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Saudi Arabia is the largest Arab state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the
Arabian Peninsula and the second-largest in the Arab world (after
Algeria .
It is bordered by Jordan, and Iraq on the north and northeast, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates on the east, Oman on the southeast, and Yemen on the south. The Red Sea lies to its west, and the Persian Gulf lies to the east.
The
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded by Abdul-Aziz
bin Saud (known for most of his career as
Ibn Saud in
1932 although the conquests which eventually led to the creation of the
Kingdom began in
1902 when he captured Riyadh, the ancestral home of his family, the
House of Saud referred to in Arabic as Al Saud. The Saudi
Arabian government, which has been an absolute
monarchy since its inception, refers to its system of government as being
Islam c, though this is contested by many due to its strong basis in Wahhabism and Salafism, which are minority schools of thought in
Islam The
kingdom is sometimes called "The Land of the Two Holy Mosques" in reference to Al-Masjid al-Haram (in
Mecca , and Al-Masjid al-Nabawi (in
Medina , the two holiest places in
Islam
Saudi Arabia has the world's second largest
oil reserves which are concentrated largely in the Eastern Province and
oil accounts for more than 95% of
export and 70% of government revenue. This facilitates the creation of a welfare state although the share of the non-
oil economy is growing recently. It has also the world's sixth largest natural gas reserves.