The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the largest country in the Middle East, with an area of 2.24 million sq. km. (nearly 2/3rd the size of India).
It is the 14th largest country in the world.
It occupies 80% of the legendary and ancient Arabian Peninsula.
One-third of the land is desert which includes a major portion of the world’s largest contiguous sand desert known as the Empty Quarter (Rub-al-Khali).
The Arabian Peninsula
The word peninsula was coined from former world language, Latin: “paene -nsula” where paene means “almost” and insula means “island”
So Peninsula means “almost an island”
This piece of land is bordered mostly by water but connected to mainland.
The Arabian Peninsula was the initial site of the “out-of-Africa” migrations that occurred between 125,000 and 60,000 years ago, leading to the hypothesis that the first Eurasian populations were established on the Peninsula and that contemporary indigenous Arabs are direct descendants of these ancient peoples.
Modern research has revealed that all humans can trace their ancestry back to Africa (Cann et al. 1987), where the ancestors of anatomically modern humans first diverged from primates (Patterson et al. 2006), and then from archaic humans (Prüfer et al. 2014).
Humans began leaving Africa through a number of coastal routes, where estimates suggest these “out-of-Africa” migrations reached the Arabian Peninsula as early as 125,000 yr ago (Armitage et al. 2011) and as late as 60,000 yr ago (Henn et al. 2012).
After entering the Arabian Peninsula, human ancestors entered South Asia and spread to Australia (Rasmussen et al. 2011), Europe, and eventually, the Americas.
The individuals in these migrations were the most direct ancestors of ancient non-African peoples, and they established the contemporary non-African populations recognized today (Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 2003).
The original out-of-Africa migrations established ancient populations on the peninsula that were direct ancestors of contemporary Arab populations.
Analyses of the populations of the Arabian Peninsula (Hunter-Zinck et al. 2010; Alsmadi et al. 2013) have found three distinct clusters that reflect primary ancestry:
1 (Bedouin)
2 (Persian-South Asian) and
3 (African)
According to (Omberg et al. 2012).
The Arabian Peninsula is the largest peninsula in the world.
The peninsula covers an area of 3,237,500 square kilometers.
About 80 million people live in there.
The camel is an indispensable vehicle for the people of the region.
As the camel becomes dehydrated, its milk becomes more sweet and salty, which makes it indispensable for its owner on long and tiring journeys in the desert.
The camel was domesticated in Arabia in 2000 BC.
In 3000 BC, the remains of Bactrian camels were found in Iran and Turkestan, while the first giant buildings and tablets about camels were found in the traditional ell-successor sites in 1100 BC.
Camels also played an active role in the battles of Arabs as well as horses.
The Arabs gave countless names to the camels according to their age, gender, color, and physical character, as they did for the horse and the lion.
Saudi Arabia is bordered on the west by the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba, and to the east by the Arabian Gulf.
It shares borders with Yemen (1458 km) and the Sultanate of Oman (676 km) on the south; Jordan (728 km), Iraq (814 km), and Kuwait (222 km) on the north, and UAE (457km) and Qatar (60km) on the east, with the Island of Bahrain located off the eastern coast in the Arabian Gulf.
The climate of the area fluctuates according to the prevailing weather at a particular time.
In the inland regions including Capital Riyadh, the summer (May to September) day temperatures average around 45ºC, with readings over 50ºC are not unusual, followed by cool nights,.
The winter (November to March) day temperatures vary between 8ºC and 20ºC, with night temperatures rarely dropping below 0°C.
Along the coastal regions, such as Jeddah, in summer day temperatures are around 38° C, but with high relative humidity, while winter temperatures are between 19º C and 29º C.
Brief rainy season is normally between January and May when sudden downpours followed by flash floods are not uncommon.
From late-February to mid-July, sand storms are experienced.
In the South-West, Asir Province with highest mountain peaks in the country and influenced by monsoons, receives about 300-500 mm of rainfall annually, has a more moderate climate.
Oil was discovered there in 1936 and commercial production began after World War II.
Saudi Arabia is the world’s major producer of oil, and has the second largest proven hydrocarbon reserves (20%).
