Saudi Arabia

a kingdom in N and central Arabia, including Hejaz, Nejd, and dependencies. 20,087,965; ab. 600,000 sq. mi. (1,554,000 sq. km). Cap.: Riyadh. Cf. Mecca.

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Saudi Arabia

Introduction Saudi Arabia -
Background: In 1902 Abd al-Aziz Ibn SAUD captured Riyadh and set out on a 30- year campaign to unify the Arabian Peninsula. In the 1930s, the discovery of oil transformed the country. Following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Saudi Arabia accepted the Kuwaiti royal family and 400,000 refugees while allowing Western and Arab troops to deploy on its soil for the liberation of Kuwait the following year. A burgeoning population, aquifer depletion, and an economy largely dependent on petroleum output and prices are all major governmental concerns. Geography Saudi Arabia
Location: Middle East, bordering the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, north of Yemen
Geographic coordinates: 25 00 N, 45 00 E
Map references: Middle East
Area: total: 1,960,582 sq km water: 0 sq km land: 1,960,582 sq km
Area - comparative: slightly more than one-fifth the size of the US
Land boundaries: total: 4,431 km border countries: Iraq 814 km, Jordan 744 km, Kuwait 222 km, Oman 676 km, Qatar 60 km, UAE 457 km, Yemen 1,458 km
Coastline: 2,640 km
Maritime claims: contiguous zone: 18 NM continental shelf: not specified territorial sea: 12 NM
Climate: harsh, dry desert with great temperature extremes
Terrain: mostly uninhabited, sandy desert
Elevation extremes: lowest point: Persian Gulf 0 m highest point: Jabal Sawda' 3,133 m
Natural resources: petroleum, natural gas, iron ore, gold, copper
Land use: arable land: 1.72% permanent crops: 0.06% other: 98.22% (1998 est.)
Irrigated land: 16,200 sq km (1998 est.)
Natural hazards: frequent sand and dust storms Environment - current issues: desertification; depletion of underground water resources; the lack of perennial rivers or permanent water bodies has prompted the development of extensive seawater desalination facilities; coastal pollution from oil spills Environment - international party to: Biodiversity, Climate
agreements: Change, Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Ozone Layer Protection signed, but not ratified: none of the selected agreements
Geography - note: extensive coastlines on Persian Gulf and Red Sea provide great leverage on shipping (especially crude oil) through Persian Gulf and Suez Canal People Saudi Arabia -
Population: 23,513,330 note: includes 5,360,526 non- nationals (July 2002 est.)
Age structure: 0-14 years: 42.4% (male 5,086,541; female 4,883,942) 15-64 years: 54.8% (male 7,493,304; female 5,396,985) 65 years and over: 2.8% (male 362,780; female 289,778) (2002 est.)
Population growth rate: 3.27% (2002 est.)
Birth rate: 37.25 births/1,000 population (2002 est.)
Death rate: 5.86 deaths/1,000 population (2002 est.)
Net migration rate: 1.28 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2002 est.)
Sex ratio: at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female under 15 years: 1.04 male(s)/female 15-64 years: 1.39 male(s)/female 65 years and over: 1.25 male(s)/ female total population: 1.22 male(s)/ female (2002 est.)
Infant mortality rate: 49.59 deaths/1,000 live births (2002 est.) Life expectancy at birth: total population: 68.4 years female: 70.2 years (2002 est.) male: 66.7 years
Total fertility rate: 6.21 children born/woman (2002 est.) HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate: 0.01% (1999 est.) HIV/AIDS - people living with HIV/ NA
AIDS:
HIV/AIDS - deaths: NA
Nationality: noun: Saudi(s) adjective: Saudi or Saudi Arabian
Ethnic groups: Arab 90%, Afro-Asian 10%
Religions: Muslim 100%
Languages: Arabic
Literacy: definition: age 15 and over can read and write total population: 78% male: 84.2% female: 69.5% (2002 est.) Government Saudi Arabia -
Country name: conventional long form: Kingdom of Saudi Arabia conventional short form: Saudi Arabia local long form: Al Mamlakah al Arabiyah as Suudiyah local short form: Al Arabiyah as Suudiyah
Government type: monarchy
Capital: Riyadh Administrative divisions: 13 provinces (mintaqat, singular - mintaqah); Al Bahah, Al Hudud ash Shamaliyah, Al Jawf, Al Madinah, Al Qasim, Ar Riyad, Ash Sharqiyah (Eastern Province), 'Asir, Ha'il, Jizan, Makkah, Najran, Tabuk
Independence: 23 September 1932 (Unification of the Kingdom)
National holiday: Unification of the Kingdom, 23 September (1932)
Constitution: governed according to Shari'a (Islamic law); the Basic Law that articulates the government's rights and responsibilities was introduced in 1993
Legal system: based on Islamic law, several secular codes have been introduced; commercial disputes handled by special committees; has not accepted compulsory ICJ jurisdiction
Suffrage: none
Executive branch: chief of state: King and Prime Minister FAHD bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud (since 13 June 1982); Crown Prince and First Deputy Prime Minister ABDALLAH bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud (half-brother to the monarch, heir to the throne since 13 June 1982, regent from 1 January to 22 February 1996); note - the monarch is both the chief of state and head of government elections: none; the monarch is hereditary head of government: King and Prime Minister FAHD bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud (since 13 June 1982); Crown Prince and First Deputy Prime Minister ABDALLAH bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud (half-brother to the monarch, heir to the throne since 13 June 1982, regent from 1 January to 22 February 1996); note - the monarch is both the chief of state and head of government cabinet: Council of Ministers is appointed by the monarch and includes many royal family members
Legislative branch: a consultative council (90 members and a chairman appointed by the monarch for four-year terms)
Judicial branch: Supreme Council of Justice Political parties and leaders: none allowed Political pressure groups and none
leaders: International organization ABEDA, AfDB, AFESD, AL, AMF, BIS,
participation: CCC, ESCWA, FAO, G-19, G-77, GCC, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICC, ICRM, IDA, IDB, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS, ILO, IMF, IMO, Interpol, IOC, ISO, ITU, NAM, OAPEC, OAS (observer), OIC, OPCW, OPEC, PCA, UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNIDO, UPU, WFTU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WTrO (observer) Diplomatic representation in the US: chief of mission: Ambassador BANDAR bin Sultan bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud chancery: 601 New Hampshire Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20037 consulate(s) general: Houston, Los Angeles, and New York telephone: [1] [phone] Diplomatic representation from the chief of mission: Ambassador Robert
US: W. JORDAN (since 3 October 2001) embassy: Collector Road M, Diplomatic Quarter, Riyadh mailing address: American Embassy Riyadh, Unit 61307, APO AE 09803- 1307; International Mail: P. O. Box 94309, Riyadh 11693 telephone: [966] (1) 488-3800 FAX: [966] (1) 488-7360 consulate(s) general: Dhahran, Jiddah (Jeddah)
Flag description: green with large white Arabic script (that may be translated as There is no God but God; Muhammad is the Messenger of God) above a white horizontal saber (the tip points to the hoist side); green is the traditional color of Islam Economy Saudi Arabia
Economy - overview: This is an oil-based economy with strong government controls over major economic activities. Saudi Arabia has the largest reserves of petroleum in the world (26% of the proved reserves), ranks as the largest exporter of petroleum, and plays a leading role in OPEC. The petroleum sector accounts for roughly 75% of budget revenues, 45% of GDP, and 90% of export earnings. About 25% of GDP comes from the private sector. Roughly 4 million foreign workers play an important role in the Saudi economy, for example, in the oil and service sectors. Riyadh expects to have a budget deficit in 2002, in part because of increased spending for education and other social programs. The government in 1999 announced plans to begin privatizing the electricity companies, which follows the ongoing privatization of the telecommunications company. The government is expected to continue calling for private sector growth to lessen the kingdom's dependence on oil and increase employment opportunities for the swelling Saudi population. Shortages of water and rapid population growth will constrain government efforts to increase self-sufficiency in agricultural products.
GDP: purchasing power parity - $241 billion (2001 est.)
GDP - real growth rate: 1.6% (2001 est.)
GDP - per capita: purchasing power parity - $10,600 (2001 est.) GDP - composition by sector: agriculture: 7% industry: 48% services: 45% (2000 est.) Population below poverty line: NA% Household income or consumption by lowest 10%: NA%
percentage share: highest 10%: NA% Inflation rate (consumer prices): 1.7% (2001)
Labor force: 7 million note: 35% of the population in the 15-64 age group is non-national (July 1998 est.) Labor force - by occupation: agriculture 12%, industry 25%, services 63% (1999 est.)
Unemployment rate: NA%
Budget: revenues: $42 billion expenditures: $54 billion, including capital expenditures of $NA (2002 est.)
Industries: crude oil production, petroleum refining, basic petrochemicals, cement, construction, fertilizer, plastics Industrial production growth rate: 1% (1997 est.) Electricity - production: 123.5 billion kWh (2000) Electricity - production by source: fossil fuel: 100% hydro: 0% other: 0% (2000) nuclear: 0% Electricity - consumption: 114.855 billion kWh (2000)
Electricity - exports: 0 kWh (2000)
Electricity - imports: 0 kWh (2000)
Agriculture - products: wheat, barley, tomatoes, melons, dates, citrus; mutton, chickens, eggs, milk
Exports: $66.9 billion (f.o.b., 2001)
Exports - commodities: petroleum and petroleum products 90%
Exports - partners: US 17.4%, Japan 17.3%, South Korea 11.7%, Singapore 5.3%, India (2000)
Imports: $29.7 billion (f.o.b., 2001)
Imports - commodities: machinery and equipment, foodstuffs, chemicals, motor vehicles, textiles
Imports - partners: US 21.1%, Japan 9.4%, Germany 7.4%, UK 7.3% (2000)
Debt - external: $23.8 billion (2001 est.)
Economic aid - donor: pledged $100 million in 1993 to fund reconstruction of Lebanon; since 1993, Saudi Arabia has committed $208 million for assistance to the Palestinians; pledged $240 million to development in Afghanistan
Currency: Saudi riyal (SAR)
Currency code: SAR
Exchange rates: Saudi riyals per US dollar - 3.7450 (fixed rate since June 1986)
Fiscal year: calendar year Communications Saudi Arabia - Telephones - main lines in use: 3.1 million (1998) Telephones - 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)
Telephone system: general assessment: modern system domestic: extensive microwave radio relay, coaxial cable, and fiber- optic cable systems international: microwave radio relay to Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Yemen, and Sudan; coaxial cable to Kuwait and Jordan; submarine cable to Djibouti, Egypt and Bahrain; satellite earth stations - 5 Intelsat (3 Atlantic Ocean and 2 Indian Ocean), 1 Arabsat, and 1 Inmarsat (Indian Ocean region) Radio broadcast stations: AM 43, FM 31, shortwave 2 (1998)
Radios: 6.25 million (1997) Television broadcast stations: 117 (1997)
Televisions: 5.1 million (1997)
Internet country code: .sa Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 42 (2001)
Internet users: 570,000 (2001) Transportation Saudi Arabia -
Railways: total: 1,392 km standard gauge: 1,392 km 1.435- m gauge (724 km are double-tracked) (2001)
Highways: total: 146,524 km paved: 44,104 km unpaved: 102,420 km (1997 est.)
Waterways: none
Pipelines: crude oil 6,400 km; petroleum products 150 km; natural gas 2,200 km (includes natural gas liquids 1,600 km)
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
Merchant marine: total: 71 ships (1,000 GRT or over) totaling 1,071,315 GRT/1,412,125 DWT ships by type: cargo 11, chemical tanker 10, container 4, livestock carrier 3, passenger 1, petroleum tanker 20, refrigerated cargo 3, roll on/roll off 11, short-sea passenger 8 note: includes some foreign-owned ships registered here as a flag of convenience: Egypt 3, Finland 1, Greece 3, Kuwait 1, Sudan 1, United Arab Emirates 1, United Kingdom 3 (2002 est.)
Airports: 209 (2001) Airports - with paved runways: total: 71 70 over 3,047 m: 31 31 2,438 to 3,047 m: 12 11 914 to 1,523 m: 3 3 under 914 m: 2 2 (2001) 1,524 to 2,437 m: 23 23 Airports - with unpaved runways: total: 138 2,438 to 3,047 m: 5 1,524 to 2,437 m: 79 under 914 m: 15 (2001) 914 to 1,523 m: 39
Heliports: 5 (2001) Military Saudi Arabia -
Military branches: Land Force (Army), Navy, Air Force, Air Defense Force, National Guard, Ministry of Interior Forces (paramilitary) Military manpower - military age: 17 years of age (2002 est.) Military manpower - availability: males age 15-49: 6,007,635 (2002 est.) Military manpower - fit for military males age 15-49: 3,359,849 (2002
service: est.) Military manpower - reaching military males: 233,402 (2002 est.)
age annually: Military expenditures - dollar $18.3 billion (FY00)
figure: Military expenditures - percent of 13% (FY00)
GDP: Transnational Issues Saudi Arabia - Disputes - international: 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
Illicit drugs: death penalty for traffickers; increasing consumption of heroin and cocaine

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officially Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Country, Middle East.

It occupies four-fifths of the Arabian Peninsula and is bounded by the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Area: 868,000 sq mi (2,480,000 sq km). Population (2002 est.): 23,370,000. Capital: Riyadh. The people are predominantly Arab. Language: Arabic (official). Religion: Islam (official), mostly Sunnite. Currency: Saudi rial. The country is a plateau region, with bands of imposing highlands rising from the narrow Red Sea coast. More than nine-tenths is desert, including the world's largest continuous sand area, the Rub al-Khali ("Empty Quarter"). The largest petroleum producer of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the third largest producer in the world, Saudi Arabia has reserves that represent one-fourth of the world total. Its other products include natural gas, gypsum, dates, wheat, and desalinated water. It is a monarchy; its head of state and government is the king. Saudi Arabia is the historical home of Islam. During premodern times, local and foreign rulers fought for control of the region; in 1517 the Ottoman Empire attained nominal control of most of the peninsula. In the 18th–19th centuries an Islamic reform group known as the Wahhābiyyah joined with the Saūd dynasty to take control of most of central Arabia. Despite political setbacks, they regained most of their territory by 1904. The British held Saudi lands as a protectorate (1915–27), after which they acknowledged the sovereignty of the Kingdom of the Hejaz and Nejd. The two kingdoms were unified as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932. Since World War II (1939–45), the kingdom's rulers have supported the Palestinian cause in the Middle East and maintained close ties with the U.S. In 2000 Saudi Arabia and Yemen settled a long-standing border dispute.

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▪ 2009

Area:

2,149,690 sq km (830,000 sq mi)

Population

(2008 est.): 24,780,000

Capital:

Riyadh

Head of state and government:

King Abdullah

      Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah made international headlines in July 2008 when he convened a three-day interfaith conference in Madrid that was attended by more than 200 religious and political leaders from around the world. The conference, which marked the first time that a Saudi ruler had invited Jewish clerics to participate in a religious meeting, was aimed at developing mutual understanding and tolerance between the followers of different faiths. The conference, however, did not sit well with some local clerics in Saudi Arabia, who regarded the meeting as an attempt to equate Islam with other religions. The Saudi king attended a second interfaith meeting in November in New York City. At the beginning of June, nearly two dozen official Saudi clerics made headlines of their own when they issued a statement that strongly condemned Shiʿite Muslims and alleged that Hezbollah's true intent was to wage war not on Israel but rather on Sunni Muslims. Although the statement was broadcast in the Saudi media, it was not signed by Saudi Arabia's grand mufti. In November Saudi authorities banned two books of the late Sayyid Qutb, a prominent figure in the religio-political organization Muslim Brotherhood, and removed his works from school libraries.

      The deterioration in the health of King Abdullah's heir and half brother, Crown Prince Sultan, toward the end of the year triggered concerns over succession. The crown prince traveled to the U.S. for cancer surgery in November. In the event that the crown prince be-came disabled or died, an allegiance council established by King Abdullah in 2006 to regulate future succession would choose the best possible candidate from among the ruling family.

      Relations between Riyadh and Washington, D.C., witnessed a degree of friction during the year. U.S. Pres. George W. Bush visited the country in January and made a return trip in May; on both occasions he urged Saudi Arabia—as well as other OPEC states—to increase oil production in order to help bring high oil prices down. The Saudis, however, dismissed the U.S. position that crude oil supplies were responsible for the surge in oil prices, instead arguing that supply was meeting demand and that the high prices thus stemmed from reasons other than market fundamentals. Saudi Arabia did agree in May to raise oil production an additional 300,000 bbl per day but maintained that the move was in response to customer demand and not to the request by President Bush. In any case, this issue receded as oil prices plummeted later in the year. In mid-August there was relief in Riyadh after a U.S. federal appeals court upheld a lower court's decision to throw out a lawsuit brought by families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; the lawsuit had attempted to hold the Saudi government responsible for the attacks.

      On the economic front, Saudi Arabia continued to enjoy ample revenues from the sale of crude oil. A joint exploration venture between Royal Dutch Shell and the state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco in the vast Rubʿ al-Khali desert reportedly yielded a new natural gas discovery in August, although some industry sources cast doubt on the significance of the find. Also in August, Riyadh announced that nonresident foreign investors would be allowed to buy shares of domestic stocks through licensed Saudi intermediaries; this move was perceived as a major step toward opening up the Saudi stock market completely. On the negative side, there were reports of widening income inequality between the various classes that made up the Saudi population. Although inflation ran at 10% during the year, the government increased wages by only 5%.

Mahmoud Haddad

▪ 2008

Area:

2,149,690 sq km (830,000 sq mi)

Population

(2007 est.): 24,209,000

Capital:

Riyadh

Head of state and government:

King Abdullah

      The most important political development in 2007 in Saudi Arabia was the issuance by 84-year-old King Abdullah in October of a set of rules to guide the conduct of the “allegiance” council, a body that was set up in 2006 to regulate political succession. Since most of the sons of former king Ibn Saʿud were either dead or aged, the stage was set for the grandsons to start looking for power at the very highest levels. In Saudi Arabia succession did not pass automatically from the father to his eldest son. The new guidelines would not take effect, however, until Abdullah's heir, 83-year-old Crown Prince Sultan, had acceded to the throne.

      A key Saudi royal, Prince Talal ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, half brother of King Abdullah and the father of billionaire Prince al-Walid ibn Talal, announced in September that he planned to establish a political party and that he would invite jailed reformists to join it. He criticized the monopoly on Saudi power by one faction within the royal family. He later retracted his statements, however.

      Saudi liberals welcomed a royal decree in October overhauling the kingdom's judicial system and allocating $2 billion for the building of new courthouses and the training of judges. The reforms would preserve the centrality of the Shariʿah (Islamic law) but would take away many powers exercised by the Supreme Judicial Council, which was controlled by conservative clerics.

      In late September Saudi Arabia's grand mufti, Sheikh ʿAbd al-Aziz al-Sheikh, issued a fatwa (religious edict) prohibiting Saudi youth from traveling abroad under the pretext of jihad. Although he did not mention Iraq by name, it was understood that the fatwa was aimed at discouraging young Saudis from going to Iraq to fight U.S. and other foreign forces in that country.

      The Saudi Arabian economy continued to perform well, especially since the price of crude oil remained robust and, at one point, soared to nearly $100 per barrel. Though the budget surplus in 2006 was $77.5 billion, that figure was expected to shrink to $5.3 billion in 2007 owing to an ambitious government spending and investment program.

      Riyadh had a huge fallout with Damascus in August after Syrian Vice Pres. Faruq al-Sharaʾ criticized the Saudi policy in the Middle East, saying it was virtually paralyzed. In an unusual and swift move, Saudi Arabian officials attacked the Syrian foreign policy that “disregarded the unity of Arab ranks and worked for spreading chaos and turbulence in the region”; a scheduled visit by the Syrian foreign minister was canceled by Riyadh.

