Riyadh
- Arabic:
- Al-Riyāḍ
Where is Riyadh located?
What is the climate in Riyadh?
Why is Riyadh called the cultural capital of Saudi Arabia?
When did Riyadh become the capital of Saudi Arabia?
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Riyadh, city and capital of Saudi Arabia. The city’s name is derived from the plural of the Arabic rawḍah, meaning gardens or meadows, so named for a natural fertility provided by its location at the juncture of Wadis Ḥanīfah and Al-Baṭḥāʾ. The spectacular sight of Riyadh from the air, illuminated in the evening by city lights, is reminiscent of its eponymous meadows; a bright sea of lights dot the desert as if fluorescent flower gardens have suddenly blossomed among its dark contours.
The city is located in the Minṭaqat Al-Riyāḍ, one of the country’s 13 provinces, and is situated in the central portions of both the country and the larger Arabian Peninsula. Few of the world’s cities have transformed as rapidly as Riyadh, which grew from a small, fortified desert village in the 17th century into a modern metropolis of several million inhabitants in the 20th century. Area city, 600 square miles (1,550 square km). Pop. (2022) 6,924,566.
Character of the city
Life in Riyadh is concentrated around the city’s more than 18,000 mosques and its numerous busy shopping centers. The city’s central core and its many souks (marketplaces) attract heavy pedestrian traffic, emphasizing the city’s intense feeling of vitality. As residents of a major city in a mainly Muslim (see Islam) country, Riyadh’s inhabitants adhere to a number of social norms that include segregation of the sexes and the need to protect the privacy of the family. Recreational activities are often a family affair, and large public gatherings are mainly restricted to male attendants. However, many activity centers allow women and families to attend at special times or in reserved areas.
Riyadh’s physical layout is dominated by its street system—a highly defined grid made up of 1.25-mile by 1.25-mile (2-km by 2-km) square blocks—which provides a network across the cityscape. This grid system is navigable, but it is also considered by some to be confining, because of its regimented compartmentalization of the city’s communities and neighborhoods.
Landscape
City site
The city of Riyadh is located approximately 1,950 feet (600 meters) above sea level in eastern Najd (“Highland”)—a region largely dominated by a rocky plateau landscape—in the center of the Arabian Peninsula. Najd’s broad, mountain-studded plateau gives way in the center and east to a series of escarpments arching from north to south, including Al-Khuff, Jilh Al-ʿIshār, and, the longest and highest of these, the Ṭuwayq Mountains. With a length of some 800 miles (1,300 km), the Ṭuwayq Mountains constitute the backbone of the most densely settled part of Najd, of which Riyadh is a part; the topography of Riyadh itself, however, is relatively flat. Soils in and around the city are made up of an alluvium of gravel, sand, silt, clay deposits, and a limestone subsoil.
Climate
Riyadh’s climate is characterized by extreme heat in the summer, with average temperatures reaching the low 100s F (low 40s C), and coolness in the winter, with lows averaging in the low 50s F (low 10s C), though there is a large difference between daytime and nighttime temperatures. Because of the distance from major bodies of water and the general scarcity of precipitation in the city, humidity in Riyadh remains low throughout the year, especially during the summer. When precipitation does occur, it is largely confined to the months between November and May.
City layout
Riyadh itself is an amorphous expanse of neighborhoods and subdivisions bounded by wide roads lined with commercial strip development. Two of the city’s most-recognizable tower buildings are Al-Fayṣaliyyah (Al-Faisaliah) center, which contains office space, a number of restaurants, and a luxury hotel, and the Markaz Al-Mamlakah (“Kingdom Centre”), which offers an expansive complex of office, retail, dining, and accommodation spaces located within and around its landmark tower.
The form and structure of the city has been reinforced by a number of large-scale construction projects undertaken in the latter half of the 20th century and in the early 21st century, including the establishment of the Diplomatic Quarter, where embassies and the offices of international organizations are located, and the redevelopment of the Qaṣr Al-Ḥukm (“Justice Palace”) district, which houses most of the central shops. Other important projects have included the Government Center, King Saud University, Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, the King Abdulaziz Historical Center, and the creation of “industrial cities”—centers where land leases and utilities are available for reduced rates and the development of various classes of industry is encouraged.
People
Between 1930 and the early 21st century, the population of Riyadh grew from about 27,000 to more than 5,000,000, a dramatic increase rooted in high birth rates coupled with the rapid economic growth of the 1970s and ’80s. During these years Riyadh also experienced an influx of immigrants, including foreign laborers. This influx contributed to a continuing, pervasive societal dependence on expatriate labor; by the beginning of the 21st century, Saudis accounted for only about two-fifths of Riyadh’s workforce. In addition to foreign laborers, a large number of Saudis from elsewhere within the country moved to Riyadh during the 1970s and ’80s, many of them from rural areas. This trend reflected the general migration of Saudis from rural areas to urban locations within the country that contributed in part to a massive reversal of the urban-to-rural ratio. While throughout Saudi Arabia in the early 1970s there existed one urban dweller for every three rural dwellers, by 1990 it was nearly the opposite, and the populations of urban areas such as Riyadh swelled dramatically. At the beginning of the 21st century, tens of thousands of Saudis continued to move from rural areas to the city of Riyadh each year.
Saudi nationals constitute about two-thirds of the city’s population. Among the non-Saudi population, Asians (among whom Indians and Pakistanis predominate) represent about one-half, and Arabs (among whom Egyptians and Yemenis predominate) constitute about two-fifths. Small proportions of Europeans and Americans also reside in the city. On the whole, Riyadh’s population is quite young; more than half of the residents are younger than 35 years old, and less than one-fifth are older than 60. Males constitute about half the city’s Saudi population but nearly three-fourths of the non-Saudi population, as many expatriate laborers come to work in Riyadh without their families. The average family size is large, with Saudi families averaging more than six members and non-Saudi families averaging approximately five members.
Within the country, religious activities aside from the practice of Islam are prohibited by law, though non-Muslim foreigners have been permitted to worship in private. As a result, Riyadh is in effect an almost wholly Islamic city. Each day begins with the call to dawn prayers (ṣalāt al-fajr; see ṣalāt) issued from loudspeakers at nearby mosques; worshippers pray four more times during the day and into the evening, attending the city’s ubiquitous mosques or choosing other locations where they can perform their ritual ablutions and prayers.