Geography Now! SAUDI ARABIA

the land of the two mosques I actually had the opportunity to travel here a couple years ago and get a slight taste of the city and countryside there's so much information that goes in this video and it cannot be easily covered so I'll try my best Saudi Arabia everybody I'm your host Barb's when I say Saudi Arabia most people think of two things Islam and oil I mean this kind of is the place where Islam originated oh and what's that yeah you can get a geography now t-shirt or a geography now Jim sack or a geography now market geographer now calm it's not selling out if it's my brand also as you know this episode was filmed during Cove in nineteen pandemic times so for the time being obviously everything will be filmed in my office Kelvin Julian are my tenants they live with me so obviously they can be in these videos cuz they live with me art is my closest neighbor he lives within walking distance so he'll be a regular and with every guest host we're gonna film in separate time slots so that we're not all crowded in one place at once thank you and with that let's just jump into it Saudi Arabia oh this episode was gonna be big alright so Saudi Arabia has actually had a lot of regional and sectional divisions based off of tribes and clans and former empires I mean there was even a point in time when their East Coast was like ruled by pirates just wait for my episode in any case let's go to the globe Saudi Arabia sits on the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East the largest peninsula in the world and in itself is the 12th largest country in land area at over two million square kilometers the country is bordered by seven other countries and keep in mind they also have the King Fahd causeway which connects them to little Bahrain so technically eight countries the country is further divided into 13 regions with the capital of Riyadh located fairly close to the south center of the country Riyadh is the largest city and the second largest in the Arab world after Cairo with over 7 million people it also has the second busiest airport King Khalid International the busiest airport however belongs to the second largest city Jeddah in the West with King Abdulaziz International and they also have the largest shipping port as well the second largest shipping port belongs to the King Abdulaziz port in the city of abdomen in the east side close to Bahrain now although Mecca the third largest city is an important place as the holiest city in Islam they do not have an airport as they believe the city should be left free of air traffic and planes should not fly above it therefore people wishing to go there usually fly to Jeddah and then take short land transport the country has a vast network extending to all other neighboring countries and four main rail lines connecting Riyadh to the east and north with another separate rail line connecting Medina to Mecca in the West today plans for a transnational railway known as the Saudi land bridge are underway as well as the GCC railway along the Persian Gulf which is supposed to connect them with the other countries along the Gulf like Kuwait and the UAE however progress is kind of slow in addition the country has about 1300 or so smaller islands and islets off their coasts about 89% of them are in the Red Sea and the remaining 11% in the Persian Gulf but herbs will tell you it's the Arabian Gulf not gonna get into that anyway of these islands the largest is Farah Sun with its archipelago in the south close to Yemen there was at one time a dispute with Egypt over the Sunnah fair islands right at the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba in 2016 however Egypt's House Committee and Parliament approved of the transfer of the islands which kind of angered a lot of people in the Egyptian public but it still went through in any case the move went forward and plans to build a Saudi Egypt causeway are underway which would officially connect the two countries for the first time since Ottoman Empire years key fact to note the area of modern-day Saudi Arabia formerly consisted of three main distinct regions the hedges in the West were about 35% of the population lives the Nejd with about 28% and eastern Arabia or ASSA with about 15% on top of that Saudi Arabia takes their maritime trading routes very seriously as about like a fifth of the entire world's oil shipping lanes pass through the incredibly narrow 21 mile wide Strait of Hormuz we've talked about this before and it can get pretty intense considering who's on the other side it's like hey hey dude you're in my boundary zone you're in my buffer yeah anyway back to the civil layout Saudi Arabia is structured in a unique way that very few other countries can kind of emulate for one they are the cornerstone and epicenter of the Islamic faith holding the two most important sites in Islam Mecca and Medina you must be Muslim to enter Mecca authorities either check your passports for the religion label if it has one war they ask you to recite the Shahada or the Muslim Creed if you don't know anything about these cities basically Medina is the burial site of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and Mecca is not only his birthplace but it also holds the holiest site in all of Islam the Kaaba which is this cube shaped building in the center of the Great Mosque of Mecca the largest mosque in the it is the duty of every able-bodied and