 Saudi Arabia would be the largest purchaser in a $20 billion arms deal that was reached between the U.S and the Arab Gulf states. The agreement was made after Israel was promised aid of $30 billion for arms over a 10-year period. In September Saudi Arabia signed an $8.8 billion deal with the U.K. to buy and service 72 Eurofighter aircraft; this was part of a larger $40 billion arms deal that had yet to be signed. In October–November, King Abdullah visited the U.K., Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Turkey, and Egypt. During his travels he met with Pope Benedict XVI, the first-ever meeting in the Vatican between a Saudi monarch and a pontiff.

Mahmoud Haddad

▪ 2007

Area:

2,149,690 sq km (830,000 sq mi)

Population

(2006 est.): 23,687,000

Capital:

Riyadh

Head of state and government:

King Abdullah

      Saudi Arabia witnessed a number of important developments in 2006. King Abdullah's strategic visit to China, India, Malaysia, and Pakistan at the beginning of the year signaled a possible shift in Saudi economic outlook, especially in the shifting of oil and gas interests from the U.S. and Europe to East Asia. A number of agreements were signed to build joint refineries and petrochemical plants in both the latter region and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis were reportedly looking to boost relations with countries that did not have an interest in Saudi internal affairs. In late October King Abdullah established the Allegiance Institution, a committee of the descendants of Ibn Saʿud, the founder of the kingdom, to determine the future of succession within the vast ruling family (there were about 6,000 Saudi princes). Crown Prince Sultan would be exempt from the new rules, however.

      The economic situation remained robust, owing to the international increase in crude-oil prices. Although Russia overtook Saudi Arabia as the main global oil producer, Riyadh was still the main global oil exporter.

      In clashes with Saudi police during the year, a half dozen extremist al-Qaeda operatives were killed. Of the 26 antigovernment operatives on the country's most-wanted list, only one name remained. Nonetheless, the U.S. government warned of possible al-Qaeda attacks on Saudi oil facilities in the Eastern province. In October 700 former Islamic extremists were pardoned and released from jail after they pledged not to engage in antigovernment activities. Some Islamists were unhappy about Riyadh's proclamation that it would make major changes to the Saudi educational system in an effort to emphasize the spirit of modernity, nonviolence, and cooperation with non-Muslims that was dictated by Muslim teachings.

 Relations with the U.S. remained lukewarm. The Saudi ambassador to Washington wrote an article in the Arab press defending his country's stance against American accusations that Riyadh had not done enough to fight the radical Islamic groups and cut off their funding from inside Saudi Arabia. In November, U.S. Vice Pres. Dick Cheney met with King Abdullah in Riyadh to discuss regional security issues. The number of Saudi students studying in the U.S. following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks plunged drastically, but by 2006 nearly 10,000 had returned to American universities.

      Rising tensions between Tehran and Washington and European capitals over the nuclear issue caused Saudi Arabia to make Iran and its policies its main concern. Although Riyadh remained largely silent on this matter, it tried to exert pressure on Syria to sever its alliance with Iran and to discourage the pro-Iranian Hezbollah in Lebanon from attacking Israeli posts in southern Lebanon. In addition, the explosive situation in Iraq led Saudi policy makers to decide to construct a $500 million fence along its 900-km (560-mi) border with Iraq. The structure would consist of two metal barriers, with barbed wire piled in a tall pyramid between them.

Mahmoud Haddad

▪ 2006

Area:

2,149,690 sq km (830,000 sq mi)

Population

(2005 est.): 23,230,000

Capital:

Riyadh

Head of state and government:

Kings Fahd and, from August 1, Abdullah

 On Aug. 1, 2005, King Fahd (Fahd ) of Saudi Arabia died. (See Obituaries.) His half brother Crown Prince Abdullah was named the new monarch, and a full brother, Prince Sultan, became the new crown prince. The succession process went very smoothly, and the investiture ceremony was extremely simple. The new king personally retained direct command of the Saudi Arabian National Guard and continued as chairman of the Supreme Economic Council (SEC), a high-level policy unit. At the same time, Crown Prince Sultan continued as general inspector of the Royal Saudi Air Force.

      The new king made an important symbolic gesture in September when he ordered citizens not to kiss his hand, saying that the traditional gesture of respect was degrading and violated Islam. Abdullah asked everyone to refrain from kissing the hands of anyone but their parents.

      The economic situation improved tremendously owing to the international increase in crude- oil prices. It was predicted that 2005 would be the best year in Saudi economic history, with a growth forecast of 26%. Oil-export revenue would reach $180 billion, about a 70% increase over the 2004 level. The internal national debt of around $150 billion was to be reduced by a third to about $100 billion. Western leaders called on oil producing countries to increase their production in order to reduce the rise in oil prices; King Abdullah concurred but also asked Western countries to reduce their taxes on petroleum products in order to help achieve this result.

      The country's prosperity was likely behind King Abdullah's decree on August 22 awarding a 15% salary raise to all Saudi government employees, both civilian and military, as well as to retired persons. At the same time, he put solving the unemployment problem as one of his priorities. About $700 million in additional funds were made available for education and training. Concurrently, the Ministry of Education announced that it was revising the school curriculum, with a greater emphasis on science and job-oriented education. The point was made about a direct link between the large number of jobless young people and the increase in support for militant Islamic groups. In regard to these latter groups, Saudi authorities were successful in gunning down two dozen Muslim extremists who belonged to an al-Qaeda organization and were intent on carrying out acts of sabotage in different parts of the kingdom.

      After four years of negotiations and a visit in April by then crown prince Abdullah with Pres. George W. Bush in Crawford, Texas, Saudi Arabia reached a decisive agreement with the U.S. in September that paved its way to joining the World Trade Organization. A U.S. statement pointed out that the agreement also promised to open up Saudi trade with Israel, as the kingdom had explicitly undertaken to allow free trade with all WTO members. Saudi Arabia formally joined the WTO on December 11. The Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Bander ibn Sultan, was replaced by Prince Turki al-Faysal, who had served as ambassador in London and was earlier the head of the Saudi intelligence service, but little change in policy was expected. On the other hand, Prince Saud al-Faysal, the Saudi foreign minister, criticized U.S. policy in Iraq as divisive and possibly pushing Iraq into the arms of Iran. Nonetheless, President Bush certified that Saudi Arabia was cooperating with efforts to combat international terrorism, which thus qualified Riyadh to receive direct U.S. aid to combat such activities.

Mahmoud Haddad

▪ 2005

Area:

2,149,690 sq km (830,000 sq mi)

Population

(2004 est.): 24,580,000

Capital:

Riyadh

Head of state and government:

King Fahd, assisted by Crown Prince Abdullah

      The issue that dominated Saudi Arabian internal affairs in 2004 was the official campaign against anti-Western Islamist groups accused of carrying out acts of sabotage in the kingdom and abroad. The authorities even cracked down on charitable organizations accused of funding suspected radical groups. The al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, one of the largest nongovernmental charitable organizations in Saudi Arabia, was disbanded in early October, and its 250 employees were sacked. The organization, which was founded in Pakistan by Aqil al-Aqil, had first been accused of funding terrorism in 2002 by the U.S. authorities. The terrorist organization al-Qaeda was linked to the killings of a number of Westerners in Saudi Arabia throughout the year, including three Americans in June, and al-Qaeda leaders declared that such killings were a message for foreigners to leave Saudi territory. Saudi security forces killed a number of al-Qaeda operatives, and a few high-profile members gave themselves up under a limited amnesty offer. Muslim militants stormed the U.S. consulate in Jeddah on December 6 and killed five non-American staff members before Saudi forces shot dead three attackers and captured two to regain control.

      The government carried on with its program for internal reform in two ways. The first was to agree to hold municipal elections, the first in decades, in various parts of the country from February 10 to April 21, 2005. Women, however, would still not be allowed to vote. The second measure was to combat militant Islamism by creating new jobs. This was to be done, according to news reports, by making jobs in the private sector traditionally held by foreigners more available to Saudis. At present only 13% of the private-sector workforce—800,000 people—was Saudi, far below the 45% goal of the government for 2004.

      Although the beginning of 2004 witnessed some strain in Saudi-American relations, there was a thaw in tensions by midyear. In September the U.S. Department of State added Saudi Arabia to its list of the world's most religiously intolerant nations, though Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to soft-pedal the message and mollify the Saudis.

      A budget surplus of about $35 billion was forecast in 2004. Economists welcomed a government decision to earmark $11 billion in windfall oil revenues to development projects and to allocate $8 billion into a safety reserve fund with the aim of protecting the budget against drops in oil revenues in the future. Most of the remaining surplus was to be spent on repaying part of the public debt, which reached $176 billion, or about 90% of GDP. The country posted a $12 billion surplus for the 2003 fiscal year, the first nondeficit budget since 2000. After the steep rise in prices of crude oil in the summer, the Saudi authorities announced that the kingdom would increase production capacity from 9.5 million to 11 million bbl a day starting in early October.

Mahmoud Haddad

▪ 2004

Area:

2,149,690 sq km (830,000 sq mi)

Population

(2003 est.): 24,008,000

Capital:

Riyadh

Head of state and government:

King Fahd, assisted by Crown Prince Abdullah

      The issue that dominated internal Saudi Arabian affairs in 2003 was the intensification of the official campaign against anti-Western Islamic groups accused of involvement in acts of sabotage. During the year the latter clashed with security forces, and there were casualties on both sides. According to official sources, 600 people were arrested. The Saudi political and religious authorities emphasized detachment from any views that called for military actions against non-Muslims in the name of Islam. Crown Prince Abdullah, the unofficial de facto ruler, vowed to uproot extremism in the country, and Prince Naif, the minister of the interior, took an unexpected step in March by attacking the Muslim Brothers, a largely Egyptian party that had not been accused of any extremist actions and that for decades had enjoyed very good relations with the Saudi establishment. Concurrently, the Saudi highest cleric, Sheikh Abdul-Aziz al-Sheikh, told the Saudis in August to ignore fanatic interpretations of Islam or risk “banning God's bounty.” That same month the U.S. military shut down the largest remaining air force unit at Prince Sultan Air Base, which brought the American military presence in the kingdom to a very low level. The move helped to diffuse resentment over the military's close proximity to Islam's holiest sites.

      Saudi officials criticized a U.S. congressional report that implied the country's complicity in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S. Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal remarked that the report was “illogical and unacceptable,” and he offered to cooperate with the FBI in providing information on any Saudi found to be linked to the attacks. At the same time, King Fahd issued a special pardon releasing five British nationals and one Canadian who had been jailed for their alleged involvement in explosions related to alcohol trafficking in 2000 and 2001.

      Calls for political and social reform were expressed in both official and unofficial circles. In June more than 500 intellectuals and clerics representing the country's Sunni majority and Shiʿite and Ismaʿili minorities, together with liberals and technocrats, gathered for a four-day meeting. The unprecedented event ended with a list of recommendations being submitted to the crown prince. The document called for greater participation by women in Saudi affairs, expansion of democratic-type freedoms, and the restriction to capable clerics of the right to issue religious fatwas. Similar requests came from other Saudi groups abroad. In response, in October the government announced that the first-ever political elections would be held in 2004, in which half the members of the municipal council would be elected. In addition, the country held a human rights conference that month, and the first woman dean was appointed to a Saudi university. Nevertheless, in late October nationwide protests were staged twice by the Movement for Islamic Reform.

      On the economic front, the two-year-long negotiations collapsed between the Saudi government and major American oil companies to finance a $25 billion natural-gas scheme. A smaller agreement was signed, however, between Dutch Shell (40%), French Total (30%), and Saudi Aramco (30%), for a $5 billion project to extract natural gas from an area south of the Rubʿ al-Khali desert.

      The Saudi balance of payments registered another surplus in 2003, owing to the relatively high price of exported crude oil. Nevertheless, the government pursued plans to privatize certain sectors of the economy, especially electricity and transportation.

Mahmoud Haddad

▪ 2003

Area:

2,149,690 sq km (830,000 sq mi)

Population

(2002 est.): 23,370,000

Capital:

Riyadh

Head of state and government:

King Fahd

      As part of a diplomatic effort aimed at improving Saudi-U.S. relations, Crown Prince Abdullah, Saudi Arabia's de facto leader, launched a comprehensive peace initiative toward Israel early in 2002. (See Biographies (Abdullah, Crown Prince ).) The initiative, which called for an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territories in exchange for full Arab normalization of relations with the Jewish state, was accepted at an Arab summit meeting in Beirut, Lebanon, in March. The crown prince traveled to the U.S. to meet with Pres. George W. Bush in April, and while there were points of disagreement between the Saudi and U.S. plans for peace in the Middle East, the White House described Abdullah's proposal as “constructive.”

      Relations were strained again, however, after Saudi Arabia made clear its unwillingness to support any attack on Iraq. An especially tense time ensued after the publication of a study by the RAND Corporation, a California-based think tank, that described Saudi Arabia as “an enemy disguised as a friend” and “active in every level of terrorism.” The study, which had been commissioned by a defense advisory panel for the Pentagon, recommended that the U.S. seize Saudi oil fields and financial assets if Saudi Arabia did not do more to fight terrorism. The study was quickly dismissed by Crown Prince Abdullah, who stressed his country's “solid historical” relations with the U.S., and Washington later dissociated itself from the report. When RAND analyst and study author Laurent Murawiec repeated the same views in an interview, however—and after families of September 11 victims joined in a lawsuit against “the financial sponsors of terrorism,” among them three Saudi princes—the Saudi media returned fire. “This is pure blackmail,” one newspaper wrote, adding that “it would be more appropriate for the families of the victims of September 11 to sue the American government itself.” Tempers had cooled somewhat by year's end. Although Riyadh reiterated that Saudi airfields would not be used in an attack on Iraq, it pledged its support of U.S. efforts to dismantle the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

      Although Saudi Arabia had projected a $12 billion budget deficit for 2002, by fall it was instead expected to boast a small surplus as a result of a rise in oil prices. Revenues from oil exports, projected at around $30 billion, shot up to more than $40 billion. Negotiations progressed on a long-awaited $25 billion gas scheme, though a large gap remained between the government's position and the position of the large Western oil companies interested in the project. While the former wanted the companies to explore for gas in relatively virgin areas, the companies wanted to take an easier route and invest in producing from already proven gas reserves, especially in the huge Ghawar oil and gas field in the eastern region of the country.

      According to a new report by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), Saudi Arabia had not kept up with world industrial development over the past two decades. It lost rank in industrial competitiveness between 1985 and 1998 and ranked lowest in UNIDO's technological effort and inventiveness index for 1998.

Mahmoud Haddad

▪ 2002

Area:

2,248,000 sq km (868,000 sq mi)

Population

(2001 est.): 22,757,000

Capital:

Riyadh

Head of state and government:

King Fahd

      In Saudi Arabia the year 2001 was dominated by security and regional political issues. During the year four British nationals, as well as a Canadian and a Belgian, confessed to involvement in a series of car bombings in what authorities described as a “Mafia war” between resident aliens who were illegally trafficking in alcohol. In late August Prince Turki al-Faisal, who headed the kingdom's General Intelligence Directorate, was replaced by Prince Nayif ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz. Relations between Riyadh and Washington were not at their best. On September 5, less than a week before the attacks by militant Islamists in the U.S., Prince Saud al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia's minister of foreign affairs, said that the peace process between the Palestinians and the Israelis had failed because of “the policies of Israel” and declared that it was “time especially for the U.S. to assume its own responsibility and prevent Israeli aggression against the Arab world.”

      The September 11 attacks had a profound impact on Saudi Arabia, since the primary suspect was Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi national who had been stripped of his citizenship some years before. Saudi authorities were quick to condemn the attacks. The government was reluctant to permit U.S. warplanes to use Prince Sultan Airbase, the most sophisticated such installation south of Riyadh, to launch attacks on Afghanistan, but it played the role of “silent partner” in the American-led coalition against Afghanistan and its Taliban government. During a summit meeting of foreign ministers of the countries attending the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Qatar on October 10, Saudi Arabia was instrumental in passing a resolution that condemned terrorism and the September 11 attacks but—in reference to the situation of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza—drew a distinction between terrorism and what were labeled acts of self-defense. The organization also warned against targeting any other Muslim or Arab country by the Western coalition under the pretext of fighting terrorism.

      On the economic front, Saudi Arabia was still far from gaining admittance to the World Trade Organization, because the country had not fully liberalized its economy. Saudi reforms introduced in May 2000 that permitted total outside ownership in some sectors were, however, able to attract pledges of about $10 billion in foreign investment in 2001. There was every reason to believe that the country's gross domestic investment was keeping pace with the 21.3% of gross domestic product (in nominal terms) realized in 2000, before the fourth quarter, which witnessed a slowdown on account of the fallout from the war in Afghanistan and the decrease in crude oil prices. Real GDP growth for 2001 was projected to be 1%. This figure was expected to rise to 2.5% in 2002 and 4.5% in 2005 on account of the returns from the $25 billion worth of investments made in gas projects.

Mahmoud Haddad

▪ 2001

Area:

2,248,000 sq km (868,000 sq mi)

Population

(2000 est.): 22,024,000

Capital:

Riyadh

Head of state and government:

King Fahd

      Two political issues gained prominence in Saudi Arabia in 2000. The first was the formation of a family council of 18 princes to provide, among other things, a better chance for easy succession to the throne and better relations among the members of the royal family. The second important issue was that the long-standing border dispute with Yemen came to a happy end with the signing of an agreement between the two countries on June 12. Actual demarcation of the 2,500-km (1,553-mi) border was expected to start soon. In other developments Saudi-Iraqi relations witnessed a stabilization of sorts after much fluctuation. In August Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein branded Kuwait and Saudi Arabia “stooges for the United States and Israel,” an accusation that was answered fiercely by Saudi media, which accused the Iraqi president of “transforming Iraq into a field of ruins thanks to his political wisdom.” Two months later, however, Saudi Arabia did not object when Iraq was invited to the Arab summit meeting in Cairo. Additionally, Saudi Arabia asked the UN to permit it to open a border crossing between it and Iraq in order to deliver humanitarian aid to the latter. A Saudi plane en route to London was hijacked to Baghdad in mid-October; the next day Iraqi authorities returned it to Saudi Arabia with all the passengers except the two Saudi hijackers, who asked for political asylum. In November a British engineer was killed, and his wife was wounded when their car exploded in Riyadh, a possible example of anti-Western sentiment.

      Economically, the rising oil prices and the volume of production provided the country with its highest current account surplus since 1981. In spite of agreements by OPEC to boost production, oil prices skyrocketed to above $30 per barrel for part of the year and were expected to average $27 per barrel for the whole year, with Saudi oil production averaging about eight million barrels a day. This would wipe out the nation's current deficit and put the current surplus at no less than $22 billion–$25 billion. As in the previous year, however, and under the direct advice of Crown Prince Abdullah, the surplus was mainly going to be used not to increase spending but instead to pay off the country's foreign and domestic debts. These steps prompted Moody's Investors Service to upgrade the kingdom's financial standing. Similarly, the government did not shy away from its earlier general direction of reducing subsidies and encouraging the private sector to take a more active role in some parts of the economy. As an example, Saudi Arabia was planning a $100 billion deal with 12 leading oil companies to develop gas-fueled infrastructure. Equally important, a privatization program was about to start, and Saudia, the national airline carrier, with an annual revenue in 1999 of about $3 billion, was one of the first candidates for a partnership between the public and private sectors. Other important candidates included the large petrochemical factories at the two cities of Al-Jubail (on the Persian Gulf) and Yanbuʿ (on the Red Sea).

