Riyadh

Riyadh (/rɨˈjɑːd/; Arabic: الرياض ar-Riyāḍ Najdi pronunciation: [er.rɪˈjɑːdˤ], is the capital and largest city of Saudi Arabia. It is also the capital of Riyadh Province, and belongs to the historical regions of Najd and Al-Yamama. It is situated in the center of the Arabian Peninsula on a large plateau, and is home to 5.7 million people, and the urban centre of a region with a population of close to 7.3 million people.

The city is divided into 15 municipal districts, managed by Riyadh Municipality headed by the mayor of Riyadh, and the Riyadh Development Authority, chaired by the governor of Riyadh Province, Faisal bin Bandar Al Saud. The current mayor of Riyadh is Abdullah bin Abdulrahman Almogbel, appointed in 2012. Riyadh has the largest all-female university in the world, the Princess Nora bint Abdul Rahman University. It has been designated a global city.

History

Early history

During the Pre-Islamic era the city at the site was called Hajr (Arabic: حجر‎), and was reportedly founded by the tribe of Banu Hanifa. Hajr served as the capital of the province of Al Yamamah, whose governors were responsible for most of central and eastern Arabia during the Umayyad and Abbasid eras. Al-Yamamah broke away from the Abbasid Empire in 866 and the area fell under the rule of the Ukhaydhirites, who moved the capital from Hajr to nearby Al Kharj. The city then went into a long period of decline. In the 14th century, North African traveller Ibn Battuta wrote of his visit to Hajr, describing it as "the main city of Al-Yamamah, and its name is Hajr". Ibn Battuta goes on to describe it as a city of canals and trees with most of its inhabitants belonging to Bani Hanifa, and reports that he continued on with their leader to Mecca to perform the Hajj.

Riyadh (disambiguation)

Riyadh is the capital of Saudi Arabia.

Riyadh may also refer to:

Places in Saudi Arabia

People

Other uses

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia (ⁱ/ˌsɔːdiː əˈreɪbiə/, ⁱ/ˌsaʊ-/), 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. Saudi Arabia is bordered by Jordan and Iraq to the north, Kuwait to the northeast, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates to the east, Oman to the southeast, and Yemen to the south. It is the only nation with both a Red Sea coast and a Persian 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. The ultra-conservative Wahhabism religious movement within Sunni Islam has been called "the predominant feature of Saudi culture", with its global spreading largely financed by the oil and gas trade. 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.

Crown prince

A crown prince or crown princess is the heir apparent to the throne in a royal or imperial monarchy. The wife of a crown prince is also titled crown princess.

Description

The term is now borne as a title mainly in Asia, Scandinavia, and the Middle East; but it may also be used generically to refer to the person or position of the heir apparent in other kingdoms. However, heirs apparent to non-imperial and non-royal monarchies (i.e., wherein the hereditary sovereign holds a title below that of king/queen, e.g., grand duke or prince), crown prince is not used as a title, although it is sometimes used as a synonym for heir apparent.

In Europe, where primogeniture governs succession to all monarchies except those of the Papacy and Andorra, the eldest son (Spain) or eldest child (Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom) of the current monarch fills the role of crown prince or princess, depending upon whether females of the dynasty enjoy personal succession rights. The eldest living child of a monarch is sometimes not the heir apparent or crown prince, because that position can be held by a descendant of a deceased older child who, by "right of representation", inherits the same place in the line of succession that would be held by the ancestor if he or she were still living (e.g., Carl Gustaf, Duke of Jämtland, was Crown Prince of Sweden from 1950 to 1973, as the senior grandson by male primogeniture of King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden, although the former Prince Sigvard, Duke of Uppland, was Gustaf VI Adolf's eldest living son, and Prince Bertil, Duke of Halland, his eldest living dynastic son during those years).

Riyadh Region

Coordinates: 23°0′N 45°30′E / 23.000°N 45.500°E / 23.000; 45.500

The Riyadh Region (Arabic: منطقة الرياض‎ Manţiqat ar Riyāḍ) is a region (mintaqah) of Saudi Arabia, also called Al-Wosta, located in the center of the country. It has an area of 404,240 km² and a population of 6,777,146 (2010), making it the second largest province in terms of both area (behind the Eastern Region) and population (behind Makkah Region). Its capital is the city of Riyadh, which is also the national capital. More than 75% of the population of the province resides within Riyadh. According to the 2004 census, 1,728,840 of the province's population is non-Saudi (approximately 31%), with 1,444,500 of those living within the provincial capital, Riyadh.

Subdivisions

In addition to the Municipality of Riyadh, the region is divided into 19 governorates (muhafazat) and 1 sub-governorate (markaz):