Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, is one of the most important powers in the Middle East. The country makes up about 80% of the Arabian Peninsula, and shares borders with 8 countries – Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Yemen. Traditionally, Saudi Arabia has been an absolute monarchy, where the ruling monarch exercises supreme, legislative, and judicial power. However, despite the formal power held the current King Abdullah, the monarch is bound to make decisions under the constraints of a very conservative religious interest group.
Arabia’s history predates Islam, though it only played a relatively limited role in history before the rise of Islam. The first inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula were Neolithic hunters and gatherers. The recorded history of the region traces its origins to the ancient culture of Dilmun, a major trading link between Mesopotamia and Indus River valley. Trade provided income for early income while agriculture sustained others. Mecca, the birthplace of Prophet Mohammad was a religious and trading center place even before the rise of Islam; the religious significance tracing it way back to Ibrahim, the forefather of Muslims and Jews. Mecca became an important religious location, when Ibrahim built a shrine to one God, the Ka’ba, which was even then a popular pilgrimage site.
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"History of Saudi Arabia".
Despite these event, the rise of Islam in the Arabia Peninsula, played the more important role in shaping the character of modern day Saudi Arabia. Prophet Muhammad was born in AD 571, and by the time of his death in AD 632, most of the Arabian Peninsula had become united under Arab rule, with Mecca and Medina becoming the most important centers of Islam.
This period and the following centuries saw the Arabian Peninsula become a cultural hub and the origin of several important cultural contributions – the Arabic alphabet, the second most widely used alphabet in the world; beautiful calligraphy scripts like Kufi and Nakshi; the basic mathematical numerals, 0-10, which are known as Arabic numerals; fields of study like alchemy, cipher system; and commonly used English words like cipher, sugar, coffee, nadir, azimuth, and of course zero. In addition to cultural contributions, Arabic culture is also credited with several important scientific and intellectual contributions in diverse fields such as astronomy, optics, philosophy, mathematics, medicine, chemistry, and pharmacology.
The modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded by of Abd al-Aziz al-Saud on September 23, 1932, though the foundation of the first Saudi state in 1744 by his ancestor Muhammad ibn Saud. The Saud family has in fact played a crucial and pivotal role in the formation and development of Saudi Arabia and has ruled the Arabian Peninsula at different stages since mid-1700s.
Since this time, there have been six kings in Saudi Arabia – Abd al-Aziz, followed by his four sons, Saud, Faisal, Khalid, Fahd, and the present ruler Abdullah. Saudi Arabia is a monarchy governed by the Saud family and advised by the Council of Ministers. Saudi Arabia has operated under a formal Koran-based system since 1932, which was codified for the first time by King Fahd in 1992, and is known as the Basic Law. The law outlines the responsibilities of the government and has been amended as per modern governance rules, such as inclusion of a system where national budget and public funding allocation is examined by elected council members. Unlike other monarchies, the succession process for the monarch not rigidly hierarchical, but is extremely fair and streamlined. There is in fact a committee which can nominate candidates for the crown prince, the only restriction being that the candidate be a direct descendent of Ibn Saud – the founder of the Saudi state.
The country’s vast oil income has allowed it an economic freedom that is rare in modern times. The government has paid off its debts and invested in the broader economy enabling even the non-oil private sector to maintain high growth levels. With an economy of first-world proportion, a developed infrastructure and some examples of quite startling modern infrastructure, Saudi Arabia has made rapid progress and has succeeded in integrating its culture with the realities of the modern world.
