Saudi Arabia

American  

noun

1. a kingdom in N and central Arabia, including Hejaz, Nejd, and dependencies. About 600,000 sq. mi. (1,554,000 sq. km). Riyadh.

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Saudi Arabia British  

/ ˈsaʊ-, ˈsɔːdɪ /

noun

1. a kingdom in SW Asia, occupying most of the Arabian peninsula between the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea: founded in 1932 by Ibn Saud, who united Hejaz and Nejd; consists mostly of desert plateau; large reserves of petroleum and natural gas. Official language: Arabic. Official religion: (Sunni) Muslim. Currency: riyal. Capital: Riyadh (royal and administrative), Jiddah (diplomatic). Pop: 26 939 583 (2013 est). Area: 2 260 353 sq km (872 722 sq miles)

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Saudi Arabia Cultural  

1. Monarchy occupying most of the Arabian Peninsula, where it is bordered by Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait to the north; the Persian Gulf, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates to the east; Oman to the east and south; Yemen to the south; and the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba to the west. Its capital and largest city is Riyadh.

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Discover More

Saudi Arabia sits on at least one-fourth of the world's known oil reserves, a geological gift that makes this otherwise resource-poor, desert nation very rich and important to the industrial nations of the world.

Saudi Arabia is the location of Mecca (see also Mecca) and Medina, the two most holy places in the world for Muslims, pilgrimage sites equivalent to the Catholic Rome and the Christian and Jewish Jerusalem (see also Jerusalem).

Saudi Arabia became the major staging ground for United Nations forces seeking to expel Iraq from Kuwait in 1990–1991. (See Persian Gulf War.)

Overwhelmingly Muslim, the country is ruled by a royal family according to conservative Muslim law.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Saudi Arabia

That is especially true now that attacks on Saudi Arabia and other wealthy, oil-producing Gulf states have left them weakened.

From Barron's ● Jul. 31, 2026

In a March 2019 piece in the Daily Beast, De Becker said his team concluded that Saudi Arabia accessed and gained private information from Bezos’ phone.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 31, 2026

After surviving the dangerous journey to Saudi Arabia in 2021, Habtom found low-paid work as a goatherder, but his employers offered him and others a chance to earn more money.

From BBC ● Jul. 31, 2026

Its current travel advice warns that it is illegal in Saudi Arabia to say anything publicly that the authorities "deem disruptive to public order".

From BBC ● Jul. 30, 2026

In Gilly’s social- studies book there was a picture of a Muslim woman of Saudi Arabia, with her body totally covered except for her eyes.

From "The Great Gilly Hopkins" by Katherine Paterson