Mahmoud Haddad

▪ 2000

Area:

2,248,000 sq km (868,000 sq mi)

Population

(1999 est.): 21,505,000

Capital:

Riyadh

Head of state and government:

King Fahd

      Two major issues dominated the concerns of Saudi Arabia in 1999. One was political, the problem of succession to the throne; the other, economic, was the shifting prices of crude oil, the main source of the country's revenues. As was the case in 1998, the illness of King Fahd and his absence from the country for long intervals prompted Crown Prince ʿAbdallah ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz to run the daily affairs of the kingdom. King Fahd, however, returned to the country in September to resume at least part of his official duties. The health of the king remained uncertain, and so the issue of succession hovered over the political affairs of the kingdom.

      Saudi relations with Iran continued to improve, as was exemplified by a visit to the kingdom by the Iranian speaker of the Majlis (parliament), Ali Akbar Nateq-Nuri, late in the year. Equally important, Iraqi-Saudi relations improved considerably after Saudi Arabia declared that it was not against removing the UN sanctions against Iraq if certain conditions and assurances were met by the latter. Also, the long-standing border dispute with Yemen showed signs of resolution, according to a statement made by the Saudi minister of defense. Similar statements were made by Pres. Ali Abdallah Salih of Yemen, who stated that “only a few kilometres of the border are left to be demarcated.”

      Economically, oil prices doubled to above $20 a barrel after early April because the members of OPEC were able to abide by an agreement to reduce crude oil production. This cut the Saudi budget deficit by $14 billion, almost two-thirds, and made it possible for the government to increase spending by $2 billion more than what had been planned a year earlier. Despite this increase, the government was moving in the general direction of reducing subsidies and encouraging the private sector to take a more active role in the economy. Furthermore, in a landmark development, if actually carried out, Crown Prince ʿAbdallah declared that non-Saudis would be allowed to own real estate in the country and that a new tax law would give more incentive for foreign investments. During a visit by U.S. Secretary of Commerce William Daley to Riyadh in October, discussions centred on Saudi Arabia's bid to join the World Trade Organization. In addition, there was much speculation about foreign investments in the Saudi oil sector, which had been nationalized two decades earlier. The Saudi government seemed reluctant, however, to accept the idea of once again allowing Western oil concerns to invest directly in the production of crude oil from new fields and preferred investments exclusively in downstream operations.

      On August 21 Prince Faisal ibn Fahd, the oldest son of King Fahd, died of a heart attack. He was not the heir to the throne, however; that position was held by his uncle, Crown Prince ʿAbdallah.

Mahmoud Haddad

▪ 1999

      Area: 2,248,000 sq km (868,000 sq mi)

      Population (1998 est.): 20,786,000

      Capital: Riyadh

      Head of state and government: King Fahd

      Owing to the illness of King Fahd, Crown Prince !Abdallah ibn !Abd al-!Aziz, half brother of the king, ran the day-to-day affairs of Saudi Arabia in 1998. Under his tenure the rapprochement with Iran, which had begun in 1997 with the visit of Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati, continued. In December 1997 a high-level Saudi delegation attended the Iranian-chaired Organization of the Islamic Conference summit, where !Abdallah offered to mediate between Iran and the U.S. in order to reach a settlement of their differences. In February 1998 the former president of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani, visited Saudi Arabia for almost two weeks, meeting with Saudi businessmen; and in March an Iranian warship docked at Jiddah. At the same time that they were moving toward closer relations with Iran, the Saudis did not support American efforts to pressure Iraq on the issue of weapons inspections.

      In addition, although both the Saudis and the Americans had originally suspected that Iran was directly or indirectly responsible for the bombing at the Khobar housing complex in June 1996 that killed 19 U.S. soldiers, in March Saudi Minister of the Interior Nayif ibn !Abd al-!Aziz announced that the investigation of the Khobar bombing had been completed, and in May he said that only Saudi nationals had been involved in the attack. The U.S. considered the investigation still open and accused the Saudis of a lack of cooperation, but by June the FBI had removed from the country all but one of its investigators, who had been acting as liaison with the Saudis. At the year's end, however, 4,500 American military personnel remained in Saudi Arabia. In July, however, the Saudi government stated that the investigation was continuing.

      Lower oil prices resulted in projections of a budget deficit in fiscal 1998 of $10.7 billion at a time when the kingdom was spending more money for education in order to prepare increased numbers of Saudi nationals to replace foreign workers. According to its policy in regard to the private sector, the government began to expel illegal immigrants so that Saudis could fill their jobs. As of 1998, foreign workers composed 90% of the workforce in the private sector. Most public-sector jobs were already held by Saudi nationals.

      The British nurses imprisoned for the murder of Australian nurse Yvonne Gilford were pardoned by King Fahd in May and returned to the U.K. During the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, 118 people were trampled to death when pilgrims fell from an overpass on the plains of Mena during the last day of the hajj. In October Crown Prince !Abdallah traveled to the U.S. to confer with executives of U.S. oil companies. He sought their advice on ways for his nation to best develop its vast reserves of oil and natural gas.

REEVA S. SIMON

▪ 1998

      Area: 2,248,000 sq km (868,000 sq mi)

      Population (1997 est.): 19,072,000

      Capital: Riyadh

      Head of state and government: King Fahd

      Since the bomb attack against the U.S. military housing complex at Al-Khubar in 1996, United States investigators had expressed frustration at the poor cooperation between American and Saudi investigators. The Saudis proposed and later dropped plans to extradite from Canada a Shiˋite suspect, Hani as-Sayegh. After learning about Sayegh, the United States flew him to Washington in June. In exchange for being provided information about the attack against the American military personnel housed in the apartment bloc, the U.S. agreed to reduced charges and guaranteed that Sayegh would not be extradited to Saudi Arabia. In September the U.S. dropped all terrorist-related charges against Sayegh for lack of evidence but set in motion plans to deport him.

      Two British nurses, Deborah Parry and Lucille McLauchlan, were arrested in December 1996 and charged with the murder of an Australian nurse, Yvonne Gilford. Both women were found guilty. Parry was sentenced to beheading and McLauchlan to an eight-year prison term and 500 lashes. According to Saudi law, the victim's family could, in exchange for monetary compensation, waive the death penalty, and Gilford's brother accepted an offer of $1,250,000.

      Strong oil prices, accounting for 80% of Saudi revenues, were responsible for a government surplus of 700 million rials at the end of 1996, the first officially recorded annual surplus since 1983. The 1997 budget projected a deficit of 17 billion rials in a budget of 164 billion rials. Infrastructure, education, and health and social services were allocated more funding. Anticipated joint ventures in the energy sector were discussed at a conference in October, but the government made it clear that Saudi Arabia would maintain ownership and control of any expansion efforts in oil and gas.

      Talks continued with Yemen over border issues, and Iran resumed direct flights to Saudi Arabia during the annual Muslim hajj for the first time since the Iranian Islamic revolution in 1979. An Iraqi plane flew more than 100 passengers to Saudi Arabia in April for the hajj, and helicopters crossed the no-fly zone, landing at the Saudi border to pick up pilgrims returning to Iraq. Although the United States considered the flights violations of the UN-imposed flight ban, the United Nations did not condemn the flights.

      During the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, a fire killed more than 300 people. It was believed that a gas cylinder had exploded, and flames spread through the more than 70,000 tents that housed the pilgrims near Mecca. More than half of the victims were from India and Pakistan.

REEVA S. SIMON

      This article updates Saudi Arabia. history of (Saudi Arabia).

▪ 1997

      The kingdom of Saudi Arabia occupies four-fifths of the Arabian Peninsula, with coastlines on the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Area: 2,240,000 sq km (865,000 sq mi). Pop. (1996 est.): 18,426,000. Cap.: Riyadh. Monetary unit: Saudi Arabian riyal, with (Oct. 11, 1996) an official rate of 3.75 riyals to U.S. $1 (5.93 riyals = £1 sterling). Kings and prime ministers in 1996, Abdullah (acting) and, from February 21, Fahd.

      On Jan. 1, 1996, King Fahd handed over the reins of government to his half brother Crown Prince Abdullah, one of the 25 surviving sons of the dynasty's founder, 'Abd al-'Aziz (Ibn Sa'ud). Fahd, though in failing health, took power back on February 21, leaving Abdullah in charge of day-to-day affairs of government. Head of the 57,000 Saudi National Guard, Abdullah was not considered to be as pro-American as Fahd and would require the assent of his 24 half brothers to become king. At 72 years of age, Abdullah was considered by many to be too old for the job.

      On April 22 the government announced the arrest of four Saudi men in connection with the bombing on Nov. 13, 1995, of the United States military training and communications facility in Riyadh in which 7 people, including 3 U.S. civilians and 2 soldiers, died and about 60 were injured. On May 31 the Saudi government announced that the men, 3 of whom were among the more than 20,000 Saudi veterans of the war in Afghanistan, had been beheaded. Before the execution the U.S. was warned that their deaths would provoke a violent anti-American response. When a truck bomb exploded on June 25 at a military compound near Az-Zahran housing U.S., British, and French military personnel, it was assumed to be a retaliatory measure. The blast caused the death of 19 U.S. servicemen and wounded almost 400 Saudis, Americans, and Bangladeshi. It left a crater 10.5 m (35 ft) deep and blew out windows almost a kilometre away. The large diesel fuel truck packed with plastic explosives was parked at the perimeter of the military complex. It aroused Saudi suspicions when the driver got into a nearby car, but warnings came too late; the bomb exploded within four minutes of the discovery of the truck.

      Muhammad al-Mas`ari, the Saudi dissident leader of the London-based Committee for the Defence of Legitimate Rights, denied any complicity in either bomb attack, even though a claim of responsibility was made by the "Legion of the Martyr Abdullah al-Huzaifi," a previously unknown group that appeared to have links to Mas`ari's committee. Already under suspicion earlier in the year for the November bombing, Mas`ari was called in by the British government in April for discussions about his possible deportation to Dominica. He planned an appeal, and when a BBC program about Mas`ari broadcast to Saudi Arabia was censored by the Saudi government and the BBC Arabic channel was taken off the air, the British were visibly upset. At the year's end Mas`ari continued to operate from the U.K.

      Osama bin Laden, resident in Afghanistan after having been deported from The Sudan, also denied responsibility for the attack but warned Britain and France to remove their troops from Saudi Arabia. The multimillionaire member of a Saudi family whose wealth derived from construction was suspected of being a major bankroller for Islamist groups throughout the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and North America. He was disowned by his family and stripped of Saudi citizenship in 1994 because of his activities.

      On November 1 Saudi officials announced the arrest for complicity in the truck-bombing attack of some 40 Saudi citizens who had been secretly held in custody for three months. This was in addition to the arrest of 80 to 100 members of the Saudi Hezbollah opposition party, which was reputed to be affiliated with the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah organization. The party, formed in 1993, had taken up Shi'ite grievances against the government.

      Many of the dominant Sunni Saudis also objected to the government's policies. Though the official government-backed religious officials condemned the attack against the Americans, many religious groups opposed the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, the U.S.'s pro-Israel policy, and the Saudi government for allowing foreign troops to be stationed on the soil of the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina. In December the Saudi government tightened security around U.S. military installations. (REEVA S. SIMON)

      This article updates Saudi Arabia. history of (Saudi Arabia).

▪ 1996

      The kingdom of Saudi Arabia occupies four-fifths of the Arabian Peninsula, with coastlines on the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Area: 2,240,000 sq km (865,000 sq mi). Pop. (1995 est.): 17,880,000. Cap.: Riyadh. Monetary unit: Saudi Arabian riyal, with (Oct. 6, 1995) an official rate of 3.75 riyals to U.S. $1 (5.93 riyals = £1 sterling). King and prime minister in 1995, Fahd.

      Economic issues, political reform, the royal succession, religious dissension, and the border dispute with Yemen occupied the Saudi leadership in 1995. Heeding calls by the International Monetary Fund for financial restraint due to declining cash reserves and the anticipation of lower prices for oil, the government in January announced an austerity budget calling for reduced government expenditure. A slight rise in oil prices during the summer, however, from the $14-per-barrel budget projection to $16.25, increased Saudi income by an additional $6 billion-$7 billion over the estimate of $42 billion. That was enough to offset the immediate threat of financial crisis. Consequently, by mid-1995 instead of the anticipated 20% budget cut that King Fahd had threatened, the government decreed a reduction of only 6.2%, which included a 20% decline in funds for education. Fees for water, electricity, gasoline, and domestic air fares were raised, and other subsidies were canceled.

      Spending on defense, more than one-third of the budget, was not affected. Responding to Iran's purchase of two submarines from Russia and its expected future purchases of additional ships and surface-to-surface missiles, the Saudis began to negotiate to buy several $1 billion Aegis-class warships from the U.S. for delivery by the end of the decade.

      The important question of whether the austerity measures would affect some 4,000 princes who derived their income directly from government largesse remained a continuing point of dissension. This was emphasized by the increasing economic inequality in the country; salaries for civil servants had not been raised for more than a decade, and more and more educated commoners were unemployed. Middle-class Saudis were beginning to feel the financial pinch.

      Fifteen members of the Consultative Council (majlis ash-shura) were assigned Cabinet posts in August. This change brought Western-educated technocrats, including 18 Ph.D.'s, to new posts, some of importance. In a government dominated by princes of the royal family, this change gave the impression of political reform. Key positions in the Cabinet—Defense, Foreign Affairs, and Interior—remained in the hands of Saudi princes, however. Also, the heads of the armed forces and security services, as well as the senior officials in the royal court, had their terms renewed and remained in power.

      The retention of power bases by the various princes reflected the continuous jockeying for power by members of the royal family over the succession to the throne as King Fahd approached his mid-70s. Fahd's half brother Prince Abdullah, whose support was chiefly tribal, was next in line for the throne, followed by Fahd's full brother Prince Sultan, who had begun to increase his responsibilities in recent months. Both men, however, were also in their 70s, a situation that could open up succession to the next generation. The question assumed somewhat more urgency in late November when King Fahd, who was reportedly a chain smoker and a diabetic, suffered a minor stroke.

      Because its leaders were no longer in Saudi Arabia, the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights (CDLR), which moved its headquarters to London in 1994, was not seen as a major threat to Saudi stability. Led by a former physics professor, Muhammad ibn al-Masa`ari, the CDLR had become the focus of opposition to the royal family and considered itself a pressure group for peaceful reform and the improvement of human rights in Saudi Arabia. A car bomb on November 13 devastated a building in Riyadh used by U.S. advisers to the Saudi National Guard, and at least 6 persons were killed and more than 60 were injured. The U.S. embassy said afterward that it had received threats earlier in the year from the Islamic Movement for Change.

      The government continued to crack down on local Islamists but allowed the religious police (mutuwwa) to operate freely in an attempt to appease the extremists. Amnesty International reported serious concern over the sharp increase in executions; there were more beheadings during the first quarter of 1995 than in all of 1994. Of the 90 people executed for crimes that included drug trafficking, possession of alcohol, and blasphemy, 5 were women. Most of the condemned were foreigners.

      Though women were relegated to less active pursuits in Saudi Arabia, and were segregated in public and at work, an increasing number of them had received higher education. More and more were working in the professions, where they outnumbered men in some fields. The number of women investing in private businesses had increased in recent years to the extent that as much as 40% of the private wealth in Saudi Arabia was in the hands of women. In 1995 more than 2,000 women were registered with the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce. They were purchasing real estate and operating shops in Riyadh and Jiddah.

      Saudi Arabia during the year began to settle its border dispute with Yemen. The declaration of principles signed in February included mutual pledges of nonaggression and a pledge to negotiate the demarcation of the entire frontier. The Treaty of At-Ta'if in 1934 concerned primarily urban areas in southwestern Arabia and recognized Saudi sovereignty over the former Yemeni provinces of Najran and Asir. The 1,500-km (950-mi) border area of desert and undemarcated oil fields was now the subject of discussion as the committees consulted records, patterns of tribal movements, and historical documents in order to come to some resolution of the border. On December 13 Prince Khalid ibn Sultan, a prominent member of the royal family, called for ending the sanctions against Iraq imposed after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. (REEVA S. SIMON)

      This updates the article Saudi Arabia. history of (Saudi Arabia).

▪ 1995

      The kingdom of Saudi Arabia occupies four-fifths of the Arabian Peninsula, with coastlines on the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Area: 2,240,000 sq km (865,000 sq mi). Pop. (1994 est.): 17,947,000. Cap.: Riyadh. Monetary unit: Saudi Arabian riyal, with (Oct. 7, 1994) an official rate of 3.75 riyals to U.S. $1 (5.97 riyals = £1 sterling). King and prime minister in 1994, Fahd.

      Civil rights, religious issues, and demands for political and economic reform were dominant themes in Saudi Arabia in 1994 as the government faced an organized dissident movement for the first time since the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by young Muslim fundamentalists in 1979.

      The Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights (CDLR), a broad coalition of Sunni Muslim academics and religious leaders opposed to the as-Sa'ud regime, moved its headquarters from Riyadh to London in April. Earlier in April Saudi special branch officers had arrested five teachers and clerics in the northern town of Ha`il and detained leading dissident Anwar Muhammad al-Masa`ari, son of the CDLR's leading spokesman, Muhammad ibn al-Masa`ari.

      In September, during a much wider crackdown on dissidents, police arrested 157 men on charges of undermining security, although 130 were subsequently released. The fate of the remaining 27 detainees was not immediately clear. At the time of the arrests, Interior Ministry spokesmen said only 110 individuals had been detained.

      Saudi Arabia also faced criticism from international human rights groups over the fate of 22,000 Iraqi refugees living at the Rafha camp in northern Saudi Arabia. The London-based human rights organization Amnesty International accused the Saudi authorities of gross mistreatment of the refugees. The Saudi embassy in London claimed that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Saudi Arabia had praised the Saudi government for its humane treatment of the Iraqi refugees, who fled their own country during the Gulf war. At the end of January, however, the International Committee of the Red Cross closed its Riyadh office in protest against the Saudi refusal to redesignate the Iraqi refugees as detainees.

      While willing to embrace political and economic reform, King Fahd was keen to appease the religious right wing by announcing on March 10 a decree banning the use, manufacture, and importation of television satellite dishes. Some 150,000 satellite dishes were erected by private Saudi citizens during the Gulf war to satisfy their hunger for uncensored news and entertainment. The Ministry of Information declared that the Saudi authorities planned to install their own cable television network throughout the kingdom.

      The first ordinary session of the all-male majlis ash-shura (Consultative Council) opened on January 22, following a formal address by the monarch some three weeks earlier in which King Fahd referred to the need for a "new framework" of consultation between the government and Saudi citizens. The assembly established committees covering Muslim affairs, foreign affairs, security, finance, society and health, culture and information services, and general utilities and administration. Meetings of the assembly and its committee were to take place behind closed doors, with no public access to the proceedings.

      On May 9 King Fahd expressed concern at the low price of oil, which he said was damaging to both producers and consumers alike. He promised a privatization program to sell state assets to the public, which observers took to imply a commitment to sell shares in state utilities, such as the national airline and the telephone system. Despite official concern at the weak price of oil, Petroleum and Mineral Resources Minister Hisham Nazer said in November that there were no plans to expand oil-production capacity beyond its current 10 million bbl a day.

      Ministers unveiled details of the sixth five-year plan (due to come into effect Jan. 1, 1995), which placed emphasis on the need for self-defense and an assertion of national consciousness, as well as for economic measures to privatize key industries, create jobs, and improve infrastructure. France and Saudi Arabia, meeting in Casablanca, Morocco, on November 19, signed an agreement for the supply of air-defense frigates and shore bases valued at $3.7 billion.

