Saudi Arabia

Why Saudi Arabia works

Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, occupies the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula in West Asia, covering a land area of approximately 2,149,690 square kilometres as the fifth-largest country in Asia and twelfth-largest in the world. It is bordered by the Red Sea to the west, Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait to the north, the Arabian Gulf, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates to the east, Oman to the southeast, and Yemen to the south, with the Gulf of Aqaba in the northwest separating it from Egypt and Israel. Riyadh is the capital and largest city, and the country's other major centres include Jeddah and Islam's two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina.

Pre-Islamic Arabia was home to several ancient cultures and civilizations, and archaeological study of the region has identified some of the earliest traces of human activity found outside Africa. Islam emerged here in the early seventh century, when the prophet Muhammad united the population of the Arabian Peninsula into a single religious polity; after his death in 632, his followers expanded Muslim rule across North Africa and into Central and South Asia and Iberia. In the northwest of the country, the oasis city of al-Ula sits in the Hejaz region, a landscape that features in the history of both Islam and several earlier Semitic civilizations, and once served as a market town on the incense trade route linking India and the Persian Gulf to the Levant and Europe.

Near al-Ula lies Hegra, also known as Madā'in Ṣāliḥ, an archaeological site that was the Nabataean Kingdom's southernmost and second-largest city after its capital, Petra, in modern Jordan. The site holds more than 110 well-preserved Nabataean tombs carved into sandstone outcrops, alongside traces of earlier Lihyanite and later Roman occupation; its arid climate and the absence of resettlement after the site was abandoned have left it in an exceptional state of preservation, offering a detailed picture of Nabataean life at what is thought to have marked the southern edge of their kingdom. Saudi Arabia's geography beyond this desert region is dominated by the Arabian Desert and associated semi-desert, shrubland, and highlands, including the Rub' al Khali, or Empty Quarter, the world's largest contiguous sand desert, covering 647,500 square kilometres in the country's southeast; the kingdom is also the largest country in the world without a permanent river, relying instead on ephemeral wadis for its fertile alluvial land.

In 2019, Saudi Arabia introduced a general tourism visa allowing non-Muslim visitors to enter the country for leisure travel for the first time, part of a wider push under Saudi Vision 2030 to grow tourism beyond religious pilgrimage; the World Bank recorded approximately 14.3 million visitors in 2012, making it the world's 19th-most-visited country at the time. The kingdom has since opened electronic visas to visitors from around 50 countries, including automatic eligibility for holders of valid US, UK, or Schengen visas, and now issues visas for visitors attending sports events and concerts as well as tourism more broadly.

Eight cultural sites in Saudi Arabia, including the Al-Hijr Archaeological Site at Madâin Sâlih, or Hegra, are designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites, recognised for their heritage value, though the country's approach to preservation varies sharply by region: in Mecca and Medina, an estimated 95 percent of historic buildings, many over a thousand years old, have been demolished over recent decades under a strand of Saudi religious thought that treats reverence for historic sites as a risk of idolatry, leaving fewer than 20 structures in Mecca dating to the time of Muhammad. That contrast, between meticulously preserved pre-Islamic sites like Hegra and al-Ula and a transformed historic core in the holy cities, is now part of what a growing leisure-tourism sector in Saudi Arabia is built around.

• Saudi Arabia — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Hegra — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Al-Ula — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Text adapted from the linked articles under CC BY-SA 4.0; edited for length.

Trip Snapshot

Highlights

Suitable For