financially capable Muslim in the world to make a pilgrimage here at least once in their life otherwise known as the Hajj in Saudi Arabia actually holds quotas for each country with the amount of pilgrims that are allowed to visit every year what about the countries they have strained relations with yep even those no Muslim is denied regardless of sect or nationhood the reason for the restriction is because every year it's like more and more people try to come and it gets very packed and often dangerous in which incidents have occurred in which people have died from like stampedes and crushing x' in the past few decades in Saudi Arabia's defense though it's really hard to maintain crowd control when your city has to suddenly accommodate three times its own population for what it's worth though the newly appointed Crown Prince has issued a mass array of social and economic reforms at the otherwise previous legislation was a little weary of implementing this includes the ever so sensitive topic of foreign investment and tourism but ultimately you know it was kind of like maybe we should just focus on religious tourism from Mecca and Medina how much did we make last year over 10 billion oh really yes how our non-muslim visa applications looking those have been going up - especially in Jeddah and Riyadh I mean 10 billion from just Muslims alone I mean ok I need a guinea pig hey Emirates how are you handling things I am having so much fun people are coming from all over the world to have fun with me interesting that's basically how they granted their first tourist visas in 2018 prior to that the country only allowed non-muslim visitors to come in if they had a business visa and if a Saudi national sponsored them which is what I had to do back in 2015 I remember the process took forever it was like a month and now the country is like yeah yeah come on in just stay away from Mecca but come on in anyhow Jada is also set to complete the new world's tallest building don't even think about it I got another trick up my sleeve anyway with Saudi Arabia you'll see a bunch of other impressive feats of engineering art tell the viewers what they could witness and the sights they could see when they go to Saudi Arabia you get to win a free car and some dates but yellow ones are really good yeah Mehta jewel yeah nah but for real besides the obvious Mecca and Medinah there's actually a lot of really cool things going on in Saudi Arabia like sight scene wise go on they have the largest water fountain in Jena the world's largest desalinization plant and soon the world's largest hotel is about to be built they even have the world's largest burger restaurant it's called wait for it I'm hungry I'm hungry right now actually Paul yes we'll feed you soon okay you have the DI marble village must Mick forth check out historic diría the rajah Alma or the famous sod eben sod palace the king abdulaziz center of world culture the floating moss and there's that really mysterious looking cool rock that looks like it was cut by a laser and nobody knows how it got that way aliens Bob Saget and probably the most famous yet very widely unheard-of to outsiders medine sala in a Lula its Saudi Arabia's first UNESCO heritage site oh okay you sold a t-shirt you should buy one too also impressive the landscape let's go there now look now we all know on the surface Saudi Arabia is quite the dry country even looking at it from space you're like yeah lots of beige and brown sand and rocks well you know if you look closer you know the desert has a lot of different types of cool sands and rocks it's more fascinating than you think first of all the country sits on its own entire tectonic plate known as the Arabian plate The rifts on the edges of this plate are essentially what formed the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf as well as the Anatolian Highlands and the Zagros Mountains in Iran the country is primarily characterized by the Arabian desert the fifth largest in the world and the largest in Asia it makes up about 90% of the land and is roughly broken into three separate sand desert sand - rocky Highland deserts the three sand deserts are the on the food in the north the on Donna in the east and the rub al-khali in the south which is the world's largest continuous sand desert and it also has the highest sand dune in the world Rama J Dilla at about four hundred and fifty five meters these deserts shield the central gnashed Highlands as well as the Hejaz mountain chain in the West the southwestern section of the Hejaz mountains known as that Tehama are the most lush and green areas of Saudi Arabia this is where the majority of Saudi Arabia's agriculture sector can be found as the climate and mountains collect more moisture influenced by the jet streams carried by the monsoons from the Indian Ocean some of them even have snow caps in the winter seasons like the tallest peak of the country which is also in this region jabal Assad at about 3,000 meters tall the interesting thing though is that Saudi Arabia is officially the largest country in the world without any permanent rivers they do however have wadis or seasonal riverbeds that flow on occasion and dry up in the warmer parts of the year the longest Wadi being wadi al roma in the Nejd plateau flowing from g biood for the white mountain near Modena all the way to Verizon for other water sources though the country does have quite a few oases speckled throughout