A large, oil-rich Middle Eastern country that borders Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq and Jordan, Saudi Arabia is the most influential power in the Arabian Peninsula. Saudi Arabia - "The land of two shrines", Home of the oldest Islamic cities, and one of the few states with an absolute monarchy.
She is the only one that has access to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. The kingdom is beautiful, of course, but its traditions of treating women and the use of the death penalty are controversial issues for the whole world. Saudi Arabia also leads the OPEC oil cartel, which has a huge impact on the global oil market. You might be interested in the article 10 largest oil and gas companies in the world.
One day, the Kingdom entered the civil war in Yemen with an armed force, supporting the government against the Houthi militants. But the help on the side does not exclude the presence of its own problems: the decline in oil prices, internal political differences and attempts to diversify the economy. In the understanding of the West, this country is an anachronism, where the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam is an absolute law, and where a woman is prohibited from driving a car. But on the other hand, here are the roots of a great history and culture, to which millions of Muslims flock every year for the pilgrimage of the Hajj and huge oil fields.
Here 15 surprising facts about the oil kingdom of Saudi Arabia:
15. No elections, parliament, political parties and dissent
An absolute monarchy reigns here, there are no national elections, political parties and a representative parliament, there is only a symbolic council body, the Mejlis ash-Shura, or the Consultative Assembly, which does not have the authority to pass laws and enforce them. This open disregard for democratic norms has been going on for decades. Along with the most violent dictatorial countries, Saudi Arabia regularly receives the lowest civil and political freedom scores from think tanks like Freedom House.
There is no constitution either, although a charter known as the Basic Law of Saudi Arabia, passed in a royal decree in 1992, obliges the monarch to rule, observing Sharia and the Koran instead of the Constitution. Criticism and dissent under strict prohibition: activists are regularly imprisoned and sentenced to severe punishments.
Examples of: Abd al-Karim, who demanded a transition to a constitutional monarchy and received 8 years in prison for this, and blogger Raif Badawi, who received 1,000 lashes for calling for freedom of speech.
14. House of the Holiest Islamic Cities
Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam and the most sacred religious sites - Mecca and Medina. The 13-meter-high Kaaba is the most sacred site in the Great Mosque of Mecca, the holiest mosque in Islam. All Muslims direct their prayers to her. One of the five pillars of Islam requires that every Muslim make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in his life, if he has the strength and finances.
An estimated two million people visit Saudi Arabia every year. It is not hard to guess that the abundant congestion of pilgrims in one place can lead to serious problems, such as the stampede in 2015, which killed and injured, according to some sources, more than 2,000 people.
13. There are not enough executioners for all executions
The death penalty is widespread in Saudi Arabia. In 2015, the authorities saw them off every other day. The country ranks 4th in the world in terms of the number of executions, they are committed for reasons such as adultery and rejection of Islam. In most cases, execution is carried out by cutting off the head with a scimitar.
The kingdom may be the only country that suffers from a shortage of executioners: in early 2013, the government thought about changing the method of execution due to an insufficient number of executioners. The priority is given to the method of execution.
In addition, Saudi Arabia is one of four countries where public executions remain. Diyera Square in the center of Riyadh is a famous site of public beheadings, known locally as “chop-chop square».
12. Huge oil reserves
What words come to mind when Saudi Arabia is mentioned? Since the Kingdom is the largest exporter of crude oil, its name is synonymous with everything related to oil and gas. More than half of GDP comes from the profit of the oil industry. Oil reserves are simply unrealistic: the largest Gavar field is capable of accommodating 4,770,897 Olympic pools. It is estimated that even after decades of pumping oil for export, there are still about 75 billion barrels left.
Saudi Arabia has 22% of the world's oil reserves, only Venezuela has more. In 1960, the Kingdom was one of the founders of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Due to the large-scale oil industry, 30% of the country's population is foreign workers.
11. The largest country without a single river
Saudi Arabia's area of more than 2 million square kilometers puts it in 13th place in the world in terms of territorial size. More than 95% are deserts and semi-deserts, many of which are the largest on earth (Big Nefud in the north and Rub al-Khali in the south). Due to the abundance of deserts and an average temperature of about 45 degrees Celsius, Saudi Arabia has no rivers and lakes, but underground bodies of water flow.
It is the largest country in the Middle East, it makes up most of the Arabian Peninsula and is the largest territorial entity in the world without a single river on the map.
10. The royal family is worth $ 14 trillion
As the head of the House of Saud, the monarch and thousands of his royal relatives hold all the important offices of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The royal power of this country would be the coveted object of any medieval court; King Salman's capital is estimated at more than $ 17 billion, and more than 7,000 family princes (according to some estimates, there are about 30,000 members of the royal nobility) hold important posts, while more talented candidates remain "overboard»Due to a wrong last name.
From the state oil monopoly, the royal family makes huge profits, which are estimated at about $ 270 billion a year. In fact, if you think of all the wealth of the Saudi royal family as a single sum, you get about $ 14 trillion. You might be interested in the article 10 richest and humblest people in the world.
9. Severe punishments
We've already mentioned Saudi Arabia's brutal laws, how about punishments? It turns out they are no better: the legal system uses the same ultra-conservative and traditionalist Hanbali school of law as the terrorist Islamic State. The legal process takes place solely on the basis of a certain interpretation of Islamic law.
The authorities' punishments include cutting off arms and legs for theft, whipping and stoning for adultery and other acts, cutting off the head for riots, political crimes, drug smuggling and witchcraft. Death sentences are also imposed for blasphemy, homosexuality and violent robbery. Saudi Arabia has been unresponsive to ever-increasing pressure to liberalize its legal system and has consistently applied punishment and the death penalty.