The petroleum sector accounts for about 90% of budget revenues and 75% of export earnings. About 40% of the GDP comes from the private sector.
Saudi Arabia joined the WTO in 2005.
The per capita income of Saudi Arabia was US $20,494 in 2015.
There are about 11.67 million expatriates in the country, mainly from South and South-East Asian countries.
Indians are the largest expatriate community, numbering over 3 million (March 2017), of which, it is estimated that about 70% are blue collar category workers, while 20% are professionals and 10% white collar non-professionals.
Other major expatriate communities are: Pakistan-1.5 million; Bangladesh–1.3 million; Indonesia-1.2 million, Philippines-1 million, Egypt-0.8 million, and Sri Lanka -0.5 million.
The official National Day is still on September 23, and it signifies the unification day of all Saudi Arabia’s regions under King Abdulaziz (King Saud).
In 1139H (1727), Imam Muhammad bin Saud Al-Muqrin (Ibn Saud) founded the first Saudi state in Diriyah as its capital and made it the most stable regions after years of hard work.
Diriyah was unsettled at the time due to many conflicts between neighboring tribes of Najd.
After being assigned to govern Diriyah, Ibn Saud succeeded in bringing peace and safety, and in maintaining protection on the routes of trade and Hajj.
The township of Diriyah was the capital for the first Saudi state under Ibn Saud.
However, the title of the Capital was transferred to Riyadh by Imam Turki when he established the second Saudi state.
A young King Abdul Aziz set out to unite the the surrounding regions into one state through a series of conquests.
The year 1351H (1932) signifies the unification of all these regions under the Third Saudi State named the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Many peoples have lived on the Arabian Peninsula.
In ancient times the Sabaeans, the Minaeans, and the Himyarites built up powerful kingdoms in southwestern Arabia.
The Arabs traded with Egypt, China, and India.
Meanwhile, the British took control of most of the southern and eastern coasts of Arabia.
The local Arabian rulers united with the British against the Ottomans and defeated them.
The history of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia begins properly on September 23, 1932, when by royal decree the dual kingdom of the Hejaz and Najd with its dependencies, administered since 1927 as two separate units, was unified under the name of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
What was Arabia called in Biblical Times?
In the Old Testament literature, Arabia was often referred to as “Kedem,” the East (cf. Gen. 1o:3o; 25:6; 29:1, etc.).
Trainedin Palestine, Paul naturally used “the East” and “Arabia” as interchangeable terms.
1700s
Arabian scholar and reformist Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab and Muhammad bin Saud formed an agreement to dedicate themselves to restoring the pure teachings of Islam to the Muslim community.
In that spirit, bin Saud established the First Saudi State in 1727, which prospered under the spiritual guidance of bin Abdul Wahhab, known simply as The Shaikh.
Origin of The Arabic Language
Linguists generally believe that “Old Arabic” (a collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic) first emerged around the 1st century CE.
Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw, in southern present-day Saudi Arabia.
However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as the conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular.
It is best re-assessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum.
It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced–epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA) language, which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries.
ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from “Arabic”.
Scholars named its variant dialects after the towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic).
However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable.
Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, is considered Old Arabic due to the fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic.
The poet companion of Ali bin Abu Talib, Al-Du’alī was one of the earliest, if not the earliest, Arab grammarians.
He is known for writing the earliest treatise on Arabic grammar, through study of the Quran, explaining why he is sometimes known as the “Father of Arabic Grammar.”
Al-Du’alī is said to have introduced the use of diacritics (consonant and vowel markings) to Arabic writing, and to have written the earliest treatises on Arabic linguistics, and grammar (nahw).
He had many students and followers.
With the expansion of the early Islamic Empire, with millions of new converts to Islam wishing to be able to recite and understand the Quran, the adoption of a formalised system of Arabic grammar became necessary, and al-Du’ali helped develop it, such as with the concepts of Nahw and Taskheel.
His science of grammar led in turn, to the establishment of the first great School of grammarians at Basrah, that would be rivalled only by the school at Kufah.