the deserts the largest one being the al-hasa oasis in the east by the town of a loaf of further fed by the twins the larger one lake as far and like Cuba the largest lakes in the country finally it's important to note that the flatter eastern section of the country is rich in hydrocarbon resources and it is essentially the economic backbone that props up much of the country's export revenue sector back to the southern green stuff yes seriously you'd almost assume it was like another planet with pristine spectacles of life amidst the granite and sandstone outcroppings these are some really cool clips from my homegirl a buff was a travel youtuber check out her channel whoo all right now it is time for my triple shot of his Brussels break which means now Noah takes over for the rest of this segment well this thing does work it'll do here we are once again at my humble abode now of course Saudi Arabia has lots of sand and rocks but a lot of the sand and rocks are like you know structured in a really cool way for example you have natural sites like this crater in this body which is sometimes called the Grand Canyon of Saudi Arabia and the center of the country you could find the edge of the world in addition the country has an abundance of hidden caves and chambers known as dolls Saudi Arabia is the largest economy in the Middle East and considered an energy superpower they are one of the top 20 economies in the world they have the fifth largest natural gas reserve and the second largest proven petroleum reserves at about 260 billion barrels this of course makes them the largest petroleum exporter in the world as well this means with the heavy supply at their disposal fuel is very cheap here's actually cheaper than water no joke I'm skin a bit dragged in water these reserves account for about 90 percent of their budget revenues and export earnings and about 42 percent of their overall GDP mostly managed by the country's largest and state-owned company Saudi Aramco anyway off that topic they also have about it doesn't voice cracks they also about a dozen or so nature reserves in protected areas throughout the country where you are most likely to find the desert wildlife and with that he's ur animal correspondent Gary Harlow it's Gary hollow he's back for Saudi Arabia Sidon places make great habitats for bird species like visits while the same grouse pelicans and storks otherwise they had jaws home to the various mammal species like the Arabian red fox the finnick sin cats striped hyenas and the highly endangered Arabian dwarf and Arabian leopard in fact my accents changing also the iconic mammal of many Arabian countries the Arabian oryx was handed to extinction but later reintroduce through a breeding program in Phoenix Arizona since then arabian ostriches and gazelles have also been reintroduced as well oh and one more last thing Saudi Arabia has the world's largest camel market and the funny thing is many of their camels are actually imported from Australia right that means that I'm out pick to you Noah thanks Gary and with that they finish off this segment like we always do you know what's coming are you ready for it food Saudi Arabia follows pretty much the same general middle-eastern format when it comes to food you know you'll see a lot of hummus and skewered meat on rice but for what it's worth here are some of the specialties you guys a saudi jogger peeps mentioned mo pata sally patrika ma sueb various types of Maundy murder taboc to read cruson daga beasts in what many considered the national dish cop saw which can have a variety of meats but chicken and camel are popular also in almost every household you will find cardamom coffee and as a very distinct cardamom smell and it is usually served with dates as an appetizer before any meal and speaking of traditions that brings us to the next segment the thank you Noah so all right if the Arab world was a family you know Egypt would be like the popular athlete actor guy with a lot of connections Iraq would be the wise old man that has a little PTSD Oman is like the happy mom that everyone loves that just made you dinner thought there is like the black sheep who doesn't care what anyone thinks of him Kuwait is like the classy rich cheerleader with straight A's ba hooray knees liked a slightly tipsy partying rich cheerleader calm down Bahrain I'm joking I'm joking what I mean come on everybody kind of knows your reputation with in the Arab world we all know it any Saudi Arabia and its people are well known throughout the world we'll break it down in a bit but first the graph Saudi Arabia has about thirty five million people and over half of the population is under 25 years old and about 80 percent of the country is urban the country is about 90 percent Arab and ethnicity and background and ten percent other groups mostly from Africa and Asia however it's important to note that numbers and statistics often may conflict from varying sources but the average general estimation is that actual Saudi citizens in themselves only make up about 60% of the country and the remaining 40% are expats from abroad the largest groups of expats coming from countries like India Pakistan Syria Bangladesh and the Philippines and a small community of about a hundred thousand Westerners mostly from Europe and the Americas Saudi Arabia uses the Saudi riyal as their currency they use the types a B G and F plug outlets and they drive on the right side