      Relations with Iran were soured by bitter diplomatic exchanges over the hajj (pilgrimage). The Saudi government not only sought to limit the number of Iranian pilgrims to 60,000 instead of the 115,000 allowed in recent years but also tried to ban the Iranian contingent from staging an anti-American and anti-Israeli rally under the pretext of a "deliverance-from-infidels" ritual. When the rally took place, on May 23, some 270 were killed in a stampede. The Saudi Health Ministry said that overall 829 people died from natural causes during the hajj. Among the Muslim leaders taking part in the hajj in 1994 were Pakistan's Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and Bosnia and Herzegovina's Pres. Alija Izetbegovic.

      In foreign affairs Saudi Arabia showed strong support for the Middle East peace process and endorsed the May 4 agreement on Palestinian self-rule, describing it as a "practical step on the road to an overall settlement." Although still cool toward the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Saudi government expressed its willingness to support economic reconstruction in Jericho and the Gaza Strip, but only through the auspices of multilateral aid organizations. No subsidies were to be paid to the PLO. The Saudi government also welcomed the bilateral agreement between Israel and Jordan on October 26, although King Fahd declined to meet King Hussein of Jordan earlier in the year when he visited the holy places to perform umra (the minor pilgrimage).

      In a move that suggested continuing border problems between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the Doha authorities on November 26 boycotted a meeting in Riyadh of interior ministers from the Gulf states. The Saudi authorities denied Qatari claims that several border incidents had occurred, but persistent reports appeared to confirm that the diplomatic agreement of December 1992 had not ended conflict between the two states. (JOHN WHELAN)

      This updates the article Saudi Arabia. history of (Saudi Arabia).

▪ 1994

      The kingdom of Saudi Arabia occupies four-fifths of the Arabian Peninsula, with coastlines on the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Area: 2,240,000 sq km (865,000 sq mi). Pop. (1993 est.): 17,419,000. Cap.: Riyadh. Monetary unit: Saudi Arabian riyal, with (Oct. 4, 1993) an official rate of 3.76 riyals to U.S. $1 (5.69 riyals = £1 sterling). King and prime minister in 1993, Fahd.

      Political reform, pro-Western policies from the government, and the formation of a fundamentalist civil rights movement were dominant themes in Saudi Arabia in 1993 as economic recovery continued following the aftermath of the Kuwait invasion crisis of 1990-91.

      In July Abdullah ibn Amr Nassif, a former dean of King Abdul Aziz University, Jiddah, was named vice chairman of the majlis ash-shura (Consultative Council) to preside over the 60-member advisory body. The other members (whose names were also published) were appointed by King Fahd and drawn from the ranks of tribal and religious leaders, the professions, academics, and businessmen. One-third of the all-male majlis were former civil servants, but observers noted that none of the 5,000 princes from the ruling as-S'aud family had been included. Only one Shi'ite was identified as a member of the council, which officially opened on December 29.

      In proceeding with the council, King Fahd was seen as having begun to fulfill the pledge made in 1962 by Faysal when he was crown prince. On August 20 a law was published covering the operations of the council and laying down formal rules for the conduct of the Council of Ministers (Cabinet). Among other provisions, the law specified a four-year term of office for ministers, although extensions were possible.

      The king also divided the existing Ministry of Pilgrimage Affairs and Religious Trusts into two ministries. Mahmoud ibn Muhammad Safar was named minister of pilgrimage affairs, while the existing minister retained responsibility for religious endowments. Observers interpreted this change as a sign of the government's determination to strengthen the official religious establishment against the challenge posed by fundamentalists. It also recognized the growing complexity of handling the annual pilgrimage (hajj), when Muslims pour into the kingdom to visit the holy cities of Medina and Mecca. The Saudi government had adopted a quota system for pilgrims from different countries in order to reduce the possibility of thousands of radicals infiltrating the holy places.

      The 1993 hajj season passed off quietly, with the Saudi authorities taking a tough line against political demonstrations. Nevertheless, police were forced to ban a planned demonstration by Iranian pilgrims on May 27. On June 1 demonstrators managed to assemble and shout anti-Israel and anti-American slogans.

      In a further round of political reforms, on September 16 King Fahd issued a decree confirming the internal organization of the kingdom into 13 regions under governors (emirs). The decree created councils for each governorate with a mandate "to monitor development and advise the government."

      Despite these changes, King Fahd for the first time in his reign faced a challenge from within the establishment. On May 9 academics and religious leaders belonging to the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights—an organization with a religious manifesto—called on the government to "safeguard the legitimate rights of the Shari'ah." (In 1992 members of the committee had put their names to a petition calling for reform of the government and a return to Islamic values.) Three days later, as the crisis escalated, the 20-member Supreme Council of ulema (religious elders), headed by the blind divine Sheikh Abdel-Aziz ibn Baz, declared the committee's declaration to be "illegal" and reminded Saudis of the "duty of all Muslims to obey the king and the ulema."

      On May 13 five men, all religious conservatives from within the establishment but associated with the committee, were dismissed from their jobs: Muhammad ibn al-Masa`ari of King Saud University, Riyadh; Abdullah al-Hamid and Abdullah at-Tuwaijari, both of the Islamic University of Imam Muhammad ibn Saud, Riyadh; Hamad as-Sulaifeh of the Ministry of Education; and Abdullah al-Jubrin, who worked for a religious organization for Islamic research. Jubrin, however, resigned from the committee on May 20 and declared his loyalty to the government. On May 15 Masa`ari, who was the most prominent of the rebels, was arrested, and religious police subsequently detained Hamid and Tuwaijari. A group of 60 academics signed a petition to the king in August demanding the release of detained members of the committee.

      Saudi Arabia's human rights record also came under attack from the London-based organization Amnesty International, which said in a critical report that capital punishment by beheading with a single stroke of a sword had been carried out on 105 people in 1992-93—four times as many as the previous year, when U.S. and allied soldiers were in the kingdom as part of Operation Desert Storm.

      King Fahd permitted the U.S. to operate air strikes against Iraq in January during the last days of Pres. George Bush's administration, with sorties being flown from military bases at az-Zahran, Riyadh, at-Ta`if, and Khamis Mushayt. Relations with the U.S. remained cordial after the inauguration of Pres. Bill Clinton. King Fahd gave his support for the agreement signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel on September 13 in a move that helped to give further momentum to the peace process.

      On January 28 U.K. Prime Minster John Major confirmed an order from the Saudi government for 48 Tornado aircraft as part of the al-Yamamah project signed in 1988. Prince Charles met King Fahd in Jiddah on November 7 in an effort to strengthen business ties between the two states. Saudi foreign policy retained a strong pro-Western and anti-Iraqi line, with Crown Prince Abdullah welcoming a delegation from the opposition London-based Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella organization of Iraqi underground groups, on May 26.

      Within OPEC, Saudi Arabia maintained a moderate stance by accepting an unchanged oil output quota of eight million barrels a day on September 29. Saudi Arabia was the only country to volunteer no increase. Its share of total OPEC production (22.7 million bbl a day) was its lowest since August 1990, but Saudi Arabia enjoyed an economic boom produced by sustained government spending. Bank profits increased and liquidity increased in the nascent Saudi stock market.

      The London-based Center for Global Energy Studies, which was founded by Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, said in a report in October that the kingdom would easily be able to expand its theoretical capacity of 9.6 million bbl a day to 10 million bbl a day by 1994 if the government chose. Nevertheless, the report's author said the government would need to invest at least $18 billion before 2000 to reach and maintain its 10 million bbl a day capacity. He said there was little possibility of new fields, such as the giant Shaybah field near the United Arab Emirates border, because of their remoteness and lack of infrastructure.

      In October the Saudi Arabian national soccer team delighted its supporters throughout the kingdom by qualifying for the first time to play in the finals of the World Cup in the U.S. in 1994. (JOHN WHELAN)

      This updates the article Saudi Arabia. history of (Saudi Arabia).

* * *

Introduction

Saudi Arabia, flag of  arid, sparsely populated kingdom of the Middle East.

 Extending across most of the northern and central Arabian Peninsula (Arabia), Saudi Arabia is a young country that is heir to a rich history. In its western highlands, along the Red Sea, lies the Hejaz, which is the cradle of Islam and the site of that religion's holiest cities, Mecca and Medina. In the country's geographic heartland is a region known as Najd (“Highland”), a vast arid zone that until recent times was a rich pastiche of warring and feuding Bedouin tribes and clans. To the east, along the Persian Gulf, are the country's abundant oil fields that, since the 1960s, have made Saudi Arabia synonymous with petroleum wealth. Those three elements—religion, tribalism, and untold wealth—have fueled the country's subsequent history.

      It was only with the rise of the Saʿūd family (Āl Saʿūd)—a Najdi group for which the country is named—and its eventual consolidation of power in the early 20th century that Saudi Arabia began to take on the characteristics of a modern country. The success of the Saʿūds was due, in no small part, to the motivating ideology of Wahhābism (Wahhābī), an austere form of Islam that was embraced by early family leaders and that became the state creed. This deep religious conservatism has been accompanied by a ubiquitous tribalism—in which competing family groups vie for resources and status—that often has made Saudi society difficult for outsiders to comprehend. Enormous oil wealth has fueled huge and rapid investment in Saudi Arabia's infrastructure. Many citizens have benefited from this growth, but it also has supported lavish lifestyles for the scions of the ruling family, and religious conservatives and liberal democrats alike have accused the family of squandering and mishandling the country's wealth. In addition, civil discontent increased after the Persian Gulf War (1990–91) over the country's close ties to the West, symbolized notably by the U.S. troops stationed in Saudi Arabia until 2005.

 In the mid-20th century, most of Saudi Arabia still embraced a traditional lifestyle that had changed little over thousands of years. Since then, the pace of life in Saudi Arabia has accelerated rapidly. The constant flow of pilgrims to Mecca and Medina (vast throngs arrive for the annual hajj, and more pilgrims visit throughout the year for the lesser pilgrimage, the umrahʿ) had always provided the country with outside contacts, but interaction with the outside world has expanded with innovations in transportation, technology, and organization. More recently, petroleum has wrought irreversible domestic changes—educational and social as well as economic. Modern methods of production have been superimposed on a traditional society by the introduction of millions of foreign workers and by the employment of hundreds of thousands of Saudis in nontraditional jobs. In addition, tens of thousands of Saudi students have studied abroad, most in the United States. Television, radio, and the Internet have become common media of communication and education, and highways and airways have replaced traditional means of transportation.

      Saudi Arabia, once a country of small cities and towns, has become increasingly urban; traditional centres such as Jiddah, Mecca, and Medina have grown into large cities, and the capital, Riyadh, a former oasis town, has grown into a modern metropolis. Many of the region's traditional nomads, the Bedouin, have been settled in cities or agrarian communities. The sedentary population of the country views those few Bedouin who maintain the traditional desert lifestyle with deep ambivalence. They are, at the same time, the link to the country's past and its solid foundation. In the words of Sandra Mackey, an American writer and traveler:

Psychologically, the Bedouin represents to the present-day Saudi what the Western cowboy folk hero represents to an American. And like Americans, the Saudis have created from the Bedouin, idealized as a desert warrior, a powerful prototype that influences their value system and their patterns of behavior. No matter how much the various geographic regions of Saudi Arabia may differ or how far a Saudi is removed from the desert, the Bedouin ethos is the bedrock of the culture.

Land

 The country occupies about four-fifths of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait to the north; by the Persian Gulf, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman to the east; by a portion of Oman to the southeast; by Yemen to the south and southwest; and by the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba to the west. Long-running border disputes were nearly resolved with Yemen (2000) and Qatar (2001); the border with the United Arab Emirates remains undefined. A territory of 2,200 square miles (5,700 square km) along the gulf coast was shared by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as a neutral zone until 1969, when a political boundary was agreed upon. Each of the two countries administers one-half of the territory, but they equally share oil production in the entire area. The controversy over the Saudi-Iraqi Neutral Zone was legally settled in 1981 by partition, yet conflict between the two countries persisted and prevented final demarcation on the ground.

Relief (Saudi Arabia)

      The Arabian Peninsula is dominated by a plateau that rises abruptly from the Red Sea and dips gently toward the Persian Gulf. In the north, the western highlands are upward of 5,000 feet (1,500 metres) above sea level, decreasing slightly to 4,000 feet (1,200 metres) in the vicinity of Medina and increasing southeastward to more than 10,000 feet (3,000 metres). Mount Sawdāʾ, which is situated near Abhā in the south, is generally considered the highest point in the country. Estimates of its elevation range from 10,279 to 10,522 feet (3,133 to 3,207 metres). The watershed of the peninsula is only 25 miles (40 km) from the Red Sea in the north and recedes to 80 miles (130 km) near the Yemen border. The coastal plain, known as the Tihāmah, is virtually nonexistent in the north, except for occasional wadi deltas, but it widens slightly toward the south. The imposing escarpment that runs parallel to the Red Sea is somewhat interrupted by a gap northwest of Mecca but becomes more clearly continuous to the south.

      Toward the interior, the surface gradually descends into the broad plateau area of the Najd, which is covered with lava flows and volcanic debris as well as with occasional sand accumulations; it slopes down from an elevation of about 4,500 feet (1,370 metres) in the west to about 2,500 feet (760 metres) in the east. There the drainage is more clearly dendritic (i.e., branching) and is much more extensive than that flowing toward the Red Sea. To the east, this region is bounded by a series of long, low ridges, with steep slopes on the west and gentle slopes on the east; the area is 750 miles (1,200 km) long and curves eastward from north to south. The most prominent of the ridges are the Ṭuwayq Mountains (Jibāl Ṭuwayq), which rise from the plateau at an elevation of some 2,800 feet (850 metres) above sea level and reach more than 3,500 feet (1,100 metres) southwest of Riyadh, overlooking the plateau's surface to the west by 800 feet (250 metres) and more.

      The interior of the Arabian Peninsula contains extensive sand surfaces. Among them is the world's largest sand area, the Rubʿ al-Khali (“Empty Quarter”), which dominates the southern part of the country and covers more than 250,000 square miles (647,500 square km). It slopes from above 2,600 feet (800 metres) near the border with Yemen northeastward down almost to sea level near the Persian Gulf; individual sand mountains reach elevations of 800 feet (250 metres), especially in the eastern part. A smaller sand area of about 22,000 square miles (57,000 square km), called Al-Nafūd (Nafūd, An-) (nafūd designating a sandy area or desert), is in the north-central part of the country. A great arc of sand, Al-Dahnāʾ (Dahnāʾ, ad-), almost 900 miles (1,450 km) long but in places only 30 miles (50 km) wide, joins Al-Nafūd with the Rubʿ al-Khali. Eastward, as the plateau surface slopes very gradually down to the gulf, there are numerous salt flats (sabkhahs) and marshes. The gulf coastline is irregular, and the coastal waters are very shallow.

Drainage and soils

      There are virtually no permanent surface streams in the country, but wadis are numerous. Those leading to the Red Sea are short and steep, though one unusually long extension is made by Wadi Al-Ḥamḍ, which rises near Medina and flows inland to the northwest for 100 miles (160 km) before turning westward; those draining eastward are longer and more developed except in Al-Nafūd and the Rubʿ al-Khali. Soils are poorly developed. Large areas are covered with pebbles of varying sizes. Alluvial deposits are found in wadis, basins, and oases. Salt flats are especially common in the east.

Climate

      There are three climatic zones in the kingdom: (1) desert almost everywhere, (2) steppe along the western highlands, forming a strip less than 100 miles (160 km) wide in the north but becoming almost 300 miles (480 km) wide at the latitude of Mecca, and (3) a small area of humid and mild temperature conditions, with long summers, in the highlands just north of Yemen.

      In winter, cyclonic weather systems generally skirt north of the Arabian Peninsula, moving eastward from the Mediterranean Sea, though sometimes they reach eastern and central Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Some weather systems move southward along the Red Sea trough and provide winter precipitation as far south as Mecca and sometimes as far as Yemen. In March and April, some precipitation, normally torrential, falls. In summer, the highlands of Asir (ʿAsīr), southeast of Mecca, receive enough precipitation from the monsoonal winds to support a steppelike strip of land.

      Winters, from December to February, are cool, and frost and snow may occur in the southern highlands. Average temperatures for the coolest months, December through February, are 74 °F (23 °C) at Jiddah, 58 °F (14 °C) at Riyadh, and 63 °F (17 °C) at Al-Dammām. Summers, from June to August, are hot, with daytime temperatures in the shade exceeding 100 °F (38 °C) in almost all of the country. Temperatures in the desert frequently rise as high as 130 °F (55 °C) in the summer. Humidity is low, except along the coasts, where it can be high and very oppressive. The level of precipitation is also low throughout the country, amounting to about 2.5 inches (65 mm) at Jiddah, a little more than 3 inches (75 mm) at Riyadh, and 3 inches at Al-Dammām. These figures, however, represent mean annual precipitation, and large variations are normal. In the highlands of Asir, more than 19 inches (480 mm) a year may be received, falling mostly between May and October when the summer monsoon winds prevail. In the Rubʿ al-Khali, a decade may pass with no precipitation at all.

Plant and animal life

      Much of Saudi Arabia's vegetation belongs to the North African–Indian desert region. Plants are xerophytic (requiring little water) and are mostly small herbs and shrubs that are useful as forage. There are a few small areas of grass and trees in southern Asir. Although the date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) is widespread, about one-third of the date palms grown are in Al-Sharqiyyah province.

      Animal life includes wolves, hyenas, foxes, honey badgers, mongooses, porcupines, baboons, hedgehogs, hares, sand rats, and jerboas. Larger animals such as gazelles, oryx, leopards, and mountain goats were relatively numerous until about 1950, when hunting from motor vehicles reduced these animals almost to extinction. Birds include falcons (which are caught and trained for hunting), eagles, hawks, vultures, owls, ravens, flamingos, egrets, pelicans, doves, and quail, as well as sand grouse and bulbuls. There are several species of snakes, many of which are poisonous, and numerous types of lizards. There is a wide variety of marine life in the gulf. Domesticated animals include camels, fat-tailed sheep, long-eared goats, salukis, donkeys, and chickens.

People (Saudi Arabia)

Ethnic groups

 Although the country's tribes are often considered “pure” Arabs (Arab)—certainly they are the descendants of the peninsula's original ethnic stock—a certain degree of ethnic heterogeneity is evident among both the sedentary and nomadic populations of Saudi Arabia. Variations have developed because of a long history of regionalism and tribal autonomy and because some localities have been subjected to important outside influences. Thus, the proximity of sub-Saharan Africa along the Red Sea littoral and the constant historical influx of peoples from Iran, Pakistan, and India along the Persian Gulf coast have left traces of the physical types characteristic of those peoples among the native population. Likewise, the hajj to Mecca has long brought hundreds of thousands of people annually from various ethnic groups to the country. About half of all pilgrims travel from Arab countries and half from African and Asian countries. A small number of such visitors have settled in and around the holy cities throughout the years, either out of religious devotion or because penury prevented their return home.

      Since the 1960s, an increasing number of outsiders have entered and left Saudi Arabia. By the early 21st century, the estimated number of foreign workers was between one-fourth and one-fifth of the country's total population, despite efforts by the Saudi authorities to encourage citizens to occupy positions typically held by foreigners. At first, most expatriated workers were Arab, such as Yemenis, Egyptians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Iraqis. Increasing numbers of non-Arab Muslims such as Pakistanis have been employed, as have large numbers of non-Muslim Koreans and Filipinos, who have been hired under group contracts for specified periods. Most specialized technical workers are Europeans and Americans.

Languages

      Arabic (Arabic language) is a Semitic language (Semitic languages) of numerous vernacular dialects that originated on the Arabian Peninsula. There are three main dialect groups in Saudi Arabia—in the eastern, central, and western parts of the country—though these are not always clearly discernible from one another because of the pervasiveness of local variations. There are various degrees of mutual intelligibility among dialect groups, but some differences are quiet pronounced. The written language, Modern Standard Arabic, is derived from Classical Arabic, the language of the Qurʾān, and is used as a literary koine within the kingdom and throughout the broader Arab world. Various dialects of Arabic from other regions are also spoken by expatriate workers, as are numerous other non-Arabic languages such as Persian, Urdu, Pashto, Tagalog, and Korean. English is widely understood.

