
Saudi Arabia, 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.
It is the only nation with both a Red Sea coast and a Arabian 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. Wahhabi Islam has been called "the
predominant feature of Saudi culture". 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.