of the road the official language of course is Arabic and it is also the original language of the Quran and thus it is considered the only pure and trusted form of the Quran to be written in keep in mind English is also widely spoken in Saudi Arabia I mean the British did kind of play a big role in their history former colony former Protectorate not colony now if you're gonna address the social structure of Saudi Arabia it kind of boils down to two main groups that run the show the royal family and the Allah Sheikh family and the shortest way I can summarize it the royal family kind of runs the government and the other Sheikh family kind of facilitates religion as the country is a theocracy to put it simply the House of Saud is the largest royal family on earth with an estimated number around 20,000 ish members they're spread across all the regions but most of the power and influence lies in about 2,000 of them and they are all descendants of Muhammad ibn Saud the founder of the Saud dynasty back in the 18th century the House of Saud didn't officially take over until the 1930s though prior to that they had to eras of control and it kind of went down like this let's seal an alliance by having our kids marry each other and let's join forces to control the area yeah oh no you don't also fun fact I'm gonna cut off your head and throw it into the Bosphorus Strait I'm gonna finish what my great-grandfather started and control the emirate of Nejd Oh richy's rapper I'm only 27 years old and I'm gonna take back my family's Kingdom with only 60 men and I'm gonna unify najd with head jaws oh that actually worked and whoa there's oil here I want to unify all Arabs and I believe the oil in Saudi Arabia should belong to all Arabs whoa I didn't sign up for that yeah Egypt had a lot of interesting ideas back in the 60s anyway for religion the Wahhabi religious movement within Sunni Islam has been described with debate as the prominent feature of Saudi culture I'm not here to eviscerate the inner of doctrinal complexities of Wahhabi or as locals call it Salafi doctrine but basically adherents claim that it is very fundamentalist conservative and Puritan somewhere around 75 to 85% in the country are Sunni Muslims and ten to fifteen are mostly Shia living in the East and South borders by Yemen all citizens are required to be Muslim and all open practice of other religions of any kind are restricted keep in mind non-muslims do live in Saudi Arabia like you know they got a lot of Filipino expats at a Christian or Hindus from India but you know everything has to be kind of like discrete like authorities won't arrest you if you say you're not Muslim and you can even kind of like openly talk about your beliefs but things like you know building places of worship and selling publishing and distributing the religious texts those are all forbidden this is where the episode is gonna go on the non sugarcoating direction isn't it we all saw this coming because the country has a standard of religious reputation to uphold like other Islamic theocratic nations there are many laws and rules in the country although not always strictly enforced that have heavy regulations and punishments for acts that many people from outside might not be able to wrap their head around they'd be like why is that punishable for example anything that is deemed too immodest is generally frowned upon I mean in stores you'll see like models with their bodies and faces blacked-out freedom of press and speech are restricted to some extent especially if it's criticizing the royal family pretty much all drugs are forbidden except for cigarettes alcohol is prohibited but everybody was a guy where they can get some the Internet is heavily restricted although everybody just kind of gets a VPN servers to bypass this and theoretically based on the law apostasy from Islam can be punishable by death if the individual refuses to recant and probably the most controversial one there are virtually no LGBT rights in the country and again theoretically based off of the law homosexuality can also be punishable by death given the circumstance I asked you guys the Saudi geography what your thoughts were on this and more or less you kind of said something along the lines of there isn't any active persecution or witch-hunt capital punishment incidents are far and wide in-between and rarely enacted nonetheless the LGBT lifestyle is just not something that can be compromised with an Islamic doctrine if you claim to be a Muslim keyword if you claim to be a Muslim this is also kind of why Saudi Arabia claims to have an incredibly low crime rate because I mean you know people are probably less inclined to commit an act if they know that the there's gonna be severe repercussions oh yeah anyway bouncing off of that topic after the hydrocarbon industry Saudi Arabia prospers a lot from the service sector driven by expats and with that here's art to explain if you rub it more than three times that's plane with it wish is my command why you gotta go there I might leave that in the video as we already mentioned in the Qatar episode Saudi Arabia is another country that has the often criticized Kafala system we won't get too much into it but basically the entire legal resident status of a migrant falls within the jurisdiction of the employer almost all construction maintenance and blue-collar services are done by expats nonetheless to ensure revenue circulates back