Religion

      Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam (Islāmic world), and most of its natives are adherents of the majority Sunni (Sunnite) branch. In modern times, the Wahhābī interpretation of Sunni Islam has been especially influential, and Muslim scholars espousing that sect's views have been a major social and political force. Wahhābism, as it is called in the West (members refer to themselves as muwaḥḥidūn, “unitarians”), is a strict interpretation of the Ḥanbalī school of Islamic jurisprudence and is named for Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (1703–92), a religious scholar whose alliance with Ibn Saʿūd led to the establishment of the first Saʿūdī state. The current government of Saudi Arabia (i.e., the Saʿūd family) has largely relied on religion—including its close and continuing ties to Wahhābism and its status as the custodian of Mecca and Medina, the two holy cities of Islam—to establish its political legitimacy. The king is supposed to uphold Islam and apply its precepts and, in turn, is subject to its constraints. But at times he and the royal family have come under criticism for failing to do so.

      Shīʿites (Shīʿite), adherents of the second major branch of Islam, make up a small portion of the population and are found mostly in the oases of Al-Hasa and Al-Qaṭīf in the eastern part of the country. Most are Ithnā ʿAsharī (Ithnā ʿAsharīyah), although there remain small numbers of Ismāʿīlīs (Ismāʿīlīte). The only Christians are foreign workers and businessmen. The country's once small Jewish population is now apparently extinct. Other religions are practiced among foreign workers. Public worship and display by non-Muslim faiths is prohibited. Public displays by non-Wahhābī Muslim groups, including by other Sunni sects, have been limited and even banned by the government. Sufism (Ṣūfism), for instance, is not openly practiced, nor is celebration of the Prophet's birthday ( mawlid). Shīʿites have suffered the greatest persecution.

Settlement patterns

      Four traditional regions stand out—the Hejaz, Asir, Najd, and Al-Hasa (Hasa, Al-) (transliterated more precisely as Al-Ḥijāz, ʿAsīr, Najd, and Al-Aḥsāʾ, respectively). The Hejaz, in the northwest, contains Mecca and Medina, as well as one of the kingdom's primary ports, Jiddah. Asir is the highland region south of the Hejaz; its capital, Abhā, lies at an elevation of about 8,000 feet (2,400 metres). Subregions in Asir are formed by the oasis cluster of Najrān—a highland area north of Yemen—and by the coastal plain, the Tihāmah. Najd occupies a large part of the interior and includes the capital, Riyadh. Al-Hasa, in the east along the Persian Gulf, includes the principal petroleum-producing areas.

       nomadism, the form of land use with which the kingdom is traditionally associated, has become virtually nonexistent, and the pattern of extensive land use traditionally practiced by the nomadic Bedouin has been supplanted by the highly intensive patterns of urban land use. More than four-fifths of Saudi Arabia's total population live in cities, and almost all of the rest live in government-supported agricultural enterprises.

      The major areas of population are in the central Hejaz, in Asir, in central Najd, and near the Persian Gulf.

 The largest towns are cosmopolitan in character, and some are associated with dominant functions: Mecca and Medina are religious, Riyadh is political and administrative, and Jiddah is commercial. Dhahran (Al-Ẓahrān), near the Persian Gulf coast in Al-Sharqiyyah province, is the administrative centre of Saudi Aramco (Arabian-American Oil Company), and nearby Al-Khubar and Al-Dammām are important commercial coastal towns. Al-Jubayl (Jubayl, al-) on the Gulf and Yanbuʿ on the Red Sea are the terminus points of oil and gas pipelines, and large petrochemical industrial complexes are located in both. Other large cities include Al-Ṭāʾif, Al-Hufūf, Tabūk, Buraydah, Al-Mubarraz, Khamīs Mushayṭ, Najrān, Ḥāʾil, Jīzān, and Abhā.

Demographic trends

      A major demographic theme since the early 20th century has been the government's policy of settling the Bedouin. This practice has largely been successful, though sedentary Bedouin remain strongly attached to their tribal affiliation. A second major theme has been an influx of foreign workers (first foreign Arabs and later workers from other regions) since the 1950s; no exact numbers are available, but it is generally agreed that these foreign workers have numbered in the millions. Some Arabs, particularly early arrivals, have been naturalized, but most are temporary, albeit often long-term, residents. Moreover, most of these are unaccompanied males who have left their families in their native land; this situation is particularly true for lower-paid workers. Although large numbers of Saudi citizens travel abroad for school or holiday, the number of those settling abroad is relatively small.

      Thanks partly to the government's policies promoting large families and partly to its large investment in health care, the country's birth rate is well above the world average. The national death rate is markedly below the world standard. As a result, Saudi Arabia's overall rate of natural increase is more than twice the world average, and its population is extremely young, with roughly two-thirds under 30 years old and about two-fifths younger than 15. Life expectancy averages about 75 years.

Economy

      Fueled by enormous revenues from oil exports, the economy boomed during the 1970s and '80s. Unlike most developing countries, Saudi Arabia had an abundance of capital, and vast development projects sprung up that turned the once underdeveloped country into a modern state. During that time, unemployment was all but nonexistent—large numbers of foreign workers were imported to do the most menial and the most highly technical tasks—and per capita income and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita were among the highest in the non-Western world.

      Long-range economic development has been directed through a series of five-year plans. The first two five-year plans (1970–75 and 1976–80) established most of the country's basic transport and communications facilities. Subsequent plans sought to diversify the economy; to increase domestic food production; to improve education, vocational training, and health services; and to further improve communications routes between the different regions of the country. But the economic boom was not without a price. As world oil prices stagnated in the 1990s, government policies encouraging larger families led to a marked increase in population. GDP per capita actually began to fall in real terms, and the kingdom's young, highly educated workforce began to face high rates of unemployment and underemployment for the first time. However, those trends reversed as oil prices again rose. In addition, five-year plans were directed toward increasing the share of private enterprise in the economy in an effort to move away from dependence on oil exports and to generate jobs.

Agriculture

 At its founding, the kingdom inherited the simple, tribal economy of Arabia. Many of the people were nomads, engaged in raising camels, sheep, and goats. Agricultural production was localized and subsistent. The kingdom's development plans have given domestic food production special attention, and the government has made subsidies and generous incentives available to the agriculture sector. Agriculture now contributes only a small fraction of the Saudi GDP and employs a comparable proportion of the workforce.

      Less than 2 percent of the total land area is used for crops. Of the cultivated land, about half consists of rain-fed dry farming (mostly in Asir), two-fifths is in tree crops, and the remainder is irrigated. Most of the irrigated areas—in the districts of Riyadh and Al-Qaṣīm, for example, and near Al-Hufūf in Al-Sharqiyyah province—utilize underground water.

      The kingdom has achieved self-sufficiency in the production of wheat, eggs, and milk, among other commodities, though it still imports the bulk of its food needs. Wheat is the primary cultivated grain, followed by sorghum and barley. Dates, melons, tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, and squash are also important crops.

      Two major constraints on cultivation are poor water supply and poor soil. Concrete and earth-filled dams have been built, primarily in the southwest, to store water for irrigation and as a means of flood control. Agricultural expansion has been great in irrigated areas, while the amount of land given to rain-fed farming has decreased. Substantial resources of subterranean water have been discovered in the central and eastern parts of the country and exploited for agriculture; however, these underground aquifers are difficult to renew.

Resources and power

petroleum

 The economy of Saudi Arabia is dominated by petroleum and its associated industries. In terms of oil reserves, Saudi Arabia ranks first internationally, with about one-fifth of the world's known reserves. Oil deposits are located in the east, southward from Iraq and Kuwait into the Rubʿ al-Khali and under the waters of the Persian Gulf.

      The discovery of oil changed the entire economic situation of Saudi Arabia. As early as 1923, Ibn Saʿūd granted an oil-prospecting concession to a British company, but this concession was never exploited. Although oil was discovered in 1938, World War II curtailed oil-producing activities until near its end. The Ras Tanura refinery was opened in 1945, and rapid expansion of the oil industry followed to meet increasing postwar demand.

      In 1951 the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco) (Aramco) discovered the first offshore field in the Middle East, at Raʾs Al-Saffāniyyah, just south of the former Saudi Arabia–Kuwait neutral zone, and oil was discovered in the zone itself in 1953. Al-Ghawār, just south of Dhahran and west of Al-Hufūf, is one of the world's largest oil fields. The first portion of the Al-Ghawār oil field was discovered at ʿAyn Dār in 1948. Intensive exploration of the Rubʿ al-Khali began in 1950, and oil fields were finally discovered in the area in the 1970s.

      In 1950 Aramco put into operation the Trans-Arabian Pipe Line (Tapline), which ran from Al-Qayṣūmah in Saudi Arabia across Jordan and Syria to its Mediterranean terminal at Sidon, Lebanon. The line was in operation only sporadically during the 1970s, and in 1983 it ceased to function beyond supplying a refinery in Jordan. In 1981 Petroline, built to carry crude oil, was completed from Al-Jubayl on the Persian Gulf to Yanbuʿ on the Red Sea, and this greatly shortened the distance to Europe and obviated navigation through the gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Petroline was built by the General Petroleum and Mineral Organization (Petromin), a government-owned corporation. Aramco constructed a massive gas-gathering system and, parallel to Petroline, a pipeline for transporting natural-gas liquids, which reached Yanbuʿ in 1981.

      During the 1970s and early '80s, Saudi Arabia gradually acquired complete ownership of Aramco, and in 1984 Aramco had its first Saudi president. In 1988 the company was renamed Saudi Aramco.

Other resources

      Other mineral resources are known to exist, and the government has pursued a policy of exploration and production in order to diversify the economic base. Geologic reconnaissance mapping of the Precambrian shield in the west has revealed deposits of gold, silver, copper, zinc, lead, iron, titanium, pyrite, magnesite, platinum, and cadmium. There are also nonmetallic resources such as limestone, silica, gypsum, and phosphorite.

      Scarcity of water is a perennial problem in the kingdom. Saudi Arabia has the largest single desalination program in the world, which meets most domestic and industrial needs. Underwater aquifers provide a limited amount of potable water, and a great deal of energy has been committed to constructing dams for water storage and to developing water-recycling plants.

      The kingdom has relied increasingly on electricity, and electrical production has grown rapidly since the 1970s. Originally highly decentralized, electrical production was slowly centralized under state control during the latter half of the 20th century. In 2000 electrical production was consolidated under a single corporation in an effort to develop a comprehensive national grid. Most of the kingdom's generators are powered by natural gas and diesel fuel.

Manufacturing

      The manufacturing sector has expanded widely since 1976, when the government established the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Sabic) in order to diversify the economy. Its initial goal was to expand the manufacturing potential of sectors of the economy related to petroleum. Since then manufactures, many associated with Sabic, have included rolled steel, petrochemicals, fertilizers, pipes, copper wire and cable, truck assembly, refrigeration, plastics, aluminum products, metal products, and cement. Small-scale enterprises have included baking, printing, and furniture manufacturing.

Finance

 The Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) was established in 1952 as the kingdom's central money and banking authority. It regulates commercial and development banks and other financial institutions. Its functions include issuing, regulating, and stabilizing the value of the national currency, the riyal; acting as banker for the government; and managing foreign reserves and investments. As an Islamic institution, it has a nonprofit status. Under Islamic law, banks cannot charge interest, but they do charge fees for lending and pay commission on deposits. Money supply and the tempo of business are dominated by government economic activity, though the government has increasingly favoured expansion of the private sector.

      A number of commercial banks operate in the country, some of which are joint ventures between Saudi citizens and foreign banks. (Like all enterprises, banks doing business in the country require a Saudi partner.) Others, however, are wholly owned by Saudis. Banking regulations traditionally have not been stringently enforced, and private banks have shown great flexibility and creativity in interpreting Islamic banking regulations. Moreover, despite the ubiquity of banks in the country, large numbers of citizens and expatriates continue to rely on money changers, both for their convenience and for the anonymity that they provide.

Trade

      Exports consist almost entirely of petroleum and petroleum products. Major imports are machinery and transport equipment, foodstuffs and animals, and chemicals and chemical products. The principal trading partners are the United States, Japan, South Korea, and China. The principal sources of imports are the United States, Japan, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Taiwan.

Services

      The service sector grew dramatically in the second half of the 20th century with the influx of revenue derived from petroleum sales and because of large levels of government spending. Nearly three-fifths of workers are engaged in service-related occupations, including civil administration, defense, wholesale and retail sales, and hospitality and tourism. These sectors of the economy account for roughly one-fourth of GDP.

      The hospitality industry has traditionally been strong only in and around the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, with the annual influx of pilgrims. However, in the 1960s, large numbers of expatriates—some with their dependents—began to arrive in the country, and facilities began to spring up to meet their needs. Only in the late 20th century did the government actively seek to attract tourists to Saudi Arabia with the construction of a number of coastal resorts and a relaxation of visa requirements for entering the country. Tourism unassociated with religious observance, however, remains an extremely small part of GDP.

Labour and taxation

      The kingdom has traditionally relied on large numbers of foreign labourers, who, at the height of their influx, accounted for roughly two-thirds of the labour force. Most of these have been unskilled or semiskilled workers from other parts of the Middle East and from South Asia, while Westerners, particularly Americans, have filled the most highly skilled positions in the country. Workers in Saudi Arabia have few legal rights, and they are not permitted to organize and do not have the right to strike.

      Rapid population growth since the late 20th century has increased the number of native Saudis entering the labour force. Beginning in the 1990s, the government responded by encouraging a policy of “Saudi-ization” (in which employers were required to hire fewer migrant workers), but highly educated young Saudis seemed unwilling to engage in occupations that had been traditionally filled by expatriates and were therefore considered menial. Female citizens traditionally have had limited employment opportunities outside the home, with most occupations being restricted to men. Many foreign women have been employed as domestic servants.

      Roughly three-fourths of government revenues are derived from the proceeds of oil exports. Remaining revenues are raised through tariffs, licensing fees, and the proceeds of government investments. Foreign companies are required to pay an income tax, but exemptions are often granted. Saudi citizens are required to pay the zakāt (zakat), an obligatory tax on Muslims that is used to help the less fortunate in society.

Transportation and telecommunications

      The country's roads are all paved, and the automobile is a common form of transport. Taxis are found in cities and most large towns. Women are not permitted to drive. The first coast-to-coast road connection, from Al-Dammām on the gulf to Jiddah on the Red Sea, by way of Riyadh, was opened in 1967; it includes a spectacular descent of the western escarpment from Al-Ṭāʾif to Mecca. A causeway, opened in 1986, connects the kingdom with the island nation of Bahrain. A railroad passing through Al-Hufūf connects Riyadh and Al-Dammām.

 Seaport capacity has been greatly expanded. Major cargo ports are Jiddah, Yanbuʿ, Ḍibā, and Jīzān on the Red Sea and Al-Dammām and Al-Jubayl on the gulf. The country has many small airports and airfields. The national airline, Saudi Arabian Airlines (formerly Saudia; founded 1945), provides both domestic and international service. The chief international airports are at Dhahran, Riyadh, and Jiddah.

      Radio broadcasts began in the kingdom in 1948, and the first television station was established in 1965. All broadcasts are operated by the state, and programming focuses on religious and cultural affairs, news, and other topics that are viewed as edifying by the government. Radio and television services are widely accessible, as is telephone service. The government has invested significant resources in updating and expanding the country's telecommunications infrastructure, and large portions of the telephone grid have been digitized. Cellular telephone service is widespread, and access to the Internet is available in all major population centres.

Government and society

Constitutional framework

      Saudi Arabia is a monarchy ruled by the Āl Saʿūd, a family whose status was established by its close ties with and support for the Wahhābī religious establishment. Islamic law, the Sharīʿah, is the primary source of legislation, but the actual promulgation of legislation and implementation of policy is often mitigated by more mundane factors, such as political expediency, the inner politics of the ruling family, and the influence of intertribal politics, which remain strong in the modern kingdom.

      The kingdom has never had a written constitution, although in 1992 the king issued a document known as the Basic Law of Government (Al-Niẓām al-Asāsī lī al-Ḥukm), which provides guidelines for how the government is to be run and sets forth the rights and responsibilities of citizens. The king (monarchy) combines legislative, executive, and judicial functions. As prime minister, he presides over the Council of Ministers (Majlis al-Wuzarāʾ). The council is responsible for such executive and administrative matters as foreign and domestic policy, defense, finance, health, and education, which it administers through numerous separate agencies. Appointment to and dismissal from the council are prerogatives of the king. The Basic Law of Government paved the way in 1993 for the establishment of a new quasi-legislative body, the Consultative Council (Majlis al-Shūrā), which includes many technical experts; all members are appointed by the king. The Consultative Council has the power to draft legislation and, along with the Council of Ministers, promote it for the king's approval.

      In the end, however, all major policy decisions are made outside these formal apparatuses. Decisions are made through a consensus of opinion that is sought primarily within the royal family (comprising the numerous descendants of the kingdom's founder, Ibn Saʿūd), many of whom hold sensitive government posts. Likewise, the views of important members of the ʿulamāʾ (religious scholars), leading tribal sheikhs, and heads of prominent commercial families are considered.

Local government

      The kingdom is divided into 13 administrative regions (manāṭiq), which in turn are divided into numerous districts. Regional governors are appointed, usually from the royal family, and preside over one or more municipal councils, half of whose members are appointed and half elected. With their councils, the governors are responsible for such functions as finance, health, education, agriculture, and municipalities. The consultative principle operates at all levels of government, including the government of villages and tribes.

Justice

      The Sharīʿah is the basis of justice. Judgment usually is according to the Ḥanbalī (Ḥanābilah) tradition of Islam; the law tends to be conservative and punishment severe, including amputation for crimes such as theft and execution for crimes that are deemed more severe (e.g., drug trafficking and practicing witchcraft).

      In 1970 the Ministry of Justice was established; its work is assisted by a Supreme Judicial Council consisting of leading members of the ʿulamāʾ. There are more than 300 Sharīʿah courts across the country. Rapid changes since the mid-20th century have produced circumstances—such as traffic violations and industrial accidents—not encompassed by traditional law, and these have been handled by the issuance of royal decrees. These decrees have evolved into a body of administrative law that is not directly drawn from Islamic precepts. Avenues of appeal are available, and the monarch is both the final court of appeal and the dispenser of pardon.

Political process

      Participation in the political process is limited to a relatively small portion of the population. There are no elections for national bodies, political parties are outlawed, and women have few political rights. Power rests largely in the hands of the royal family, which governs through a process that—despite the political and economic changes since the late 20th century—differs little from the traditional system of tribal rule. Tribal identity remains strong and is still an important pillar of social control; despite the existence of a modern state bureaucracy, political influence is frequently determined by tribal affiliation. Tribal sheikhs, therefore, maintain a high degree of authority within the tribe and a considerable degree of influence over local and national events.

      The tribal hierarchy in the country is complex. There are a number of smaller, less-influential tribes and a handful of very influential major tribes. The Saʿūd family, although not a tribe strictly speaking, behaves like one in many respects. Although the ruling family came to power largely through its martial skill and religious ties, its continued hegemony has been based on the traditional view in Arabian society that leaders owe their positions to their ability to manage affairs. Just as the tribal sheikh leads the tribe, so has the Saʿūd family ruled the country—by placating rival factions, building a broad consensus, and squelching extreme voices. (Early Orientalists used the Latin phrase primus inter pares, “first among equals,” to refer to such an arrangement.) The medium for this process is the traditional dīwān, an informal council in which the senior male (whether he is a sheikh at the tribal level or the king at the national) hears outstanding grievances and dispenses justice and largess. In theory, any male citizen may make his voice heard in the dīwān.

