العربية السعودية (al-Arabiyah as-Su'udiyah)¹--part: Northern Frontier,² Jawf, Ha'il, ar-Riyad, Najran and Qasim³

How is the land laid out?

All of this area is arid or semi-arid plateau, cut by seasonally wet gullies (wadis), and sometimes mitigated by oases like al-Jawf, north of the an-Nafud desert, Ha'il, south of it, and ar-Riyad⁴ in the area's center.

The south consists of the western part of the Empty Quarter (Rub al-Khali), a trackless waste.

Map

Who lives there?

The majority, probably more than eight in ten,⁵ speak dialects of Arabian Spoken Arabic and are Sunni Moslems.

The rest--mostly immigrants since the 20th century--speak a miscellany of languages; some of these are Sunni Moslems, a few are Shi'ites and some are Christians.

الرياض (Ar-Riyād or Riyadh) is the only city with over a million people.

Who was there before?

The past

The city of former importance is الدر9ية (ad-Dir'iyah or Dir'iyah, Deraiya) whose old district ruins are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Around the Area

northwest
northeast
east
south
west

Footnotes

1. Saudi Arabia in English.
2. al-Hudud-as-Samaliyah in transliterated Arabic.
3. Also transliterated from Arabic as Qassim.
4. Or Riyadh.
5. The distribution of the newer immigrants through the nation is not known to me, and probably varies over time. It is likely that most are in the vicinity of ad-Damman, ar-Riyad and perhaps Jiddah. The second of these is in this area.