to their own state the Ministry of Labour and Social Development issued that Nita khat policy in 2011 this policy requires saudi private sector firms to meet specific employment quotas for Saudi nationals / expats companies that fail to hire enough Saudi nationals risk losing government contracts this has been quite frustrating for certain businesses as most Saudis are unwilling to take service and manual labor jobs and are often not educated in technical jobs that are usually assigned to expats sometimes companies just bite the bullet and it's like okay are you Saudi yes why do you want the job can you do the job probably not can you at least show up if I feel like it you're hired on top of that there are no income taxes in Saudi Arabia but they do give 10% of their salary monthly for pension plans Thank You art and finally one issue that seems to be misconstrued a lot the role of women in Saudi Arabia I don't know Hannah you're a woman you take this part and explain what's the women's situation in Saudi Arabia right now well for one unlike before no women do not need the approval or permission of a man to get permits certificates paperwork or for travel and yes since 2017 women now have the right to drive cars Saudi women also for the first time took part in the Olympics no they are not required to wear jobs and you will see uncovered heads the women actually outnumber men in enrolment in universities up to 60% so overall things are changing nonetheless in public sometimes you will see gender specific segregation for men and then a different part for women and children Thank You Hannah we'll get back to you in a second nonetheless there's also social benefits like free Medicare and free education if you could accept it into a university so it's weird it's kind of like a heavily religious land with somewhat austere limiting policies polished with a shiny tech Laden exterior that's basically Saudi Arabia today anyway who I've been talking for a while it's time to take another triple shot of the semester break and with that here's culture stuff with Saudi Arabia is essentially the cradle of Arabism and it goes back on millennia prior to the rise of Islam in the 7th century the entire Peninsula was subject to a multitude of Arab tribes clans and smaller kingdoms originally Arab clans practice various forms of paganism and polytheistic beliefs before Islam these ancient kingdoms and civilizations influenced a set of folklore legends and tradition like the legend of Ali Baba and 40 thieves Sinbad the sailor and yes even Aladdin there's a ton of scary legendary creatures like the nos nos that has only half a body bent al-hasa whose lips are sewn shut she tickles men to death that is terrifying poetry is taken very seriously and is a national pastime they even have poetry competitions on TV with prizes of over a million dollars what I'm the poetry champ I should get in on this Paul my team I needed for the episode any Mayan you can go traditional architecture varies by region and is based on what resources were available at the time for example the Nejd region you will find thick mud brick box shaped homes with wooden beams in a communal courtyard otherwise and the Hejaz region more sandstone and wood is used in buildings as mentioned women normally wear abayas which come in black and also other colors men can often be found wearing filled with a gutter and a ghoul on their head if it gets cooled they might add a to it and when they hear a sassy comet they might respond with this please marriages are often heavily orchestrated by families arranged isn't really the best word because actually adults can reject each other if they want but family involvement is key otherwise some very popular pastimes include things like falconry camel racing and sidewalk skiing and finally festivals and celebrations are abundant you have Guardian in which kids dress in traditional clothes and go door to door asking for treats there National Day is the 23rd of September which is a big celebration with fireworks and skyscrapers light up with green and lots of music and dancing can be heard which brings us to Keith the rivalry continues so just so you guys know rush is my favorite band I probably said about this about 10,000 million times that's my commentary don't sue in Saudi Arabia let alone the Arab world music has always been an integral part of their culture each region kind of has their own specialty but the most popular one considered the national dance would be the Al Arda done with swords and drums it's pretty cool looking otherwise Saudi Arabia has a thriving kind of contemporary music scene ish EDM there's some metal bands it always kind of teeters on the edge of is it okay with the government or not so for instance like out on route there a black metal band out of Saudi Arabia but they have to live a life in secrecy because due to the lyrical content and for the music basically they can't be known who they are or whatever their musical is punishable how much more black metal can you get than that you also have the female of the all-female band the accolades so as you can imagine it's a very controversial band the band's first single Pinocchio has become an underground hit with a quarter million downloads from the group's page on MySpace I totally forgot about MySpace I wonder where tom is now do you guys remember Tom that's all I got you guys today Thank You Keith and now it's time for the