1. Saudi Arabia shares borders with Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and Yemen. Their primary industry is petroleum, although they also produce natural gas, iron ore, gold and copper. 90% of their export dollars are from oil (Liberty, 2006).
2. Ethnicity is 90% Arab and 10% Afro-Asian. Religion is Islam (100%) and the language spoken is Arabic. Literacy rate is 78.8% (Liberty, 2006).
3. Jeddah: The location of the Biblical Eve’s Tomb. The name of the city could come from the word for grandmother: Jaddah.
4. KSA is the home of the two most holy places for Muslims, Mecca and Medina.
5. Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s driest countries. However, the southwestern province of Asir experiences monsoons between May and October (Liberty, 2006).
6. It is the 14th largest country and it has the largest sand desert on earth.
7. It doesn’t collect taxes from the populace and it provides free public health care.
8.  It spends 25 % of it’s budget on education (both grade schools and universities).
9. Classrooms are strictly segregated by gender, and women are prohibited from studying certain subjects (Liberty, 2006).
10. It has no permanent lakes or rivers (Liberty, 2006).
11. 75 % of it’s population is younger than 35 years old and the average age is 18 years old.
12. Women in the government sector are given 2 years of paid maternal leave.
13. Women are banned from driving, and wear abayas (long cloak) in most public areas.
14.  The population total includes nearly 6 million non-nationals (21%). Approximately 100,000 foreigners enter the country each year, mostly to fill specific job openings (Liberty, 2006).
15. The legal code permits corporal punishment, such as flogging, as well as amputation, stoning, and execution by beheading, although the use of such punishments reportedly has declined (Liberty, 2006).
16.  The government owns and operates the radio and television companies in Saudi Arabia. Censors remove objectionable material deemed offensive by the standards of Islam, including references to pork, Christianity and other religions, alcohol, and sex (Liberty, 2006).
17. Conversion from Islam to another religion is illegal, punishable in theory, if not in recent practice, by execution (Liberty, 2006).

Sources

Liberty of Congress-Federal Research Division. (2006).  Country Profile: Saudi Arabia. Retrieved from <http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/profiles/Saudi_Arabia.pdf>