Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia, whose full official name is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), sits in West Asia at the heart of the Middle East. It occupies most of the Arabian Peninsula, spanning roughly 2,150,000 square kilometers. This makes it Asia’s fifth-largest country, the Middle East’s largest, and the world’s twelfth-largest. Its western border runs along the Red Sea; to the north lie Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait; the eastern coast touches the Arabian Gulf, with Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates nearby; Oman is to the southeast, and Yemen to the south.

In the northwest, the Gulf of Aqaba separates it from Egypt and Israel. Saudi Arabia is unique in having coastlines on both the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf. Most of its landscape is arid desert, lowland, steppe, and mountain. Riyadh serves as the capital and biggest city, while other key urban centers include Jeddah, plus Mecca and Medina—the two holiest sites in Islam.

With 33.7 million residents, it ranks sixth in population among Arab nations. Long before Islam, the area now called Saudi Arabia hosted several ancient cultures and civilizations; archaeological work there has uncovered some of the earliest signs of human activity beyond Africa. Islam arose in this region during the early 600s. The prophet Muhammad united the Arabian Peninsula’s people under a single Islamic religious state.

After his death in 632, his followers rapidly expanded Muslim rule out of Arabia, conquering lands in North Africa, Central and South Asia, and Iberia within decades. Arab dynasties that originated in modern-day Saudi Arabia established the Rashidun (632–661), Umayyad (661–750), Abbasid (750–1517), and Fatimid (909–1171) caliphates, along with many other Muslim states across Asia, Africa, and Europe. King Abdulaziz founded Saudi Arabia in 1932 by merging Hejaz, Najd, and parts of Eastern and South Arabia into one state through military and political campaigns that began in 1902.

This kingdom is the Third Saudi State, following the First (1727–1818) and Second (1824–1891). Since then, the House of Saud has ruled it as an absolute monarchy. According to its Basic Law, Saudi Arabia is a sovereign Arab Islamic state with Islam as its official religion and Arabic as its official language. Until the 2000s, the ultraconservative Wahhabi movement within Sunni Islam dominated politics and culture.

The government has faced criticism for its role in the Yemeni Civil War, restrictions on political and civil freedoms, and a poor human rights record. Starting in the mid-2010s, it has introduced limited, gradual reforms to liberalize social, cultural, and religious life. Saudi Arabia is seen as both a regional and middle power, and it is a major non-NATO ally of the United States. Oil was discovered there in 1938, and the kingdom has since become the world’s second-largest oil producer and leading oil exporter, controlling the second-largest oil reserves and sixth-largest gas reserves.

The World Bank classifies it as a high-income economy, and it is the only Arab country in the G20. Its economy is the largest in the Middle East and ranks nineteenth globally by nominal GDP and seventeenth by purchasing power parity. It scores very high on the Human Development Index, offers free university tuition, no personal income tax, and free universal health care. Heavily reliant on foreign labor, it has the world’s third-largest immigrant population, with foreign-born residents making up about 40% of the total.

Saudi Arabians are among the world’s youngest populations, with roughly half under 25. The country belongs to the Gulf Cooperation Council, United Nations, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, Arab League, and OPEC, and is a dialogue partner of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. The name “Saudi Arabia” comes from a royal decree issued by Abdulaziz on September 23, 1932, after he merged the Kingdom of Hejaz and Nejd. The new state was called al-Mamlaka al-ʿArabiyya as-Suʿūdiyya in Arabic, which literally means “the Saudi Arab Kingdom” or “the Saudi Kingdom of Arabia” (compare the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan).

The term “Saudi” is a nisba adjective derived from as-Suʿūdīyya, itself formed from the dynastic name of the royal family, Al Saud. Including it signals that the country is considered the personal possession of the royal family. “Al Saud” is an Arabic name built by adding Al (meaning “family of” or “House of”) to the personal name of an ancestor—in this case, Saud ibn Muhammad ibn Muqrin, father of the dynasty’s 18th-century founder, Muhammad bin Saud.

Evidence shows humans lived on the Arabian Peninsula as early as about 125,000 years ago. A 2011 study suggests the first modern humans moving east across Asia left Africa roughly 75,000 years ago via the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, which connects the Horn of Africa to Arabia. The peninsula is considered key to understanding human evolution and dispersal. During the Quaternary period, Arabia experienced extreme environmental shifts that drove profound evolutionary and demographic changes.

Its rich Lower Paleolithic record, with many Oldowan-like sites, points to a major role in early hominin colonization of Eurasia.