briefly condensed history and famous people segment Neolithic period animal domestication buyed period pre-islamic kingdoms rise of Islam Rashi dune caliphate MyID caliphate a bastard caliphate fatimid caliphate splits off into tribal traditional rule in the sharif of mecca clashes with the Persians Ottoman rule the first and second states of Saudi rule unification and establishment of the kingdom oil discovered Gulf War attention cold war with Iran 2030 vision and here we are today for famous people I'm just gonna briefly summarize it pretty much all the former kings and some of the royal family members these actors these football / soccer players these singers and some notable Saudi females include these people as well all right and with that let's find out who Saudi Arabia interacts with across the world friendzone go now Saudi Arabia is a country everybody is paying attention to so naturally they play a big important geopolitical role on the world stage for one in a sense all Arabic speaking countries and Muslim majority countries have some kind of tie to Saudi Arabia Indonesia and Pakistan are probably the closest allies in Asia Pakistan is often called the closest non Arab Ally as they are shared bilateral relations since the country's inception in 1947 since then they've shared military alliances Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in Pakistan's infrastructure they even funded the construction of the biggest mosque in Pakistan which they named after King Faisal Pakistanis can easily obtain business permits in Saudi Arabia and Pakistanis provide assistance in the fields of technology and science they even decreed a week-long mourning period when King Fahd passed away in 2005 Indonesia is important as they are the largest Muslim nation on earth population wise and have the largest number quota of pilgrims for Hajj every year trade is crucial between them especially in the petroleum industry and today there are over 1 million Indonesian expats living in Saudi Arabia the USA and UK are probably the closest Western allies and Saudi Arabia was once a protectorate of the UK that worked side-by-side against the Ottoman Empire today over 200 joint ventures exist between them worth billions and over 30,000 British nationals live and work in the country the USA was also one of the first countries to recognize them after the Saudi family took over the US President Franklin Roosevelt personally even met the King to establish future relations today the two countries have a mutual defense agreement that involves operations and training for the Saudi military trade is huge between the two in many Saudi national study abroad in the USA or the UK especially members of the royal family tensions were a little strained after the 9/11 attacks in which it was revealed that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals and even though Saudi Arabia publicly denounced the act and stripped the Taliban members of their Saudi citizenship including Osama bin Laden as well as helping against the fight against terrorism the stigma slightly stuck to the American public nonetheless relations are still relatively strong today Jordan is kind of like the sidekick of Saudi Arabia the two get along very well at first it was a little tense though because you know Saudis were kind of responsible for ending the Hashemite kingdom's rule over the Hejaz region but that's not really an issue they bring up anymore when it comes to their best friends however most Saudis I've talked to have said probably their fellow GCC countries the Emirates Bahrain and Kuwait Kuwait has a heartfelt place in the minds of Saudis they protected the House of Saud when they're in exile from the Rashid dynasty and Saudi Arabia gave refuge to some of the Kuwaiti royal family during the Gulf War and they participated in the fighting against Saddam's Iraqi forces from taking over Bahrain as we mentioned is basically Saudi Arabia's hot girlfriend that he absolutely loves to visit and party with Bahrain is essentially where Saudis go to get away from the strict life of being a Saudi to have had virtually no controversies the royal families love visiting each other and they have cooperated on almost every single diplomatic measure since each country's beginning the UAE is the fun brother that like Bahrain they love to hang with Saudi Arabia also kind of likes to observe the UAE like an experiment so they can take notes on which practices they can implement in their own social structure for future development for what it's worth though when a Saudi and Emirati or Bahraini meet they don't even feel a sense of nationhood they just feel a welcomed kinship oh and of course everyone loves Oman can't forget about them Oman is like the loving grandma nobody disrespects in conclusion Saudi Arabia is today faced with a unique situation in which they kind of have to find a way to like coalesce Islam and Arab tradition with advancements and ideas that sometimes bring a little bit of a challenge to Islam and Arab tradition they are a Quran wrapped in steel and concrete covered in a beast hidden in the ancient sands of the 21st century stay tuned Senegal is coming up next [Music]

Channel: Geography Now

Views: 2,185,099

Keywords: Geography, facts, info, cool, education, learning, countries, history, class, lesson, funny, travel

Id: tP68QwVvAZk

Length: 29min 2sec (1742 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 03 2020