      In this system, succession to the throne is not directly hereditary, though, under the Basic Law of Government, the king must be a son or grandson of Ibn Saʿūd. Traditionally the heir apparent, who is also deputy prime minister, has been determined by a consensus of the royal family, but since 1992 he has been appointed by the king (confirmation by the family occurring only after the monarch's death). In the same way, through consensus, the family may depose the monarch, as was seen in King Saʿūd's deposition in 1964.

      The family has also relied heavily on its long relationship with the Wahhābī religious hierarchy to maintain social and political control. The crown appoints all major religious functionaries, who are almost exclusively selected from Wahhābī ʿulamāʾ; in turn it is supported by that sect. Most major threats to the political status quo have come either from dissident factions within the religious community or from groups that appeal in some way to Islamic values. Many of these groups have operated abroad, and a number have been involved in political violence.

Security

      Military service is voluntary. The army accounts for about three-fifths of the total military force. It experienced rapid modernization especially after the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. The air force was equipped largely by the British until the 1970s, when the kingdom began to buy aircraft from the United States. It is now one of the best-equipped forces in the region, with several hundred high-performance aircraft; likewise, ground forces have large numbers of state-of-the-art main battle tanks. Army officers are trained at King ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Military Academy just north of Riyadh. Major air bases are at Riyadh, Dhahran, Ḥafar al-Bāṭin (part of the King Khālid Military City) near the border with Iraq and Kuwait, Tabūk in the northwest near Jordan, and Khamīs Mushayṭ in the southwest near Yemen. All three armed services—army, air force, and navy—are directed by the defense minister, who is also the second deputy prime minister.

      The National Guard, which has roughly the same troop strength as the army, is essentially an internal security force, though it can support the regular forces for national defense. One of its primary peacetime tasks is to guard the country's oil fields. It is administered separately, and its commander reports to the crown prince. The armed forces employ expatriate personnel in support and training positions.

      The kingdom has several internal security organs, including the Coast Guard, Frontier Force, and a centralized national police force. All of these organizations report to the Ministry of the Interior, which also supervises the country's intelligence and counterintelligence bodies. Police interaction with civilians, particularly with foreigners, has often been described as heavy-handed, but reports of human rights abuses are far less numerous and severe than those reported in other countries of the region. There is also a religious police force attached to the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Known as the Muṭawwaʿūn (colloquially, Muṭawwaʿīn), this force operates in plain clothes and enforces such Islamic precepts as ensuring that women are properly veiled, that shops close during prayer, and that the fast is kept during Ramadan. Imposing impromptu corporal punishment for infractions is an accepted part of their duty.

Health and welfare

      A great deal of attention has been given to health care, and the numbers of hospital beds, physicians, and nurses have increased greatly. In addition to numerous health institutes, hospitals, and health centres, a network of dispensaries serving communities of 10,000 or more people has been set up, complemented by a system of mobile health services reaching small communities and the remaining nomadic populations. The government has also begun to train Saudis to replace foreign medical personnel. Of serious concern are a high rate of trachoma and occasional outbreaks of malaria, bilharzia (schistosomiasis), and cholera. Outbreaks of serious diseases such as meningitis have occurred during the hajj.

Housing

 Because of the kingdom's geographic diversity, a wide variety of traditional housing types were embraced. These ranged from the conventional black tents of the Bedouin and mud-brick dwellings of agrarian villages to the lofty, ornate townhouses found in urban centres along the coast. Since the advent of oil wealth, the government has invested heavily in housing construction. It provides low-interest or interest-free loans to citizens wishing to purchase or build homes. Homes in newer areas are equipped with standard utilities (such as water, sewerage, and electricity) as well as many technical conveniences, such as Internet access and cable and satellite television. Towns in some rural areas, however, remain far removed from power and water networks.

Education

      Education is free at all levels and is given high priority by the government. The school system consists of elementary (grades 1–6), intermediate (7–9), and secondary (10–12) schools. A significant portion of the curriculum at all levels is devoted to religious subjects, and, at the secondary level, students are able to follow either a religious or a technical track. Girls are able to attend school (all courses are segregated by gender), but fewer girls attend than boys. This disproportion is reflected in the rate of literacy, which exceeds 85 percent among males and is about 70 percent among females.

      Higher education has expanded at a remarkable pace. Institutions of higher education include the King Saʿūd University (formerly the University of Riyadh, founded in 1957), the Islamic University (1961) at Medina, and the King ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz University (1967) in Jiddah. Other colleges and universities emphasize curricula in sciences and technology, military studies, religion, and medicine. Institutes devoted to Islamic studies in particular abound, and schools for religious pedagogy are located in several towns. Women receive college instruction in segregated institutions. Many foreign teachers are employed, especially in technical and medical schools. Large numbers of students travel abroad for university study.

Cultural life

Cultural milieu

      The cultural setting is Arab and Muslim. To preserve the country's purist religious position, many proscriptions of behaviour and dress are enforced. Alcoholic beverages are prohibited, for example, and there is no theatre or public exhibition of films. Educated Saudis are well informed on issues of the Arab world, the Muslim world, and the world at large, but public expression of opinion about domestic matters is not encouraged. There are no organizations such as political parties or labour unions to provide public forums.

Daily life and social customs

      Saudi Arabia's population has traditionally been composed of nomads, villagers, and townspeople. Pervading this triad, however, is the patrilineal kinship principle, and superimposed on all is the administrative organization centred on the royal family. The kinship principle is pervasive in Saudi society, and the extended family is a strong social unit. Villages constitute local service centres and contain members from more than one tribal affiliation, though one group may tend to be dominant. Cities are not tribally organized, though the importance of kinship affiliation endures, and local affairs tend to be dominated and administered by a few families. Social stratification is more clearly developed in the cities than elsewhere. Before the effects of oil were felt on the economy, status was a matter of lineage and occupation rather than of wealth; with the development of the oil industry, however, wealth and material position have acquired an additional social value. The new technology and industry have produced a growing middle-income economic group of technocrats that is increasingly aware of the widening gap between the ruling families and the rest of the population. This has led to discontent and, in some cases, outbreaks of civil unrest.

      Most Saudis continue to dress in a traditional fashion. For men this consists of an ankle-length shirt known as a thawb (or dishdashah), which is usually woven of white cotton. The traditional head cover is the kaffiyeh (sometimes known as a ghuṭrah), a broad cloth folded and held in place by a camel's hair cord known as an ʿiqāl. The time-honoured dress for women consists of a thawb beneath which is worn a loose fitting pair of slacks known as a sirwāl. In public women are expected to be fully veiled, however, and a long black cloak known as an ʿabāyah is worn. A veil called a ḥijāb covers the head, and another known as a niqāb covers the face. Among Bedouin, women's clothing is often quite ornate and has traditionally consisted of a beautiful panoply of handcrafted silver jewelry.

      Cuisine in Saudi Arabia is broadly similar to that of the surrounding Persian Gulf countries, and Turkish, Persian, and African cultures have heavily influenced culinary tastes. Islamic dietary customs are closely observed; for instance, pork is not consumed, wine is eschewed, and even ritually licit animals such as lambs must be slaughtered in a prescribed fashion. A dish consisting of a stuffed lamb, known as khūzī, is the traditional national favourite. Kebabs are also popular, as is shāwarmah (shwarma), a marinated meat dish of lamb, mutton, or chicken that is grilled on a spit and served either as an entrée or a sandwich. As in the countries of the Persian Gulf, makhbūs (machbous), a rice dish with fish or shrimp, is extremely popular. Flat, unleavened bread is a staple of virtually every meal, as are all varieties of fresh fruit. Dates, either fresh or candied, are ubiquitous. Coffee, served strong and hot in the Turkish style, is the traditional beverage.

      In accordance with the Wahhābī interpretation of Islam, only two religious holidays are publicly recognized, Īd al-Fiṭrʿ and Īd al-Aḍḥāʿ. The celebration of other Islamic holidays, such as the Prophet's birthday (see mawlid) and Āshūrāʾʿ—an important holiday to Shīʿites—are tolerated only when celebrated on a small scale at the local level but are otherwise condemned as dangerous innovations. Public observance of non-Islamic religious holidays is prohibited, with the exception of September 23, which celebrates the unification of the kingdom. (It is also the only holiday celebrated on the Western calendar.)

The arts

      For a thousand years, artistic expression usually perpetuated ancient forms. From the 18th century onward, the strict Wahhābī religious outlook discouraged intellectual deviation from accepted purist positions. With the advent of the petroleum industry came exposure to outside influences, such as Western housing styles, furnishings, and clothes, and, at the same time, local craftsmen found themselves in competition with imported goods.

      Music and dance have always been part of Saudi life. Native music, of which there are several types, is generally associated with poetry and is sung collectively. Instruments include the rabābah, an instrument not unlike a three-string fiddle, and various types of percussion instruments, such as the ṭabl (drum) and the ṭār (tambourine). Of the native dances, the most popular is a martial line dance known as the ʿarḍah, which includes lines of men, frequently armed with swords or rifles, dancing to the beat of drums and tambourines.

      Native Bedouin poetry, known as nabaṭī, is extremely popular. It has similarities to the classical qaṣīdah (qasida), or ode, of which the central and eastern regions of the country are the traditional birthplace. Many of the great masters of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry dwelt in what is now Saudi Arabia, and the two styles, qaṣīdah and nabaṭī, differ largely in the former's use of Classical Arabic as a medium. Nabaṭī poetry is composed in the vernacular and has a strong musical quality.

      Visual arts are dominated by geometric, floral, and abstract designs and by calligraphy, the latter a sophisticated and learned enterprise. Not much diversity is seen in traditional architecture; typical features are decorative designs on doors and windows and wide use of crenellated walls. The wave of change starting in the 1960s influenced architectural styles, and stark linear motifs became common in office and residential buildings. The spectacular airport terminals at Jiddah and Riyadh, however, are testimony to the persistence and worth of traditional styles.

Cultural institutions

      The King Fahd National Library (founded 1968) is located in Riyadh, as is the National Museum (1978). There are a number of smaller libraries and museums throughout the country, mostly in the larger towns and cities. The Society for Arts and Cultures was founded in 1972 to coordinate and support traditional Arabian art forms. The King Fayṣal Foundation (1976) supports literary, educational, and cultural programs. The annual Jinādiriyyah Heritage and Cultural Festival brings together thousands near Riyadh to partake in traditional pastimes such as camel racing, arts and crafts, and traditional song and dance. Al-Ḥijr (Madāʾin Ṣāliḥ), an archaeological site inhabited until the 1st century CE by the Nabataeans (Nabataean), was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2008.

Sports and recreation

 Saudis value a number of traditional and modern pastimes. Football (soccer) is extremely popular. Many Saudis also participate in activities such as scuba diving, windsurfing, and sailing. The time-honoured pursuit of camel racing developed a new following in the 1970s. During the winter—the coolest part of the year—races are held weekly at the Riyadh stadium. The annual King's Camel Race, begun in 1974, is one of the sport's most important contests and attracts animals and riders from throughout the region. falconry, another traditional pursuit, is still practiced, although it has come under increasingly strict regulation because several species on which the falcon preys have become endangered.

      The government of Saudi Arabia has encouraged sports and athletics by constructing sports and recreation facilities in all major urban areas. The Saudi Arabian Olympic Committee was organized in 1964 and was recognized internationally the following year. It has sent athletes to the Summer Games since 1972 but has not fielded a team for the Winter Games. The country also sends athletes to the Asian Games.

Media and publishing

      Several daily and weekly newspapers are published in Arabic and in English. Although newspapers and periodicals are mostly privately owned, editors frequently practice self-censorship. Criticism of the government and of the royal family is frowned upon, and on occasion journalists have been dismissed for statements seen as antigovernment or against religion. The government heavily subsidizes the publishing industry, including periodical and academic presses. Radio and television broadcasting is operated by the Ministry of Information.

Joshua Teitelbaum

History

      This discussion focuses on Saudi Arabia since the 18th century. For a treatment of earlier periods and of the country in its regional context, see Arabia (Arabia, history of).

      The coastal parts of the territory that was to become Saudi Arabia participated in the broad trends of Arabian Peninsula history in the Islamic period—the rise of Islam (Islām) in western Arabia in the 7th century, the creation and expansion of the various Islamic empires to the 10th century, the establishment of separate and usually small Muslim states in the period leading to the 15th century, and the ordering of the Arab Middle East conducted by the Ottoman Empire starting in the 16th century. Central Arabia was linked commercially and intellectually with western Arabia and the Fertile Crescent but was often isolated from general political and military trends because of its remoteness and relative poverty. In the middle of the 18th century in central Arabia, an alliance of Muslim Wahhābī religious reformers and the Saʿūdī dynasty formed a new state and society that resulted in the creation of three successive Saʿūdī kingdoms, including the modern country of Saudi Arabia, officially proclaimed in 1932.

The Wahhābī movement

Origins and early expansion

      As the population of the oasis towns of central Arabia such as ʿUyaynah slowly grew from the 16th to the early 18th century, the ʿulamāʾ (religious scholars) residing there increased in number and sophistication. Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (Wahhāb, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-), the founder of the Wahhābī movement, was born in ʿUyaynah in 1703 to a family of religious judges and scholars and as a young man traveled widely in other regions of the Middle East. It was upon his return to ʿUyaynah that he first began to preach his revolutionary ideas of conservative religious reformation based on a strict moral code. His teaching was influenced by that of the 14th-century Ḥanbalī scholar Ibn Taymiyyah, who called for the purification of Islam through the expulsion of practices that he saw as innovations, including speculative theology, Sufism (Ṣūfism), and such popular religious practices as saint worship.

      The ruler of ʿUyaynah, ʿUthmān ibn Muʿammar, gladly welcomed the returning prodigal and even adhered to his doctrines. But many opposed him, and ʿAbd al-Wahhāb's preaching was put to a number of severe tests. The chief of the Al-Hasa (Hasa, Al-) region, who was of the influential Banū Khālid tribe, threatened to withhold gifts to ʿUthmān, or even to go to war with him, unless ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was put to death.

      ʿUthmān, unable to face this danger but unwilling to kill his guest, decided to dismiss ʿAbd al-Wahhāb from his territory. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb went to Al-Dirʿiyyah, some 40 miles (65 km) away, which had been the seat of the local prince Muḥammad ibn Saʿūd since 1726. In 1745 people flocked to the teaching of the reformer. The alliance of theologian and prince, duly sealed by mutual oaths of loyalty, soon began to prosper in terms of military success and expansion.

      One by one, the enemies of the new union were conquered. The earliest wars brought ʿUyaynah and portions of Al-Hasa under Wahhābī control, but the oasis town of Riyadh maintained a stubborn resistance for 27 years before succumbing to the steady pressure of the new movement. By 1765, when Muḥammad ibn Saʿūd died, only a few parts of central and eastern Arabia had fallen under more or less effective Wahhābī rule.

      Muḥammad ibn Saʿūd's son and successor, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz I (reigned 1765–1803), who had been largely responsible for this extension of his father's realm through his exploits as commander in chief of the Wahhābī forces, continued to work in complete harmony with Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb. It was the latter who virtually controlled the civil administration of the country, while ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz himself, later in cooperation with his warlike son, Saʿūd I (1803–14), busied himself with the expansion of his empire far beyond the limits inherited by him. Meanwhile, in 1792, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb died at the age of 89. Wahhābī attacks on settled areas had begun to attract the attention of officials of the Ottoman Empire, the dominant political force in the region. In 1798 an Ottoman force invaded Al-Hasa, though it later was compelled to withdraw. Qatar fell to the Saʿūdīs in 1797, and they also gained control through local allies over Bahrain and parts of Oman.

Struggle with the Ottomans (Ottoman Empire)

      In 1801 the Wahhābīs captured and sacked the Shīʿite holy city of Karbalāʾ in Ottoman Iraq, plundering and damaging important religious buildings. In the following year, Saʿūd led his father's army to the capture of Mecca itself in the Hejaz, which was also under Ottoman control. It was soon after Saʿūd's return from this expedition that his father was assassinated by a Shīʿite in the mosque of Al-Dirʿiyyah in revenge for the desecration of Karbalāʾ.

      Conflict between the Ottomans and the Wahhābīs of Arabia now broke out in earnest. In 1804 Saʿūd captured Medina, and the Wahhābī empire embraced the whole of Arabia down to Yemen and Oman. Year after year, Saʿūd visited Mecca to preside over the hajj pilgrimage as the imam of the Muslim congregation. But the tide was soon to turn to his disadvantage. The sultan of the Ottoman Empire, preoccupied in other directions, consigned to Muḥammad ʿAlī, the virtually independent viceroy of Egypt, the task of crushing those the Ottomans viewed as heretics. An Egyptian force landed on the Hejaz coast under the command of Muḥammad ʿAlī's son Ṭūsūn. Saʿūd inflicted a severe defeat on the invaders, but reinforcements enabled Ṭūsūn to occupy Mecca and Medina in 1812. The following year, Muḥammad ʿAlī assumed command of the expeditionary force in person. In the east, Britain severely curbed the maritime activities of the Qawāsim dynasty, who were allies of the Wahhābīs, in 1809.

      Saʿūd died at Al-Dirʿiyyah in 1814. His successor, his son ʿAbd Allāh ibn Saʿūd, was scarcely of his father's calibre, and the capture of Al-Raʿs in Al-Qaṣīm region by the Egyptians in 1815 forced him to sue for peace. This was duly arranged, but the truce was short-lived, and in 1816 the struggle was renewed, with Ibrāhīm Pasha (Ibrahim Pasha), another of Muḥammad ʿAlī's sons, in command of the Egyptian forces. Gaining the support of the volatile tribes by skillful diplomacy and lavish gifts, he advanced into central Arabia. Joined by most of the principal tribes, he appeared before Al-Dirʿiyyah (Dirʿīyah, Battle of ad-) in April 1818. Fighting ended in September with the surrender of ʿAbd Allāh, who was sent to the Ottoman capital of Constantinople ( Istanbul) and beheaded. Local Wahhābī leaders also were executed, Al-Dirʿiyyah was razed, and Egyptian garrisons were posted to the principal towns. The Saʿūd family had suffered heavy losses during the fighting. A few had managed to escape before the surrender; the rest were sent to Egypt for detention along with descendants of Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb. The Wahhābī empire ceased to exist, but the faith lived on in the desert and in the towns of central Arabia in defiance of the new rulers of the land.

Second Saʿūdī state

      The dynasty was restored and the second Saʿūdī state begun in 1824 when Turkī (1823–34), a grandson of Muḥammad ibn Saʿūd, succeeded in capturing Riyadh and expelling the Egyptian garrison. Thereafter, Riyadh remained the capital of the state. Turkī tried to maintain friendly ties with the Ottoman governors of Iraq, as he accepted nominal Ottoman sovereignty, and with the British. Al-Hasa and Ḥāʾil fell again to the Saʿūdīs by 1830 as the town militias of central Arabia, which formed the bases of the Saʿūdī army, overcame the nomadic tribes. Literature, commerce, and agriculture flourished despite the crushing losses to society occasioned by the return of cholera.

      In 1834 Turkī was murdered by an ambitious cousin, who then was deposed and executed by Turkī's son Fayṣal (1834–38; 1843–65). Fayṣal had been carried away into captivity in Egypt in 1818 but had escaped in 1828 to rejoin his father and play a prominent part in reestablishing Wahhābī rule. He refused to pay the Egyptian tribute, and in 1837 an Egyptian expeditionary force entered Riyadh. Fayṣal was captured the following year and returned to Cairo. Khālid, son of Saʿūd and brother of ʿAbd Allāh, was installed as ruler of Najd by the Egyptians on the condition that he recognize Egyptian hegemony.

