Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia (officially Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) is a country in Western Asia, with its capital at Riyadh, and is home to roughly 35.3M people.
Arabic is the official language; the currency in circulation is Saudi riyal (ر.س); people from here are called Saudi Arabian.
- »Saudi Arabia has no permanent rivers.
- »The Rub' al Khali is the largest continuous sand desert in the world.
Saudi Arabia straddles the Tropic of Cancer.
Saudi Arabia touches seven neighbours: Iraq to the north, Jordan to the northwest, Kuwait to the northeast, Oman to the east, Qatar to the east, United Arab Emirates to the east and Yemen to the south. Directions run from one centre to the other.
Riyadh means 'the gardens', for the oases it grew from. It sits on a desert plateau and has grown from a walled town of a few thousand into a metropolis within a century.
1,927,022 km² (744,027 sq mi), 13th largest of 198 countries and territories on file, almost exactly the size of Mexico.
Population 35,300,280, 45th of 198 on file. That averages 18 per km² (47 per sq mi).
Bears the shahada, the Islamic declaration of faith, above a sword. Because the text is sacred, the flag is never flown at half-mast and is printed on both sides so the script reads correctly either way.