Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia, proclaimed a kingdom in 1932, is the desert state that Abdulaziz ibn Saud built from a single recaptured fort. Slipping back into Riyadh in 1902 with forty men, he spent thirty years reuniting Nejd, al-Hasa and finally the Hejaz with its holy cities of Mecca and Medina, which his house has guarded ever since. Oil, struck at Dammam in 1938 and pumped by Aramco, turned a poor Bedouin realm into the swing producer of world crude: the 1973 embargo quadrupled prices and funded Faisal's schools, highways and army. The 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque and Iran's revolution pushed the kingdom toward stricter piety, while the 1990 Gulf War parked American troops on sacred soil. Abdullah opened cautious reforms — women in the Shura, universities, interfaith talk — and his successor's son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, now bets everything on Vision 2030: a post-oil economy of deserts turned to solar farms, Red Sea resorts and a new future city, while Yemen's war and detained critics shadow the promise.