8. Sidewalk Skiing's Dangerous Quirk
This is a rather bold entertainment, fraught with "funny "danger". The trick consists of movement on two wheels from one side of the car along the roadway, during which a person climbs onto the car and stands on top of it along the entire movement.Fans of this entertainment treat it with a purely sporting interest, but this is one of the most useless and dangerous inventions that humanity has ever betrayed.
In one video, a team of like “stuntmen»Gets out of the car to change the tire. All this happens on the go. To tell "Don't try this at home", - say nothing.
7. Tent settlement
Initially, pilgrims took tents with them on the journey and set them up on the plains of Mina. In the 1990s, the Saudi Arabian government made housing easier for religious tourists by setting up a camp site with regular cotton tents. But in 1997, a fire broke out in the settlement, killing 350 pilgrims.
After that, a new camp with fire-resistant tents was organized. Mina City has 100,000 air-conditioned, neat fireproof tents with a kitchen and bathroom. In fact, this is a modern residential complex.
The state-of-the-art tents can accommodate around 3 million people. For about 5 days a year, they are occupied by pilgrims, and the rest of the time they are empty. The kingdom received a flurry of international criticism after refusing to host Syrian refugees there.
6. The problem with lingerie
Women are virtually prohibited from working outside the home. This causes embarrassing situations, such as when the salesperson in the lingerie department is a man. Embarrassed women who could not make intimate purchases because of this made an attempt to change the law. They were heeded, and in 2012 a decree was issued prohibiting men from working in women's lingerie stores.
But the decree contradicted Sharia, which is why about a hundred stores ignored the innovation. A few months after the law came into force, they were closed. The decree is still in effect, and various inspectorates regularly monitor its implementation. If a male seller is found, shops are threatened with closure.
5. They have the "Magic Police"
In Saudi Arabia, everything that is directly or indirectly related to magic, witchcraft and magic is prohibited. This is considered a serious crime, people were even beheaded for allegedly practicing magic. The government takes the magic threat so seriously that it even banned the Harry Potter books and created special anti-sorcery police squads.
Created in 2009, the Anti-Witchcraft Group is on the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Riot Prevention of the Saudi Arabian Religious Police. They are tasked with restraining sorcerers and preventing their spells. Since 2009, more than 500 people have been prosecuted for the practice of magic.
People who are supposedly whispering spells, performing rituals, or being caught with talismans can get into very serious trouble. But the question of witchcraft is very subtle, because the original and generally recognized characteristics of witches are as follows: they have a broom on which they fly. The legal code of Saudi Arabia leaves the decision of this issue to the judge, who must summarize whether the person is guilty of witchcraft and whether he will receive the death penalty. No wonder Saudi Arabia is included in the ranking of 15 countries in which they still believe in witchcraft.
4. In the future, the country with the tallest building in the world
The most long-awaited event for all people in the world is the construction of “Tallest building in the world". This position is currently held by the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. In 2018, the title will be proudly held by the Tower of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, also known as the Royal Tower. It will be the first building in history to reach a kilometer height and will be the shining center of Saudi Arabia's new coastal city.
To imagine what it will look like, imagine the World Trade Center in New York (541 meters) - here it is just over half the estimated height of the Royal Tower. Once completed, the tower will have a hotel, observatory, offices and obscenely expensive penthouses. The preliminary cost is $ 1.2 billion. Now the project is called "the limit of engineering capabilities».
3.Women's rights are worse than you thought.
It is highly recommended that you familiarize yourself with its laws before traveling to Saudi Arabia. Recently, women's rights in the Persian Gulf have been the subject of social opposition. It is now the last country on earth where women are not allowed to drive. This fact attracts representatives of the media everywhere.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, without a man's permission, women are prohibited from leaving home, shopping, opening a bank account, hiring, going to school, acting as a legal entity and other official, and agreeing to a surgery.
Until recently, women were unable to vote and sit on the advisory chamber of the chamber, making Saudi Arabia the last country to give women the right to vote. Before his death, King Abdullah assigned a fifth of the council chamber to women and allowed them to vote, but this was more of a symbolic gesture that did not in fact affect the lives of Saudi women.
2. One of the largest military budgets in the world
For a country of 33 million, Saudi Arabia's military spending is enormous. The kingdom usually ranks 4th in the world in terms of the number of military spending, behind the United States, China and Russia, and all superpowers have a population and territory many times larger. In 2015, it stood in third place, having raised the budget from $ 80 billion to more than $ 87 billion.
By the way, Saudi Arabia is one of the few countries with one of the most advanced tanks in the world - M1 Abrams... There are about several hundred of them. In 2010-14, the Kingdom was the second largest arms importer in the world.
1. Import of sand and camels from Australia
Yes that's right: the sandy country actually buys sand from Australia. What for? It turns out that not a single type of Saudi sand is suitable for construction. For the construction of buildings, special alluvial sand without silica is needed (it often generates a lot of dust and difficulties for workers when sandblasting). The Kingdom obtains sand with the required properties from Australia in bulk.
Now about the camels. In Saudi Arabia, they are used to transport people and goods, and sometimes for racing. Australia is happy to export its camels, which are wild and vicious in nature. Ironically, camels were first imported to Australia from Arabia, India and Afghanistan in the 19th century.
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In this video, you will find out where Saudi Arabia got its name from, how you can pay off your sins, and why there is practically no public transport there.