Abu al-Aswad al-Du’ali (c. 603–689) is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar, or an-naḥw (النَّحو “the way”[38]), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants (نقط الإعجام nuqat l-i’jām “pointing for non-Arabs”) and indicate vocalization (التشكيل at-tashkil).
Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718 – 786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-‘Ayn (كتاب العين “The Book of the Letter ع”), and is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody.
Al-Jahiz (776-868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries.
The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century.
The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya “Arabic”, Sībawayhi’s al-Kitāb, is based first of all upon a corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur’an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya.
The Arabic language started spreading with the spread of Islam.
Following the early Muslim conquests, Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish.
In the early Abbasid period, many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad’s House of Wisdom.
By the 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides, the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic—Arabic written in Hebrew script—including his famous The Guide for the Perplexed (דלאלת אלחאירין, دلالة الحائرين Dalālat al-ḥāʾirīn).
Ibn Jinni of Mosul, a pioneer in phonology, wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif, Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab, and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ.
Ibn Mada’ of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized the overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior.
The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab (لسان العرب, “Tongue of Arabs”), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290.
Charles Ferguson’s Koine Theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times.
Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on the eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009).
The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests.
Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories.
According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples.
Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA.
In around the 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus, the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb
House of Wisdom (Ancient Library)
The House of Wisdom was founded either as a library for the collections of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid in the late 8th century (then later turned into a public academy during the reign of al-Ma’mun) or was a private collection created by al-Mansur (reign 754–775) to house rare books and collections of poetry in Arabic.
But The House of Wisdom and its contents were destroyed in the Siege of Baghdad in 1258, leaving relatively limited archaeological evidence for the House of Wisdom, such that most knowledge about it is derived from the works of contemporary scholars of the era such as al-Tabari and Ibn al-Nadim.
Throughout the 4th to 7th centuries, scholarly work in the Arabic languages was either newly initiated or carried on from the Hellenistic period.
Centers of learning and of transmission of classical wisdom included colleges such as the School of Nisibis and later the School of Edessa, and the renowned hospital and medical academy of Jundishapur; libraries included the Library of Alexandria and the Imperial Library of Constantinople; and other centers of translation and learning functioned at Merv, Salonika, Nishapur and Ctesiphon, situated just south of what was later to become Baghdad.
During the Umayyad era, Muawiyah I started to gather a collection of books in Damascus.
He then formed a library that was referred to as “Bayt al-Hikma”.
Books written in Greek, Latin, and Persian in the fields of medicine, alchemy, physics, mathematics, astrology and other disciplines were also collected and translated by Muslim scholars at that time.
The Umayyads also appropriated paper-making techniques from the Chinese and joined many ancient intellectual centers under their rule, and employed Christian and Persian scholars to both translate works into Arabic and to develop new knowledge.
These were fundamental elements that contributed directly to the flourishing of scholarship in the Arab world.
In 750, the Abbasid dynasty replaced the Umayyad as the ruling dynasty of the Islamic Empire, and, in 762, the Caliph al-Mansur (r. 754–775) built Baghdad and made it his capital instead of Damascus.
Baghdad’s location and cosmopolitan population made the perfect location for a stable commercial and intellectual center.
The Abbasid dynasty had a strong Persian bent, and adopted many practices from the Sassanian Empire—among those, that of translating foreign works, except that now texts were translated into Arabic.
For this purpose, al-Mansur founded a palace library modeled after the Sassanian Imperial Library, and provided economic and political support to the intellectuals working there.
He also invited delegations of scholars from India and other places to share their knowledge of mathematics and astronomy with the new Abbasid court.
In the Abbasid Empire, many foreign works were translated into Arabic from Greek, Chinese, Sanskrit, Persian and Syriac.
The Translation Movement gained great momentum during the reign of Caliph Harun al-Rashid, who, like his predecessor, was personally interested in scholarship and poetry.
Originally the texts concerned mainly medicine, mathematics and astronomy; but other disciplines, especially philosophy, soon followed.
Al-Rashid’s library, the direct predecessor to the House of Wisdom, was also known as Bayt al-Hikma or, as the historian al-Qifti called it, Khizanat Kutub al-Hikma (Arabic for “Storehouse of the Books of Wisdom”).
