Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia (ⁱ/ˌsɔːdiː əˈreɪbiə/, ⁱ/ˌsaʊ-/), officially known as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is an Arab state in Western Asia constituting 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 second-largest state in the Arab world after Algeria. 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 the only nation with both a Red Sea coast and a Persian Gulf coast, and most of its terrain consists of arid inhospitable desert or barren landforms.

The area of modern-day Saudi Arabia formerly consisted of 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. The country has since been an absolute monarchy, effectively a hereditary dictatorship governed along Islamic lines. The ultra-conservative Wahhabism religious movement within Sunni Islam has been called "the predominant feature of Saudi culture", with its global spreading 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 Kingdom has a total population of 28.7 million, of which 20 million are Saudi nationals and 8 million are foreigners.

Sakakah

Sakakah (Arabic: سكاكا‎) is a city in northwestern Saudi Arabia and is the capital of Al Jawf Province. It is located just to the north of the An Nafud desert. Sakakah had a population of 242,813 at the 2010 Census.

Agriculture

Al-Jawf is notable for its abundant agricultural water, making possible the cultivation of dates (200,000 Palms) and olives (12,000,000 trees), as well as other agricultural products. Farms number around 16,000, and agricultural projects around 1,500. It is the home of some agribusiness farms such as Watania Farms, the largest organic farm in the kingdom. The fertile agricultural land of Al-Jawf is due largely to underground water, which drew delegates of King Abdul Aziz. They were sent to the town of Sakaka and Dumat Al-Jandal and Qurayat, requesting resident tribes there to join the nascent kingdom. Sakaka is home to many Saudi families that can proudly trace their lineage to a few large, old tribes that have dominated the area since time immemorial.

Historical Places