Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia: capital Riyadh, population 37M, area 2,149,690 km². The 43rd most populous country, in Asia. Facts, map, neighbours and more.

Saudi Arabia holds most of the Arabian Peninsula, from the Nabataean tombs of Hegra and the oasis kingdom of Lihyan in the north-west to the sand of the Rub' al Khali in the south. A narrow-gauge railway reached Medina from Damascus in the early 20th century, and drilling at Dammam struck oil in 1938. Cardamom coffee poured from a dallah, painted al-qatt entrance rooms in Asir and 2.5 million palms at Al-Ahsa show how households work with heat, water and scarcity.

• The kingdom of Lihyan ruled from Dadan in the Al-Ula oasis somewhere between the 5th and 1st centuries BC, and its reach was such that the Gulf of Aqaba was once called the Gulf of Lihyan.
• Ordered by Sultan Abdul Hamid II in March 1900, the narrow-gauge Hejaz railway ran 1,300 kilometres from Damascus to Medina and stopped 400 kilometres short of Mecca.
• Drilling at the well known as Dammam No. 7 struck oil in commercial quantities on 3 March 1938; it kept producing until 1982 and now stands as a museum piece.
• At-Turaif in Diriyah, built almost entirely of mud brick on hills above the wadi, served as the seat of the Emirate of Diriyah from 1727 to 1818 and joined the World Heritage list in 2010.

• Haifaa al-Mansour directed Wadjda, the first feature film shot entirely inside Saudi Arabia, from a small van using a monitor and a walkie-talkie; it premiered at Venice in 2012.
• Raja Alem was joint winner of the 2011 International Prize for Arabic Fiction for The Doves' Necklace; her novels record the Mecca and wider Hejaz she grew up in.
• Ahmed Mater's 2012 series Magnetism uses a magnet to pull iron filings into circling rings around a central black cube, an image taken from the crowds at prayer.
• Hayat Sindi finished a doctorate in biotechnology at Cambridge in 2001, the first Saudi woman to do so; she works on point-of-care testing and became a UNESCO goodwill ambassador in 2012.

• Hegra was the Nabataean kingdom's second city after Petra, and more than 110 tombs cut into its sandstone outcrops survive because nobody resettled the site afterwards.
• The Great Mosque of Mecca is the largest mosque in the world and encloses the Kaaba, which pilgrims circle seven times during both the hajj and the shorter umrah.
• The Rub' al Khali covers some 650,000 square kilometres of the southern peninsula, about 1,000 kilometres long and 500 wide, reaching into Oman, the Emirates and Yemen.
• Houses in the Al-Balad quarter of Jeddah carry wooden roshan windows and mashrabiya screens; the historic district was added to the World Heritage list in 2014.

• Arabic coffee is roasted in a long-handled mihmas pan, crushed in a mihbaj mortar, brewed with cardamom in a dallah and poured into small finjān cups; Saudi roasts stay light and golden.
• In the Asir region women plaster and paint the entrance room of the house with bright geometric al-qatt patterns, and UNESCO inscribed the practice in 2017.
• Pilgrims on the hajj wear unstitched white cloth, circle the Kaaba seven times, walk between Safa and Marwah and keep vigil at Arafat; between 2000 and 2019 about 2.27 million came each year.
• The Al-Ahsa oasis waters roughly 2.5 million palms from more than 280 artesian springs, allowing year-round farming in country that is otherwise sand; UNESCO listed it in 2018.

What is the capital of Saudi Arabia?

The capital of Saudi Arabia is Riyadh.

What is the population of Saudi Arabia?

Saudi Arabia has about 37M people — the 43rd most populous country in the world.

How big is Saudi Arabia?

Saudi Arabia covers 2,149,690 km², making it the 12th largest country by area.

Which region is Saudi Arabia in?

Saudi Arabia is in Western Asia, Asia.