News Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Legacy

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Saudi Arabia (/ˌsɔːdi əˈreɪbiə/ (listen), /ˌsaʊ-/ (listen); Arabic: السعودية‎ as-Saʿūdīyah), officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia(KSA; Arabic: المملكة العربية السعودية‎ al-Mamlakah ʿArabīyah as-Saʿūdīyah, pronunciation (help·info)), is a country in Western Asiaconstituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula. With a land area of approximately 2,150,000 km2 (830,000 sq mi), Saudi Arabia is geographically the largest sovereign state in the Middle East, the second-largest in the Arab world (after Algeria), the fifth-largest in Asia, and the 12th-largest in the world. Saudi Arabia is bordered by Jordan and Iraq to the north, Kuwait to the northeast, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates to the east, Oman to the southeast and Yemen to the south; it is separated from Israel and Egypt by the Gulf of Aqaba. It is the only nation with both a Red Sea coast and a Persian Gulf coast, and most of its terrain consists of arid desert, lowland and mountains. As of October 2018, the Saudi economy was the largest in the Middle East and the 18th largest in the world.Saudi Arabia also enjoys one of the world's youngest po[CENSORED]tions; 50% of its 33.4 million people are under 25 years old.

The territory that now constitutes Saudi Arabia was the site of several ancient cultures and civilizations. The prehistory of Saudi Arabia shows some of the earliest traces of human activity in the world.The world's second-largest religion, Islam, emerged in modern-day Saudi Arabia. In the early 7th century, the Islamic prophet Muhammad united the po[CENSORED]tion of Arabia and created a single Islamic religious polity.Following his death in 632, his followers rapidly expanded the territory under Muslim rule beyond Arabia, conquering huge and unprecedented swathes of territory (from the Iberian Peninsula in the West to modern day Pakistan in the East) in a matter of decades. Arab dynasties originating from modern-day Saudi Arabia founded the Rashidun (632–661), Umayyad (661–750), Abbasid (750–1517) and Fatimid (909–1171) caliphates as well as numerous other dynasties in Asia, Africaand Europe.

The area of modern-day Saudi Arabia formerly consisted of mainly four distinct regions: Hejaz, Najd and parts of Eastern Arabia (Al-Ahsa) and Southern Arabia ('Asir).The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded in 1932 by Ibn Saud. He united the four regions into a single state through a series of conquests beginning in 1902 with the capture of Riyadh, the ancestral home of his family, the House of Saud. Saudi Arabia has since been an absolute monarchy, effectively a hereditary dictatorship governed along Islamistlines.The ultraconservative Wahhabi religious movement within Sunni Islam has been called "the predominant feature of Saudi culture", with its global spread largely financed by the oil and gas trade.Saudi Arabia is sometimes called "the Land of the Two Holy Mosques" in reference to Al-Masjid al-Haram (in Mecca) and Al-Masjid an-Nabawi (in Medina), the two holiest places in Islam. The state's official language is Arabic.

Petroleum was discovered on 3 March 1938 and followed up by several other finds in the Eastern Province.Saudi Arabia has since become the world's second largest oil producer (behind the U.S.) and the world's largest largest oil exporter, controlling the world's second largest oil reserves and the sixth largest gas reserves.The kingdom is categorized as a World Bank high-income economy with a high Human Development Indexand is the only Arab country to be part of the G-20 major economies.The state has attracted criticism for its treatment of women and use of capital punishment.An autocratic monarchy,the kingdom has the world's third-highest military expenditureand, according to SIPRI, was the world's second largest arms importer from 2010 to 2014.Saudi Arabia is considered a regional and middle power.In addition to the GCC, it is an active member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and OPEC.

Following the unification of the Hejaz and Nejd kingdoms, the new state was named al-Mamlakah al-ʻArabīyah as-Suʻūdīyah (a transliteration of المملكة العربية السعودية in Arabic) by royal decree on 23 September 1932 by its founder, Abdulaziz Al Saud (Ibn Saud). Although this is normally translated as "the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia" in English,it literally means "the Saudi Arab kingdom",[34] or "the Arab Saudi Kingdom".

The word "Saudi" is derived from the element as-Suʻūdīyah in the Arabic name of the country, which is a type of adjective known as a nisba, formed from the dynastic name of the Saudi royal family, the Al Saud (Arabic: آل سعود‎). Its inclusion expresses the view that the country is the personal possession of the royal family.Al Saud is an Arabic nameformed by adding the word Al, meaning "family of" or "House of",to the personal name of an ancestor. In the case of the Al Saud, this is the father of the dynasty's 18th-century founder, Muhammad bin Saud

Prehistory

Anthropomorphic stela (4th millennium BC), sandstone, 57x27 cm, from El-Maakir-Qaryat al-Kaafa (National Museum, Riyadh)

There is evidence that human habitation in the Arabian Peninsula dates back to about 125,000 years ago.It is now believed that the first modern humans to spread east across Asia left Africa about 75,000 years ago across the Bab-el-Mandeb connecting the Horn of Africa and Arabia.The Arabian peninsula is regarded as a central figure in our understanding of hominin evolution and dispersals. Arabia underwent an extreme environmental fluctuation in the Quaternary that led to profound evolutionary and demographic changes. Arabia has a rich Lower Paleolithic record, and the quantity of Oldwan-like sites in the region indicate a significant role that Arabia had played in the early hominin colonization of Eurasia.

