From incense caravans and the birth of Islam to unification, oil and Vision 2030 - three thousand years in five minutes.
Ancient Arabia. Long before oil, the peninsula was a crossroads: frankincense and myrrh caravans moved from Yemen to the Mediterranean, and the Nabataeans - the builders of Petra - carved their second capital at Hegra, in today's AlUla. Coastal trading cities faced Persia, India and East Africa.
The birth of Islam. In the early 7th century, in Makkah and then Madinah, Islam was founded - the event that shaped Arabia's identity permanently. Within a century Arab armies and merchants had carried the faith, and the Arabic language, from Spain to Central Asia; the peninsula itself settled into a patchwork of tribal emirates and holy cities.
The First Saudi State (1744). In Diriyah, near modern Riyadh, Muhammad ibn Saud formed an alliance that united much of the peninsula under one rule for the first time. That state fell to Ottoman-Egyptian forces in 1818; a Second Saudi State rose in Riyadh in 1824 and lasted, with interruptions, until 1891.
Unification (1902-1932). Abdulaziz ibn Saud - King Abdulaziz - retook Riyadh in 1902 and spent three decades uniting the peninsula's regions, by negotiation as much as by arms. On 23 September 1932 the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was proclaimed - the date Saudis celebrate as National Day.
Oil and transformation (1938 onwards). Oil was struck at Dammam's Well No. 7 in 1938. The revenues of the following decades built the modern state - highways, universities, airports and cities - at extraordinary speed, and turned a desert kingdom into a G20 economy and the world's pivotal energy exporter.
The modern Kingdom. Under King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Vision 2030 (launched 2016) is the defining project: diversify the economy, open society and welcome the world. The tourist eVisa of 2019 - the reason this website exists - is one of its most visible results. Diriyah, where the story started, is being restored as a cultural capital: history and future in the same place.
Explore the places this history left behind on our tourism page.
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