      The subservience of Khālid to his Egyptian and Ottoman masters was increasingly resented by his Wahhābī subjects, and in 1841 his cousin, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Thunayān, raised the standard of revolt. Riyadh was captured by a bold coup; its garrison was expelled; and Khālid, who was in Al-Hasa at the time, fled by ship to Jiddah. ʿAbd Allāh resisted when Fayṣal reappeared in 1843, only to be overpowered and slain. So Fayṣal resumed his reign after an interruption of five years and ruled basically unchallenged, despite occasional tribal uprisings and friction with the townspeople of Al-Qaṣīm, until his death in 1865. The Hejaz remained in Ottoman hands, while northern Arabia (the province of Jabal Shammar) was locally autonomous but acknowledged the supremacy of Riyadh. Fayṣal reestablished Saʿūdī authority for a short time in Bahrain and for a longer time in Al-Buraymī and the Oman hinterland. He extended his influence as far as Hadhramaut and the frontiers of Yemen. Only British intervention stopped the extension of direct Saʿūdī power over the western shore of the gulf.

      Administration under Fayṣal was simple and involved few people, mostly members of the royal family and descendants of Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb. Justice in the provinces was enforced by officials appointed by Riyadh; even the tribes paid taxes; and the writing of poetry and history flourished.

Death of Fayṣal

      In 1865, when his power was an acknowledged factor in Arabian politics, Fayṣal died. His sons disputed the succession. His eldest son, ʿAbd Allāh, succeeded first, maintaining himself against the rebellion of his brother Saʿūd II for six years until the Battle of Jūdah (1871), in which Saʿūd triumphed. ʿAbd Allāh fled, and Saʿūd took power. But during the next five years the throne changed hands no fewer than seven times in favour of different members of the Saʿūd family. Drought in 1870–74 exacerbated the civil war's effects as the unity of the Wahhābī community disintegrated. Meanwhile, ʿAbd Allāh had appealed to the Ottoman governor in Baghdad, who came to his assistance but took advantage of the situation to occupy the province of Al-Hasa for the empire in 1871—an occupation that lasted 42 years.

The Rashīdīs

      Saʿūd II died in 1875, and, after a brief interval of chaos, ʿAbd Allāh (as ʿAbd Allāh II) returned to the throne the following year only to find himself powerless against the Rashīdī emirs of Jabal Shammar, with their capital at Ḥāʾil. The Rashīdīs had ruled there since 1836, first as agents for the Saʿūd family, but subsequently they became independent, with strong links to the Ottomans and growing wealth from the caravan trade. Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Rashīd (reigned 1869–97) was undoubtedly the dominant figure in Arabian politics when ʿAbd Allāh (now as ʿAbd Allāh II ibn Saʿūd) returned to Riyadh for his third spell of authority. At first the Rashīdīs refrained from any forward action, but they soon intervened in the chaotic affairs of the Wahhābī state. And it was not long before ʿAbd Allāh was persuaded to join Ibn Rashīd at Ḥāʾil (ostensibly as a guest but in truth as a hostage), while a representative of the Rashīdīs was appointed governor of Riyadh in 1887. ʿAbd Allāh eventually was allowed to return to Riyadh and even was named governor of the city in 1889. ʿAbd Allāh did not live to enjoy his restoration for long, however; he died in the same year, leaving to his youngest brother, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, the almost hopeless task of reviving the dynasty.

      ʿAbd al-Raḥmān was soon embroiled in hostilities with the Rashīdīs. The Battle of Al-Mulaydah (Mulaydah, Battle of al-) (in Al-Qaṣīm) settled the issue between them decisively in 1891, and, for the second time in a space of 70 years, the Wahhābī state seemed to be completely destroyed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān fled with his family to take refuge in Kuwait as the guest of its rulers. Unlike the first Saʿūdī regime, which was ended by external conquest, the second Saʿūdī state fell chiefly because of internal disputes between members of the royal family.

Ibn Saʿūd and the third Saʿūdī state

      ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (known commonly as Ibn Saʿūd), the son of the exiled ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, took advantage of his new location to acquire useful knowledge of world affairs, while the new Rashīdī prince, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd Mitʿab, alienated the population of Najd. In 1901 the young Ibn Saʿūd (he was about 22 to 26 years old) sallied out of Kuwait with a force of 40 followers on what must have seemed a forlorn adventure. On Jan. 15, 1902, with a select body of only 15 warriors, he scaled the walls of Riyadh, surprised and defeated the Rashīdī governor and his escort before the gate of the fort of Mismāk (Musmāk), and was hailed by the populace as their ruler.

      The following years witnessed the development of the struggle by the third Saʿūdī state to expand its control once again over most of the Arabian Peninsula and thereby reestablish the glories of the first Saʿūdī state in the 18th century. The first challenge was from the Rashīdīs, whose power was by no means spent and who received substantial help from the Ottomans in men and material. In 1904 Ibn Saʿūd defeated a combined Rashīdī and Ottoman force but afterward allowed the Ottomans to place garrisons in central Arabia for one year. Ibn Rashīd continued the struggle, but he was killed in battle in 1906, and thenceforth Ibn Saʿūd, who secured the withdrawal of Ottoman troops from Al-Qaṣīm in 1906, became the undisputed master of central Arabia. Ibn Saʿūd bent himself to the task of regaining the whole realm of his ancestors. He was cautious enough to continue acknowledging Ottoman overlordship (even if only in name), and, by cultivating contacts with Britain, he hoped to balance each power against the other.

      Meanwhile, he busied himself with the reorganization of the country's administration, including the inception of a plan designed to ensure the stability and permanence of his military force. In 1912 he established the first Ikhwān (“Brethren”) colony on the desert wells of Al-Arṭāwiyyah, peopled entirely by Bedouin. The colony formed a militant cantonment dedicated to the service of God and prince. During the next decade, nearly 100 similar colonies organized around tribal group identity were founded throughout the country, providing Ibn Saʿūd with a formidable military force. At the same time, however, the Saʿūdī military also included soldiers recruited from the towns and settled areas.

      Ibn Saʿūd's first major conquest in Najd was the taking of Al-Hasa province from the Ottomans in 1913, although he was again compelled to reaffirm Ottoman sovereignty over all of his territory in 1914. During World War I (1914–18), he was aided by British subsidies, but he managed by adroit diplomacy to be relatively quiescent, though surrounded by enemies. In 1919, however, he struck his first blow, against Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī of the Hejaz, whose army was annihilated by the Ikhwān. In 1920 Ibn Saʿūd's son Fayṣal captured the province of Asir between the Hejaz and Yemen. In 1921 Ibn Saʿūd defeated the forces of Muḥammad ibn Ṭalāl, the last Rashīdī emir, and annexed the whole of northern Arabia, occupying Al-Jawf and Wadi Al-Sirḥān in the following year. Kuwait experienced border raids and a Saʿūdī blockade over payment of customs duties. Meanwhile, Fayṣal I and Abdullāh Iʿ, the sons of Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, had been placed on the thrones of Iraq and Transjordan, respectively, by the British government. These territories and the Hejaz served as a formidable British-protected cordon around the northern and western borders of the Wahhābī state, though incidents along the border were frequent.

      In 1923 the British government invited all the rulers concerned in these sporadic hostilities to attend a conference in Kuwait and if possible to settle their differences. The British also made it clear that the subsidies theretofore paid to Ibn Saʿūd and Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī would be terminated.

      The conference ended in complete disagreement, and in September 1924 the Wahhābīs attacked the Hejaz. They captured Al-Ṭāʾif after a brief struggle, but this was followed by a massacre of the city's male civilians. The Saʿūdīs occupied Mecca without opposition. Ibn Saʿūd then laid siege to Jiddah and Medina, while Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī abdicated his throne in favour of his son ʿAlī. By the end of 1925, both Medina and Jiddah had surrendered to the Saʿūdīs. The Al-ʿAqabah–Maʿān district adjacent to the northern Hejaz was occupied by Transjordan to prevent its falling into Wahhābī hands. On Jan. 8, 1926, Ibn Saʿūd, who had adopted the title sultan of Najd in 1921, was proclaimed king of the Hejaz in the Great Mosque of Mecca. In 1927 he also changed his title of sultan to king of Najd and its dependencies, the two parts of his dual kingdom being administered for the time being as separate units. In the same year, the Treaty of Jiddah, negotiated between Ibn Saʿūd and a British special envoy, Sir Gilbert Clayton, placed Saʿūdī relations with Great Britain on a permanent footing as the British fully acknowledged Saʿūdī independence. A series of Muslim conferences sponsored by the Saʿūdīs in the Hejaz legitimized their presence as rulers.

      Associating with Christian powers put Ibn Saʿūd in an awkward position with the more religious elements in Najd. Moreover, his alleged complaisance over British involvement in and protection of Iraq and Transjordan, both of which the Ikhwān thought ripe for conquest, created tension with his military supporters. Incidents on their frontiers created a state of virtual though undeclared war, in which British aircraft played a part in discouraging Wahhābī incursions. Ibn Saʿūd also on several occasions violently suppressed political and military opposition by the Ikhwān.

      In 1928 and 1929, Fayṣal al-Dawīsh, Sulṭān ibn Bijād, and other leaders of the Ikhwān, accusing Ibn Saʿūd of betraying the cause for which they had fought and opposing the taxes levied upon their followers, resumed their defiance of the king's authority. The rebels sought to stop the centralization of power in the hands of the king and keep the purity of Wahhābī practices against what they saw as innovations advocated by Ibn Saʿūd. The majority of the population rallied to the king's side, and this, with the support of the Najdi ʿulamāʾ, enabled him to defeat the rebels. The civil war, however, dragged on into 1930, when the rebels were rounded up by the British in Kuwaiti territory and their leaders handed over to the king. With their defeat, power passed definitively into the hands of townspeople rather than the tribes.

      Ibn Saʿūd was at last free to give his undivided attention to the development of his country and to the problems of foreign policy that beset him on all sides. Above all, he was concerned to assert and maintain the complete independence of his country and in it the exclusive supremacy of Islam. As long as these fundamental objectives remained in place, he was not only ready to cooperate with all nations but prepared to regard with sympathy some of the practices that had taken root in the Hejaz and other areas as the result of foreign contacts. The ban on music, for example, was progressively circumvented by the radio, which was also used as a tool to unite the kingdom and increase military efficiency. And so the latitudinarian spirit, slowly at first but with ever-increasing momentum, lessened a few of the inhibitions of the puritan regime.

      On the other hand, Ibn Saʿūd rigorously opposed the intervention of any foreign government whatever in the internal politics of the regime. Yet, aside from members of the royal family, and Najdi and Hejazi merchants, many of the king's chief advisers were foreign Muslims. Some of the foreign advisers were political refugees from their homelands and served Ibn Saʿūd for many years.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

      The history of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia begins properly on Sept. 23, 1932, when by royal decree the dual kingdom of the Hejaz and Najd with its dependencies, administered since 1927 as two separate units, was unified under the name of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The chief immediate effect was to increase the unity of the kingdom and to decrease the possibility of Hejazi separatism, while the name underscored the central role of the royal family in the kingdom's creation. No attempt was made to change the supreme authority of the king as the absolute monarch of the new regime; indeed, his power was emphasized in 1933 by his choice of his son Saʿūd as heir apparent.

Foreign relations, 1932–53

      From the date of its establishment in September 1932, Saudi Arabia enjoyed full international recognition as an independent state, although it did not join the League of Nations.

      In 1934 Ibn Saʿūd was involved in war with Yemen over a boundary dispute. An additional cause of the war was Yemen's support of an uprising by an Asiri prince against Ibn Saʿūd. In a seven-week campaign, the Saudis were generally victorious. Hostilities were terminated by the Treaty of Al-Ṭāʾif, by which the Saudis gained the disputed district. Diplomatic relations with Egypt, severed in 1926 because of an incident on the Meccan pilgrimage, were not renewed until after the death of King Fuʾād (Fuʾād I) of Egypt in 1936.

      Fixing the boundaries of the country remained a problem throughout the 1930s. In tribal society, sovereignty was traditionally expressed in the form of suzerainty over certain tribes rather than in fixed territorial boundaries. Hence, Ibn Saʿūd regarded the demarcation of land frontiers with suspicion. Nevertheless, the majority of the frontiers with Iraq, Kuwait, and Jordan had been demarcated by 1930. In the south, no agreement was reached on the exact site of the frontiers with the Trucial States and with the interior of Yemen and Muscat and Oman.

      After Saudi Arabia declared its neutrality during World War II (1939–45), Britain and the United States subsidized Saudi Arabia, which declared war on Germany in 1945, and this thus enabled the kingdom to enter the United Nations as a founding member. Ibn Saʿūd also joined the Arab League, but he did not play a leading part in it, since the religious and conservative element in Saudi Arabia opposed cooperation with other Arab states, even when Saudis shared common views, as in opposition to Zionism. In the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, Saudi Arabia contributed only one battalion.

Internal affairs, 1932–53

      Although oil had been discovered in Al-Hasa near the shores of the Persian Gulf before World War II, it was not exploited until after 1941. State revenues before the war were derived primarily from the pilgrimage, customs duties, and taxes—which decreased as a result of the world economic depression of the 1930s. After 1944 large numbers of foreign oil workers arrived in the country, and Aramco (the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco)) was established as a joint venture between a number of American oil companies and the Saudi government. The country was itself unable to supply the oil company with sufficient skilled workers, and oil production was largely managed and undertaken by foreigners. When in 1949 Aramco paid more taxes to the U.S. government than the yield to Saudi Arabia in royalties, the Saudi leadership obtained a new agreement in 1950 that required Aramco to pay an income tax of 50 percent of the net operating income to the Saudis.

      The sudden wealth from increased production was a mixed blessing. Cultural life flourished, primarily in the Hejaz, which was the centre for newspapers and radio, but the large influx of outsiders apparently increased xenophobia in a population already noted for its distrust of foreigners. The disturbance of traditional patterns caused by the cultural changes, new wealth from increased production of oil, inflation, and the movement of the population to the major cities was reflected in the government, which had become increasingly wasteful and lavish. Despite the new wealth, extravagant spending led to governmental deficits and foreign borrowing in the 1950s.

      Ibn Saʿūd, who had been brought up in the strict puritanical faith of the Wahhābīs, viewed this flood of wealth and the consequent changing mores with distaste and bewilderment. He died on Nov. 9, 1953.

King Saʿūd ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (Saʿūd)

      Ibn Saʿūd was succeeded by his eldest surviving son, Saʿūd, with his second son, Fayṣal (the two had different mothers), declared heir apparent. The two half-brothers were remarkably different. Saʿūd had been heir apparent since 1933; he had many ties among the desert tribes. Fayṣal, who had lived chiefly in the cities of the Hejaz, had often been abroad in his post as Saudi foreign minister. Saʿūd thus represented what soon would become the ancien régime, while those advocating modernization supported Fayṣal.

      Meanwhile, money continued to pour into the country. There was an enormous increase in the population of the towns, notably of Riyadh and Jiddah. The character of these urban societies was changed beyond all recognition by a large influx of bourgeoisie from neighbouring countries. The freer lifestyle of immigrant wives was tolerated to a certain degree, but such liberalization was not extended to Saudi women. Roads, schools, hospitals, palaces, apartment buildings, and airports replaced the old alleyways and mud-brick houses. Weaving and other crafts continued, but they were modified by the use of new patterns and materials.

      At the royal court, there was constant rivalry between Saʿūd and Fayṣal. In March 1958, as a result of pressure from the royal family, Saʿūd issued a decree transferring all executive power to Fayṣal. In December 1960, however, Fayṣal was obliged to resign as prime minister, and the king himself assumed the office. In 1962–63 Fayṣal was once more given executive powers. Finally, on Nov. 2, 1964, the family collectively deposed Saʿūd and proclaimed Fayṣal king. The National Guard, the royal princes, and the ʿulamāʾ had supported Fayṣal in the struggle for power against Saʿūd. Fayṣal was simply more competent than Saʿūd: it was he who developed the ministries of government and established for the first time an efficient bureaucracy.

Foreign affairs under Saʿūd and Fayṣal

      Since the frontier between Saudi Arabia and Oman had never been demarcated and there was the possibility of discovering oil in the area, in 1952 Saudi Arabian forces occupied the oasis of Al-Buraymī, which Britain felt belonged to Oman and the emirate of Abu Dhabi (Abū Ẓabī)—both of which enjoyed British protection. In July 1954 the British and Saudi governments agreed to submit the dispute to an arbitration tribunal. It convened in Geneva in September 1955, but the negotiations broke down, and British-officered forces from Oman and Abu Dhabi reoccupied the oasis. During the Suez Crisis in 1956, Saudi Arabia broke off relations with Britain, and they were not reestablished until 1963. In September 1961, following the Iraqi claim to sovereignty over Kuwait, Saudi Arabia sent troops to Kuwait in response to a request from its ruler.

      Since World War II, the United States had become the most influential foreign power in Saudi Arabia. American interest was directed toward the oil industry, which was owned by U.S. companies. In 1960 Saudi Arabia helped found the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) (OPEC). The Saudis favoured the United States in the Cold War with the Soviet Union, but they opposed American support of Israel.

      As a result of the rise to power of Egypt's Pan-Arab nationalist president Gamal Abdel Nasser (Nasser, Gamal Abdel), Saudi relations with Egypt were often strained. Egyptian propaganda made frequent attacks on the Saudi system of royal government. When Egyptian troops were sent to North Yemen in 1962, tension between Saudi Arabia and Egypt became more acute. The Saudis helped the Yemeni royalists against the Egyptian-backed Yemen republic. King Fayṣal ultimately agreed to assist Egypt with financial aid, provided Nasser withdrew his troops from Yemen.

      Fayṣal, leader of the largest conservative Arab state, continued to warn against the danger of communist influence in Arab and Muslim countries. Saudi Arabia also acted against the United States, however, as a result of U.S. assistance to Israel during the Arab-Israeli War (Arab-Israeli wars) of 1973. The Saudis and other Arab oil producers organized a short-lived oil boycott, and the price of oil worldwide quadrupled.

      The Saudi government gained direct ownership of one-fourth of Aramco's (Aramco) crude oil operations in 1973. Ultimately, the Saudis achieved complete control of the company and, therefore, over their chief economic resource. By 1984 the president of Aramco was a Saudi citizen.

Harry St. John Bridger Philby William L. Ochsenwald Joshua Teitelbaum

Reigns of Khālid and Fahd

Domestic and foreign policy until the Persian Gulf War

      On March 25, 1975, King Fayṣal was assassinated; he was succeeded by his half-brother, Crown Prince Khālid, and Prince Fahd was made crown prince. During the new king's reign, economic and social development continued at an extremely rapid rate, revolutionizing the infrastructure and educational system of the country.

      After the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement on March 26, 1979, Saudi Arabia joined most of the other Arab nations in severing diplomatic relations with Egypt. (See Camp David Accords.) The establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979 and the subsequent Iran-Iraq War (1980–90) also caused the Saudi monarchy serious concern—owing in no small part to the large Shīʿite minority in eastern Saudi Arabia (the same sect that predominates in Iran) that rioted in 1979 and 1980 in support of Iran's revolution. The kingdom thereafter supported Iraq in its war with Iran.

      The only dramatic domestic challenge to the monarchy since World War II took place in November 1979 when the Ḥaram mosque (Great Mosque) in Mecca, the holiest site in the world for Muslims, was seized by followers of a Saudi religious extremist, Juhaymān al-ʿUtaybī, who had been educated by the Saudi religious establishment and was a former member of the National Guard. Juhaymān protested what he saw as the un-Islamic behaviour of the Saudi royal family. The rebels occupied the mosque for two weeks before they were defeated by National Guard troops.