In the Neolithic period, prominent cultures such as al-Magar whose epicenter lay in modern-day southwestern Najd flourished. al-Magar could be considered as a "Neolithic Revolution" in human knowledge and handicraft skills.The culture is characterized as being one of the world's first to involve the widespread domestication of animals, particularly the horse, during the Neolithic period.Aside from horses, animals such as sheep, goats, dogs, in particular of the Saluki race, ostriches, falcons and fish were discovered in the form of stone statues and rock engravings. al-Magar statues were made from local stone, and it seems that the statues were fixed in a central building that might have had a significant role on the social and religious life of the inhabitants.

In November 2017 hunting scenes showing images of most likely domesticated dogs, resembling the Canaan dog, wearing leashes were discovered in Shuwaymis, a hilly region of northwestern Saudi Arabia. These rock engravings date back more than 8000 years, making them the earliest depictions of dogs in the world.

At the end of the 4th millennium BC, Arabia entered the Bronze Age after witnessing drastic transformations; metals were widely used, and the period was characterized by its 2 m high burials which was simultaneously followed by the existence of numerous temples, that included many free-standing sculptures originally painted with red colours.

   

Pre-Islamic

The Worshiping Servant statue (2500 BC), above one metre in height, the statue is much taller than any possible Mesopotamian or Harappan models

The earliest sedentary culture in Saudi Arabia dates back to the Ubaid period, upon discovering various pottery sherds at Dosariyah. Initial analysis of the discovery concluded that the eastern province of Saudi Arabia was the homeland of the earliest settlers of Mesopotamia, and by extension, the likely origin of the Sumerians. However, experts such as Joan Oates had the opportunity to see the Ubaid period sherds in eastern Arabia and consequently conclude that the sherds dates to the last two phases of Ubaid period (period three and four), while handful examples could be classified roughly as either Ubaid 3 or Ubaid 2. Thus the idea that colonists from Saudi Arabia had emigrated to southern Mesopotamia and founded the region's first sedentary culture was abandoned.

Climatic change and the onset of aridity may have brought about the end of this phase of settlement, as little archaeological evidence exists from the succeeding millennium.[49] The settlement of the region picks up again in the period of Dilmun in the early 3rd millennium. Known records from Uruk refer to a place called Dilmun, associated in several occasions with copper and in later period it was a source of imported woods in southern Mesopotamia. A number of scholars have suggested that Dilmun originally designated the eastern province of Saudi Arabia, notably linked with the major Dilmunite settlements of Umm an-Nussi and Umm ar-Ramadh in the interior and Tarout on the coast. It is likely that Tarout Island was the main port and the capital of Dilmun.Mesopotamian inscribed clay tablets suggests that, in the early period of Dilmun, a form of hierarchical organized political structure existed. In 1966 an earthworks in Tarout exposed ancient burial field that yielded a large impressive statue dating to the Dilmunite period (mid 3rd millennium BC). The statue was locally made under strong Mesopotamian influence on the artistic principle of Dilmun.

By 2200 BC, the centre of Dilmun shifted for unknown reasons from Tarout and the Saudi Arabian mainland to the island of Bahrain, and a major developed settlements appeared in Bahrain for the first time, where a laborious temple complex and thousands of burial mounds that dates to this period were discovered.

By the Late Bronze Age, a historically recorded people and land (Median and the Medianites) in the north-western portion of Saudi Arabia are well-documented in the Bible. Centered in Tabouk, Median stretched from Wadi Arabah in the north to the area of al-Wejh in the south.The capital of Median was Qurayyah,it consists of a large fortified citadel encompassing 35 hectares and below it lies a walled settlement of 15 hectares. The city hosted as many as ten to twelve thousand inhabitants.The Medianites were depicted in two major events in the Bible that recount Israel's two wars with Median, somewhere in the early 11th century BC. Politically, the Medianite were described as having decentralized structure headed by five kings (Evi, Rekem, Tsur, Hur and Reba), the names appears to be toponyms of important Medianite settlements.It is common view that Median designated a confederation of tribes, the sedentary element settled in the Hijaz while its nomadic affiliates pastured, and sometimes pillaged as far away land as Palestine.The nomadic Medianites were one of the earliest exploiters of the domestication of camels that enabled them to navigate through the harsh terrains of the region.

Colossal statue from al-Ula (6th–4th century BC), it followed the standardized artistic sculpting of the Lihyanite kingdom, the original statue was painted with white

At the end of the 7th century BC an emerging kingdom appeared on the historical theater of north-western Arabia. It started as a Sheikdom of Dedan, which developed into the Kingdom of Lihyan tribe.The earliest attestation of state regality, King of Lihyan, was in the mid-sixth century BC.The second stage of the kingdom saw the transformation of Dedan from a mere city-state of which only influence they exerted was inside their city walls, to a kingdom that encompass much wider domain that marked the pinnacle of Lihyan civilization.The third state occurred during the early 3rd century BC with bursting economic activity between the south and north that made Lihyan acquire large influence suitable to its strategic position on the caravan road.

Lihyan was a powerful and highly organized ancient Arabian kingdom that played a vital cultural and economic role in the north-western region of the Arabian Peninsula.The Lihyanites ruled over large domain from Yathrib in the south and parts of the Levant in the north.In antiquity, Gulf of Aqaba used to be called Gulf of Lihyan. A testimony to the extensive influence that Lihyan acquired.

The Lihyanites fell into the hands of the Nabataeans around 65 BC upon their seizure of Hegra then marching to Tayma, and to their capital Dedan in 9 BC. The Nabataeans ruled large portions of north Arabia until their domain was annexed by the Roman Empire.