A major contribution from the House of Wisdom in Baghdad is the influence it had on other libraries in the Islamic world.
It has been recognised as a factor that connected many different people and empires because of its educational and research components.
The House of Wisdom has been accredited and respected throughout Islamic history and was the model for many libraries during and following its time of function.
A large number of libraries emerged during and after this time and it was evident that these libraries were based on the House of Wisdom in Baghdad.
These libraries had the intention of reproducing the advantageous and beneficial characteristics that are known throughout the world because of the House of Wisdom.
Some other places have also been called House of Wisdom, which should not be confused with Baghdad’s Bayt al-Hikma:
In Cairo, Dar al-Hikmah, the “House of Wisdom”, was another name of the House of Knowledge, founded by the Fatimid Caliph, al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah in 1004.
Included in this House of Knowledge was a library that had a collection so vast, it was known as a “Wonder of the World”.
The beginning of the foundation of Cairo’s House of Wisdom was by Fatimid al-Aziz billah who was a lover of books and collected a vast amount of them.
He was determined to collect every book that was authored or translated in the Baghdad House of Wisdom.
The actual founder al-Hākim bi-Amr Allah, assembled a group of scholars to work in the library by authoring books and contributing to the scientific knowledge acquired in this place.
He provided a large amount of supplies like ink, paper, and anything else that the scholars may have needed in order to make their contributions.
The Aghlabids House of Wisdom founded in Raqqada by Amir Ibrahim Ibn Mohammad al-Aghlabī.
Ibrahim was enticed by the acquisition of knowledge and knew the positive qualities that education, scholarship, and innovative ideas brought to societies around the world. A multitude of scholarly manuscripts, scientific journals, and books were found here with the intent to create a library with an equivalent reputation to the Baghdad House of Wisdom.
A group of scholars would journey to Baghdad annually to retrieve important literary works and other writings and bring them back to the library which helped contribute to the unique and rare material found in the Aghlabids House of Wisdom.
The Andalusian House of Wisdom founded in Andalusia by an Umayyad caliph, al-Hakam al-Mustansir, who was known as a master of scholar for his knowledge in many different scientific categories.
He started one of the largest collections of manuscripts, writings, and books that consisted of a multitude of genres and scientific categories.
The Andalusian House of Wisdom was constructed based on the Baghdad House of Wisdom and was used to store the vast amount of knowledge acquired by al-Mustansir.
During this period scientific development, art, architecture, and much more grew and prospered.
There is a research institute in Baghdad called Bayt Al-Hikma after the Abbasid-era research center.
While the complex includes a 13th-century madrasa (33.3423°N 44.3836°E), it is not the same building as the medieval Bayt al-Hikma. It was damaged during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The House of Wisdom was similar to that of the present day British Library in London or The National Library in Paris.
The main library at Hamdard University in Karachi, Pakistan, is called ‘Bait al Hikmah’.
La Maison de Sagesse (House of Wisdom), an international NGO based in France.
The House of Wisdom, Fez, Morocco, established in 2018 by Cardinal Barbarin and Khal Torabully.
The Royal Library of Alexandria is located in Alexandria, Egypt.
In the ancient world, it was once known as not only the most significant library but also the largest.
The library was created by Ptolemy I Soter and its construction was done in the 3rd century BC and the library was dedicated to Muses, The nine goddesses of the arts.
After many years of accumulating scrolls adding up to somewhere between 40,000 to 400,000, the library was burned down.
This caused the loss of many important scrolls and cultural knowledge.
Located in the Byzantine Empire and founded by Constantius II, The Imperial Library of Constantinople was famously known as last of the great ancient libraries.
It housed a lot of knowledge of the Greek and Roman people.
This library also experienced fires throughout its lifetime ending with the final destruction during the conquering by the Ottoman Empire.
Most of the classical Greek work that is known today is originally from this library.
The School of Nisibis was founded in 350 and was located in what is known as present-day Turkey.
This was a spiritual center that had three primary departments, theology, philosophy, and medicine.
