Abdulaziz (1982)

Area:
756,981 sq mi (1,960,582 sq km)

Population (2003 est.):
24,293,844 (growth rate: 3.1%); birth rate: 37.2/1000; infant mortality rate: 47.9/1000; density per sq mi: 32

Capital: Riyadh

Largest cities (1993):
Riyadh, 3,000,000;
Jeddah, 2,500,000;
Makkah (Mecca) 550,000.

Monetary unit: Riyal

Languages:
Arabic, English widely spoken

Ethnicity/race:
Arab 90%, Afro-Asian 10%

Religion:
Islam 100%

Literacy rate:
62% (1990)

Economic summary: GDP/PPP (2001 est.): $241 billion; per capita $10,600.
Real growth rate: 2%.
Inflation: 2%.
Unemployment: n.a.
Arable land: 1.72%.
Agriculture: wheat, barley, tomatoes, melons, dates, citrus; mutton, chickens, eggs, milk.
Labor force: 7 million; note: 35% of the population in the 15?4 age group is non-national (July 1998 est.); agriculture 12%, industry 25%, services 63% (1999 est.). Industries: crude oil production, petroleum refining, basic petrochemicals, cement, construction, fertilizer, plastics.
Natural resources: petroleum, natural gas, iron ore, gold, copper. Exports: $66.9 billion (f.o.b., 2001): petroleum and petroleum products 90%.
Imports: $29.7 billion (f.o.b., 2001): machinery and equipment, foodstuffs, chemicals, motor vehicles, textiles. Major trading partners: U.S., Japan, South Korea, Singapore, India, Germany, Italy, UK.

Communications: Telephones: main lines in use: 3.1 million (1998); mobile cellular: 1 million; note: in 1998, the government contracted for the installation of 575,000 additional Group Speciale Mobile (GSM) cellular telephone lines over 15 months to raise the total number of subscribers to more than one million; Riyadh planned to further expand the GSM system in 1999 by adding an additional one million lines (1998).

Radio broadcast stations:
AM 43, FM 31, shortwave 2

Radios: 6.25 million (1997).

Television broadcast stations: 117 (1997). Televisions: 5.1 million (1997). Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 42 (2001). Internet users: 570,000 (2001).

Transportation: Railways: total: 1,392 km (2001). Highways: total: 146,524 km; paved: 44,104 km; unpaved: 102,420 km (1997 est.). Ports and harbors: Ad Dammam, Al Jubayl, Duba, Jiddah, Jizan, Rabigh, Ra's al Khafji, Mishab, Ras Tanura, Yanbu' al Bahr, Madinat Yanbu' al Sinaiyah. Airports: 209 (2001).

International disputes: demarcation of delimited boundary with Yemen involves nomadic tribal affiliations; because details of 1974 and 1977 treaties have not been made public, the exact location of the Saudi Arabia-UAE boundary is unknown and status is considered de facto.

demand and rising production outside OPEC combined to reduce its oil revenues from $120 billion in 1980 to less than $25 billion in 1985, threatening the country with domestic unrest and undermining its influence in the Gulf area.

At the start of 1996, King Fahd passed authority to Crown Prince Abdullah, saying he needed rest. Although not an abdication, it was unclear how long the king would be absent. In 1998 the country's oil income fell by 40% because of a worldwide decline in prices, and it entered its first recession in 6 years.

In 2000, Saudi Arabia, along with other OPEC nations experiencing a recession, decided to reduce production to raise oil prices. In 2001, OPEC cut oil production three additional times.

Saudi Arabia's relations with the U.S. were strained after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks?5 of the suicide bombers involved were Saudis. Despite the monarchy's close ties to the West, much of the extremely influential religious establishment has supported anti-Americanism and Islamic militancy.

In March 2002, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia offered a Middle East peace plan at the annual Arab summit: all Arab governments would offer “normal relations and the security of Israel in exchange for a full Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Arab lands, recognition of an independent Palestinian state with noble Jerusalem as its capital, and the return of the Palestinian refugees.?An extraordinary offer because it promised the backing of the entire Arab world, the Saudi plan nevertheless seemed unrealistic in the concessions it expected from Israel. And without a cease-fire, much less an agreement to negotiate between the Israelis and Palestinians, the plan languished.

Following the U.S.-led war on Iraq in March and April 2003, the United States announced it would withdraw its troops stationed in Saudi Arabia. The U.S. has maintained troops in the country for the past decade, a source of great controversy in the strongly conservative Islamic country. One of the major reasons for the Sept. 11 attacks, according to Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden, was the presence of U.S. troops in the home of Islam's holiest sites, Medina and Mecca. On May 12, suicide bombers killed 34, including eight Americans, at housing compounds for Westerners in Riyadh. Al-Qaeda was suspected. Saudi Arabia's commitment to antiterrorist measures was again called into question by the U.S. and other countries.