      On June 13, 1982, King Khālid died, and Crown Prince Fahd, who had long been influential in the administration of affairs, succeeded to the throne. Fahd maintained Saudi Arabia's foreign policy of close cooperation with the United States and increased purchases of sophisticated military equipment from the United States and Britain. In the 1970s and '80s, the country had become the single largest oil producer in the world, and the government played a major role in determining OPEC policy on oil production and pricing. Oil revenues were crucial to Saudi society as its economy was changed by the extraordinary wealth channeled through the government and derived from oil operations, notwithstanding a downturn in oil prices and production in the mid-1980s. Urbanization, mass public education, the presence of numerous foreign workers, and access to new media all affected Saudi values and mores. While society changed profoundly, however, political processes did not. The political elite came to include more bureaucrats and technocrats, but real power continued in the hands of the dynasty.

The Persian Gulf War and its aftermath

      Saudi political leadership was challenged when Iraq, after having rejected attempted Saudi mediation, reasserted its earlier claims and invaded neighbouring Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, precipitating the Persian Gulf War (1990–91). The Kuwaiti government fled to Saudi Arabia, and King Fahd denounced the Iraqi invaders. Fearing that President Ṣaddām Ḥussein of Iraq might invade Saudi Arabia next (despite Saudi assistance to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War), the Saudis, breaking with tradition, invited the United States and other countries to send troops to protect the kingdom. This was done after Fahd had received the approbation of the kingdom's highest-ranking religious official, Sheikh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Bāz, who agreed that non-Muslims could defend Islam's holiest places. By mid-November the United States had sent 230,000 troops, which were the most important part of the coalition force that ultimately included soldiers from many other countries. The Saudis adroitly coordinated Arab and Muslim contingents and also established diplomatic ties with China, the Soviet Union, and, later, Iran. King Fahd expanded his goal beyond the protection of Saudi Arabia to include the liberation of Kuwait and, if possible, the overthrow of Ṣaddām Ḥussein.

      With approval from Saudi Arabia secured in advance, the coalition, with some 800,000 troops (more than 540,000 from the United States), attacked Iraq by air on Jan. 16–17, 1991. Saudi pilots flew more than 7,000 sorties and were prominent in the battles around the Saudi town of Raʾs al-Khafjī. In the four-day ground war that began on February 24, Saudi troops, including the National Guard, helped defeat the Iraqis and drive them out of Kuwait. Despite the clear military victory, the full implications of the war for Saudi Arabia were not immediately known.

William L. Ochsenwald Joshua Teitelbaum

      Yet as time wore on, that cardinal event, in which a fellow Arab state threatened to rend years of the royal family's accomplishments asunder, seemed to be a turning point for many aspects of Saudi political, social, and economic life. A certain malaise set in, with various groups questioning the wisdom of the royal family and demanding accountability. Many citizens questioned how a regime that had spent such vast sums on defense would, in the end, be required to call on the help of non-Muslim outsiders when it felt threatened. In the internal political sphere, two opposition movements emerged, one Islamist and the other liberal and modernist, and forced Fahd to undertake several initiatives.

      The economic impact of the Persian Gulf War was considerable, as Saudi Arabia housed and assisted not only foreign troops but also Kuwaiti civilians while at the same time expelling Yemenis and Jordanians, whose countries had supported Iraq diplomatically. Saudi Arabia purchased new weapons from abroad, increased the size of its own armed forces, and gave financial subsidies to a number of foreign governments. Higher Saudi oil production and substantially higher prices in the world oil market provided some compensation for the Saudi economy. However, gross domestic product per capita grew only marginally through the 1990s and in real terms actually fell in some years. A languid economy—in a country perceived as otherwise being extremely wealthy—combined with a growth in unemployment to contribute to the kingdom's sense of malaise. This disquiet added to a subsequent rise in civil unrest.

      One of the first results of the altered situation in Saudi Arabia was King Fahd's March 1, 1992, issuance of three important decrees: the Basic Law of Government; the Consultative Council Statute; and the Regions Statute. Whereas Fahd was responding to demands for greater governmental accountability, the first and second decrees contained a number of quasi-constitutional clauses. But since the government had often stated that the Qurʾān and the sunnah (practices) of the Prophet were the country's constitution, he was at pains to state that there had not been a “constitutional vacuum” in Saudi Arabia and that the new laws confirmed existing practice.

      The Saudi dilemma was to respond to dissent while making as few actual changes in the status quo as possible. The Basic Law of Government changed the process used to select the heir to the throne by extending candidates to the grandchildren of Ibn Saʿūd, enshrined the king's right to choose his heir, established a right to privacy, and prohibited infringements of human rights without just cause. The Consultative Council Statute set up an advisory body of 60 (later expanded to 120) members plus a chairman. While convoking a council gave the appearance of a step toward a more representative government, the council actually was appointed by the king and could be dissolved by him at will.

      Fahd made it clear that he did not have democracy in mind: “A system based on elections is not consistent with our Islamic creed, which [approves of] government by consultation [ shūrā].”

The Islamist opposition

      After the Persian Gulf War, Saudi Arabia's Islamist opposition grew more influential. It was not made up of extremists like Juhaymān; instead, highly educated academics and Islamic preachers from the lower ranks of the establishment ʿulamāʾ formed its core. It was a loose agglomeration of various trends, but the main spokesmen were two charismatic preachers, Salmān al-ʿAwdah and Safār al-Ḥawālī. Their main grievance was that the regime failed to act according to what the opposition defined as proper Islamic norms in foreign and domestic affairs. Criticism of the government was not allowed in Saudi Arabia, but in September 1992 a group associated with the two clerics published a daring, lengthy, and detailed document called the “Memorandum of Exhortation,” in which they took the regime to task for having an overfinanced military that did not live up to expectations, for glorifying decadent and Westernized lifestyles, and for not allowing dissenting Islamist opinions to be expressed in print and on the airwaves.

      The regime tried to rely on clerics with whom it had close ties to reign in the dissidents, but to no avail. The kingdom's first organized Sunni Islamist opposition group, the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights (CDLR), was established in 1993. The committee was not a Western-style human rights organization—as its English-language sobriquet might suggest—but an Islamist opposition group that demanded that the regime act according to the strict Islamic norms on which the country had been founded. Its original members were clerics and university faculty, and it was quick to disseminate its message via telephone facsimile and, later, the Internet.

      The Islamist challenge that faced the regime was an especially troubling one inasmuch as the regime itself had risen to power and maintained its status by appealing to those same Islamic symbols. This attack threatened to undermine the Saʿūd family's very legitimacy, and the family reacted by outlawing the committee and arresting its members. The group thereafter operated abroad, in London, until it split in 1996.

      Meanwhile, in 1994 the first mass Islamist demonstration was held in the central Arabian city of Burayda, following the arrest of al-Ḥawālī. It was led by al-ʿAwdah, who was arrested during the demonstration. While one could not conclude that Islamist opposition was rampant, the fact that such a large demonstration was held at all was an indication that all was not right in the capital. The demonstration was followed by a further crackdown on dissent.

      The dissidents condemned the regime's supposed un-Islamic practices. Of particular concern to them was the presence of U.S. troops and those of other non-Muslim countries on Saudi soil, a presence that—given the proximity of the two holy cities—they deemed not only an affront to their religion but a situation designed only to protect the regime. In November 1995 an explosion rocked the central Riyadh headquarters of a U.S. government group that trained members of the Saudi National Guard. The explosion killed five Americans and two Indians. Three hitherto-unknown organizations took responsibility for the operation, and all of them demanded the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the kingdom. While there was no proven connection between the bombers and the known leaders of the Saudi Islamist movement, in May 1996 Saudi authorities arrested and executed four youths who claimed—in televised confessions—to have been influenced by the CDLR and by the views of an Afghanistan-based Saudi Islamist financier, Osama bin Laden (bin Laden, Osama).

      In June 1996 a massive explosion ripped through an apartment complex housing U.S. Air Force personnel. Nineteen U.S. servicemembers were killed, and hundreds were injured. This bombing remained unsolved, but U.S. and Saudi authorities suggested that Iranian-backed Saudi Shīʿites were involved.

      Although they still actively campaigned from abroad—particularly on the Internet—Islamists maintained a low profile within the kingdom throughout the 1990s. Indications were that Crown Prince Abd Allāhʿ (Abdullah)—who had effectively run day-to-day affairs after Fahd suffered a stroke in 1995—had either reached some kind of agreement with Islamist leaders or had been granted some form of grace period by them. In 1999 the government ordered the release of the opposition clerics al-Ḥawālī and al-ʿAwdah, and, although there were no indications of the conditions of their release, the two thereafter refrained from publicly criticizing the royal family.

      Far more ominous was the development outside the kingdom of a network, which was associated with bin Laden, known as al-Qaeda (Qaeda, al-). Although there were no direct attacks against the regime either at home or abroad, al-Qaeda staged a number of violent attacks against U.S. targets throughout the world. These attacks culminated in the September 11 terrorist attacks (September 11 attacks) in 2001, a majority of whose participants were citizens of Saudi Arabia.

Foreign policy since the end of the Persian Gulf War

      Saudi Arabia owed a tremendous debt to the countries whose forces had defeated Iraq, particularly to the United States. The kingdom repaid this debt in part by purchasing large quantities of weapons from American firms and by supporting the U.S.-led peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. In the aftermath of the war, however, the kingdom also sought to cultivate closer relations with other regional powers, particularly with Iran.

      Saudi Arabia played a behind-the-scenes role in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations by persuading Syria to attend the October 1991 Madrid Conference, which opened the postwar peace dialogue in the region; Saudi Arabia held observer status at the conference and was active in an effort to soften Syria's position against Israel, though with little avail. Following the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1993, the government overcame its anger at PLO chairman Yāsir ʿArafāt (Arafāt, Yāsirʿ) for having supported Iraq during the Persian Gulf War and pledged large sums of money to support the development of the Palestinian Authority. In 1994 the Saudis, encouraged by the United States, led the Gulf Cooperation Council in withdrawing from a long-standing Arab League boycott of companies either directly or indirectly doing business with Israel.

      With Iraq seemingly chastened by the Persian Gulf War, Saudi worries over regional security turned to Iran, which, since the Islamic revolution, had purportedly sought to export the revolution to other countries in the region with significant Shīʿite populations, such as Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. In strongly opposing Iran, the Saudi government also followed the U.S. policy of “dual containment” (i.e., isolating both Iran and Iraq), in which the United States sought to depict Iran as a “rogue” state that supported terrorism.

      By 1996, however, Saudi Arabia's sense of obligation to the United States for its support during the war had begun to wane. Saudi leaders, particularly the newly powerful Abd Allāhʿ, began to develop closer relations with Iran. ʿAbd Allāh, keen to put a distance between his policies and the unpopular pro-Western policies of Fahd, apparently assessed that the United States would continue to support the Saʿūd family, despite U.S. antipathy toward Iran, and so turned his attention to improving regional relations. Soon dignitaries from Iran and Saudi Arabia were exchanging visits, and the two countries' leaders were cooperating in several matters. The kingdom also resolved several long-standing border disputes; these actions included significantly reshaping its border with Yemen.

      In the end, however, the greatest hurdle to U.S.-Saudi relations came from within the kingdom—from the Saudi citizens who participated in the September 11 attacks and other acts of terrorism against the United States. The perception of many Americans was that the royal family, through its long and close relations with the Wahhābī sect, had laid the groundwork for the growth of militant groups like al-Qaeda and that after the attacks had done little to help track the militants or ward off future atrocities. That viewpoint was reinforced when in 2003 the Saudi government refused to support or to participate in the Iraq War between U.S.-led forces and Iraq, an action seen by some as an attempt by the royal family to placate the kingdom's Islamist radicals. That same year Saudi and U.S. government officials agreed to withdraw all U.S. military forces from Saudi soil. The country underwent a peaceful power transition in 2005, when, following Fahd's death on August 1, ʿAbd Allāh ascended the throne. Also, in December, Saudi Arabia formally joined the World Trade Organization.

Joshua Teitelbaum

Additional Reading

Land and people

Overviews and general reference works include David E. Long, The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (1997); J.E. Peterson, Historical Dictionary of Saudi Arabia (1993); Hussein Hamza Bindagji, Atlas of Saudi Arabia (1978), with thematic, regional, and city maps. Mecca is the subject of F.E. Peters, Mecca: A Literary History of the Muslim Holyland (1994); and Gerald De Gaury, Rulers of Mecca (1954, reissued 1980). Also useful is Angelo Pesce, Jiddah: Portrait of an Arabian City, rev. ed. (1977). An anthropological approach is taken in Soraya Altorki, Women in Saudi Arabia: Ideology and Behavior Among the Elite (1986); and William Lancaster, The Rwala Bedouin Today (1981), a case study. Also of importance are Donald Powell Cole, Nomads of the Nomads: The Al Murrah Bedouin of the Empty Quarter (1975, reissued 1988); and Motoko Katakura, Bedouin Village: A Study of a Saudi Arabian People in Transition (1977). Architecture and art are treated in G.R.D. King, The Historical Mosques of Saudi Arabia (1986), a study of mosque architecture; and Safeya Binzagr, Saudi Arabia: An Artist's View of the Past (1979), a pictorial perspective of Saudi Arabia's culture and people.An important annual survey of events in Saudi Arabia can be found in the Saudi Arabia chapters of Bruce Maddy-Weitzman (ed.), Middle East Contemporary Survey (annually, from 1976).

Economy and government

The economy is examined in Ali D. Johany, Michel Berne, and J. Wilson Mixon, Jr., The Saudi Arabian Economy (1986); Adnan M. Abdeen and Dale N. Shook, The Saudi Financial System, in the Context of Western and Islamic Finance (1984); A. Reza S. Islami and Rostam Mehraban Kavoussi, The Political Economy of Saudi Arabia (1984); John R. Presley, A Guide to the Saudi Arabian Economy, 2nd ed. (1989); Arthur N. Young, Saudi Arabia: The Making of a Financial Giant (1983), a historical survey of the impact of oil; Tim Niblock (ed.), State, Society, and Economy in Saudi Arabia (1982); Fouad Al-Farsy, Saudi Arabia: A Case Study in Development, rev. and updated (1989); and Donald M. Moliver and Paul J. Abbondante, The Economy of Saudi Arabia (1980). Policy studies are found in Ragaei El Mallakh, Saudi Arabia, Rush to Development: Profile of an Energy Economy and Investment (1982); Hassan Hamza Hajrah, Public Land Distribution in Saudi Arabia (1982), on transformation of land ownership; Robert E. Looney, Saudi Arabia's Development Potential: Application of an Islamic Growth Model (1982); William B. Quandt, Saudi Arabia in the 1980s: Foreign Policy, Security, and Oil (1981), a diplomatic study; and Robert D. Crane, Planning the Future of Saudi Arabia: A Model for Achieving National Priorities (1978), with a summary of the five-year plans. A more recent study of Saudi oil policy is Nawaf E. Obaid, The Oil Kingdom at 100: Petroleum Policymaking in Saudi Arabia (2000). Further bibliographic information can be found in Hans-Jürgen Philipp, Saudi Arabia: Bibliography on Society, Politics, Economics (1984), in English and German; and Frank A. Clements, Saudi Arabia, rev. ed. (1988).Defense issues are well covered in Nadav Safran, Saudi Arabia: The Ceaseless Quest for Security (1985, reissued 1988); and Anthony H. Cordesman, Saudi Arabia: Guarding the Desert Kingdom (1997).

Cultural life

A full scholarly history of the Muslim pilgrimage—the hajj—still remains to be written, but its history in the 16th and 17th centuries is admirably analyzed in Suraiya Faroqhi, Pilgrims and Sultans: The Hajj Under the Ottomans, 1517–1683 (1994); the 20th-century hajj is the subject of David Edwin Long, The Hajj Today: A Survey of the Contemporary Muslim Pilgrimage (1979). The pilgrimage as reflected in literature is very well presented in F.E. Peters, The Hajj: The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy Places (1994). Politics and society in the home of the hajj, Mecca, in the 18th and early 19th centuries are admirably covered in William Ochsenwald, Religion, Society, and the State in Arabia: The Hijaz Under Ottoman Control, 1840–1908 (1984).Women's literature is the focus of Saddeka Arebi, Women and Words in Saudi Arabia: The Politics of Literary Discourse (1994). A historical approach to women in the kingdom is taken in Eleanor Abdella Doumato, Getting God's Ear: Women, Islam, and Healing in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf (2000).

History

The most important historical works include Kamal Salibi, A History of Arabia (1980); Abdelgadir Mahmoud Abdalla, Sami Al-Sakkar, and Richard T. Mortel (eds.), Sources for the History of Arabia, 2 vol. (1979), symposium proceedings; and H.St.J.B. Philby, Saʿūdi Arabia (1955, reprinted 1972). A more interpretive discussion is presented in Joseph Kostiner, “Tracing the Curves of Modern Saudi History,” Asian and African Studies, 19(2):219–244 (July 1985). R. Bayly Winder, Saudi Arabia in the Nineteenth Century (1965, reprinted 1980), remains the definitive work on that period. The life of Ibn Saʿūd, the founder of the modern Saudi state, is discussed sympathetically in Mohammed Almana, Arabia Unified: A Portrait of Ibn Saud, rev. ed. (1982). Other treatments include David Holden and Richard Johns, The House of Saud (1981), a detailed history of the years 1902–80; Hafiz Wahba, Arabian Days (1964); and Ameen Rihani, Ibn Saʿoud of Arabia: His People and His Land (1928, reprinted 1983). Christine Moss Helms, The Cohesion of Saudi Arabia: Evolution of Political Identity (1981), combines political geography, history, and diplomacy for the early 20th century. Early Saudi foreign relations are discussed in Jacob Goldberg, The Foreign Policy of Saudi Arabia: The Formative Years, 1902–1918 (1986). Works covering the same time include John S. Habib, Ibn Saʿud's Warriors of Islam: The Ikhwan of Najd and Their Role in the Creation of the Saʿudi Kingdom, 1910–1930 (1978); Madawi Al Rasheed, Politics in an Arabian Oasis: The Rashidi Tribal Dynasty (1991); Joshua Teitelbaum, The Rise and Fall of the Hashimite Kingdom of Arabia (2001); and Clive Leatherdale, Britain and Saudi Arabia, 1925–1939: The Imperial Oasis (1983). Joseph Kostiner, The Making of Saudi Arabia, 1916–1936: From Chieftaincy to Monarchical State (1993), is the best scholarly discussion of the kingdom's formative years. The kingdom in the reigns of Saʿūd and Fayṣal is covered in Sarah Yizraeli, The Remaking of Saudi Arabia (1997), which follows Kostiner's approach. Histories of Aramco and U.S.-Saudi foreign policy include Irvine H. Anderson, Aramco, the United States, and Saudi Arabia: A Study of the Dynamics of Foreign Oil Policy, 1933–1950 (1981); Aaron David Miller, Search for Security: Saudi Arabian Oil and American Foreign Policy, 1939–1949 (1980); and Robert Vitalis, America's Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier (2006). Recent important studies of Saudi politics and Saudi-U.S. relations since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 include Dore Gold, Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism (2003); Rachel Bronson, Thicker than Oil: America's Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia (2006); and Thomas Lippman, Inside the Mirage: America's Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia (2004). Two important internal issues in the post-World War II period are analyzed in Ayman Al-Yassini, Religion and State in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (1985); and Alexander Bligh, From Prince to King: Royal Succession in the House of Saud in the Twentieth Century (1984). A later study of the succession is Simon Henderson, After King Fahd: Succession in Saudi Arabia, 2nd ed. (1995). More on internal issues, such as political dissent, can be found in Mordechai Abir, Saudi Arabia: Government, Society, and the Gulf Crisis (1993); Mamoun Fandy, Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent (1999); and Joshua Teitelbaum, Holier than Thou: Saudi Arabia's Islamic Opposition (2000).William L. Ochsenwald Joshua Teitelbaum

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