Battle of Backbone Mountain

The Saudi Arabia Portal – بوابة المملكة العربية السعودية

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Saudi Arabia's Location

Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia and the Middle East. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about 2150000 km2 (830000 sq mi), making it the fifth-largest country in Asia and the largest in the Middle East. It is bordered by the Red Sea to the west; Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait to the north; the Persian Gulf, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to the east; Oman to the southeast; and Yemen to the south. Bahrain is an island country off its east coast. The Gulf of Aqaba in the northwest separates Saudi Arabia from Egypt and Israel. Saudi Arabia is the only country with a coastline along both the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and most of its terrain consists of arid desert, lowland, steppe, and mountains. The capital and largest city is Riyadh; the kingdom also hosts Islam's two holiest cities of Mecca and Medina.

Saudi Arabia is considered both a regional and middle power. The Saudi economy is the largest in the Middle East; the world's nineteenth-largest economy by nominal GDP and the seventeenth largest by PPP. As a country with a very high Human Development Index, it offers a tuition-free university education, no personal income tax, and a free universal health care system. With its dependency on foreign labour, Saudi Arabia is home to the world's third-largest immigrant population. It also has one of the world's youngest populations, with approximately 50% of its population of 32.2 million being under 25 years old. In addition to being a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Saudi Arabia is an active and founding member of the United Nations, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, Arab League, Arab Air Carriers' Organization and OPEC. Saudi Arabia is a dialogue partner of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. (Full article...)

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In 2017, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri abruptly announced his resignation while he was in Saudi Arabia on 4 November 2017. Shortly thereafter, the foreign relations between both countries and allied regional neighbors became increasingly strained. On 6 November, Saudi Arabia claimed Lebanon declared war between the two states, despite leaders of Lebanon stating otherwise. On 9 November, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates asked their citizens to leave Lebanon. The conflict is thought to be part of the larger Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict.

Lebanon's president and some Lebanese officials believe that Hariri's abrupt resignation was made under coercion by Saudis and have claimed that the Saudis had kept him hostage. Iran, Hezbollah and some analysts also believe that this was to create a pretext for war against Hezbollah. On 21 November, Hariri resigned in Beirut but he immediately suspended it, then he rescinded the resignation completely on 5 December. (Full article...)
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12 March 2024 –
Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund announces a $2 billion offer to buy both professional tennis tours, the ATP Tour and the WTA Tour. (The Telegraph)

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The McMahon–Hussein letter of 24 October 1915. George Antonius—who had been the first to publish the correspondence in full—described this letter as "by far the most important in the whole correspondence, and may perhaps be regarded as the most important international document in the history of the Arab national movement... is still invoked as the main piece of evidence on which the Arabs accuse Great Britain of having broken faith with them."

The McMahon–Hussein Correspondence is a series of letters that were exchanged during World War I in which the Government of the United Kingdom agreed to recognize Arab independence in a large region after the war in exchange for the Sharif of Mecca launching the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire. The correspondence had a significant influence on Middle Eastern history during and after the war; a dispute over Palestine continued thereafter.

The correspondence is composed of ten letters that were exchanged from July 1915 to March 1916 between Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca and Lieutenant Colonel Sir Henry McMahon, British High Commissioner to Egypt. Whilst there was some military value in the Arab manpower and local knowledge alongside the British Army, the primary reason for the arrangement was to counteract the Ottoman declaration of jihad ("holy war") against the Allies, and to maintain the support of the 70 million Muslims in British India (particularly those in the Indian Army that had been deployed in all major theatres of the wider war). The area of Arab independence was defined to be "in the limits and boundaries proposed by the Sherif of Mecca" with the exception of "portions of Syria" lying to the west of "the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo"; conflicting interpretations of this description were to cause great controversy in subsequent years. One particular dispute, which continues to the present, is the extent of the coastal exclusion. (Full article...)

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More did you know

  • ... that Murtaja Qureiris, the youngest political prisoner in Saudi Arabia, is a member of the Shia minority who may face execution for taking part in anti-government protests when he was 10 years old?

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Sources

  1. ^ Sawe, Benjamin (2017-04-25), Tallest Mountains In Saudi Arabia, Worldatlas.com, retrieved 2019-01-14
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