title: Saudi Arabia

text: In the wake of Jamal Khashoggi's murder in October 2018, the US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and the US defence secretary Jim Mattis called for a ceasefire in Yemen within 30 days followed by UN-initiated peace talks. Pompeo has asked Saudi Arabia and the UAE to stop their airstrikes on populated areas in Yemen. Theresa May backed the US call to end the coalition. President of the International Rescue Committee David Miliband called the US announcement as "the most significant breakthrough in the war in Yemen for four years".


title: Saudi Arabia

text: In September 2020, Showtime announced that it will premiere its original documentary, "Kingdom of Silence", on 2 October that year. The film was based on the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi authorities. Directed by filmmaker Rick Rowley, the documentary examines the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia, as a backdrop to the murder of Khashoggi, along with the interactions between the Trump administration and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Another documentary by Bryan Fogel, "The Dissident", which excavated a web of deceit behind the murder, was to be released on the same day that marked the second death anniversary of Khashoggi.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Jeremy Hunt, the UK Foreign Secretary, on his visit to Saudi Arabia and the UAE on 12 November 2018, is expected to raise the need for a ceasefire from all sides in the four-year-long Yemen civil war. The US called for a ceasefire within 30 days. Andrew Smith, of Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), said that Hunt and Boris Johnson "played an utterly central and complicit role in arming and supporting the Saudi-led destruction of Yemen."


title: Saudi Arabia

text: In 2017, as part of its nuclear power program, Saudi Arabia planned to extract uranium domestically, taking a step towards self-sufficiency in producing nuclear fuel. On 24 August 2017, the kingdom signed a memorandum of understanding with China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) to explore and assess uranium On 4 August 2020, a report claimed that Saudi Arabia has constructed a facility in the desert near Al-'Ula for extracting uranium yellowcake from uranium ore with the help of China. The facility raised concerns among the US and allied officials about Saudi nuclear energy plans and the country's option of developing nuclear weapon. On 19 August 2020, Congressional Democrats asked the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to provide information about China's alleged role in building a uranium processing facility in Saudi Arabia.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: On 17 September 2020, "The Guardian" released an exclusive report revealing that Saudi Arabia was paving the way for domestic production of nuclear fuel. The confidential report obtained by the media house stated that the kingdom was assisted by Chinese geologists to produce over 90,000 tonnes of uranium from three major deposits in the centre and northwest of Saudi, near the NEOM megacity development. The disclosure raised concerns regarding Riyadh's aggressive interest in developing atomic weapons program. Apart from China, the UN nuclear watchdog, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was also assisting Saudi's nuclear ambition.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: According to the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki in March 2014, Saudi Arabia along with Qatar provided political, financial, and media support to terrorists against the Iraqi government. Similarly, President of Syria Bashar al-Assad noted that the sources of the extreme ideology of the terrorist organization ISIS and other such salafist extremist groups are the Wahabbism that has been supported by the royal family of Saudi Arabia.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Relations with the U.S. became strained following 9/11 terror attacks. American politicians and media accused the Saudi government of supporting terrorism and tolerating a "jihadist" culture. Indeed, Osama bin Laden and 15 out of the 19 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia; in ISIL-occupied Raqqa, in mid-2014, all 12 judges were Saudi. The leaked US Department of State memo, dated 17 August 2014, says that "governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia...are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIS and other radical groups in the region." According to former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, "Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups... Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide." Former CIA director James Woolsey described it as "the soil in which Al-Qaeda and its sister terrorist organizations are flourishing." The Saudi government denies these claims or that it exports religious or cultural extremism. In April 2016, Saudi Arabia has threatened to sell off $750 billion in Treasury securities and other US assets if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be sued over 9/11. In September 2016, the Congress passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act that would allow relatives of victims of the 11 September attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for its government's alleged role in the attacks. Congress overwhelmingly rejected President Barack Obama's veto.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: According to Sir William Patey, former British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, the kingdom funds mosques throughout Europe that have become hotbeds of extremism. "They are not funding terrorism. They are funding something else, which may down the road lead to individuals being radicalised and becoming fodder for terrorism," Patey said. He said that Saudi has been funding an ideology that leads to extremism and the leaders of the kingdom are not aware of the consequences.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: However, since 2016 the kingdom began backing away from Islamist ideologies. Several reforms took place including curbing the powers of religious police, stopping funding mosques in foreign countries, and first mixed-gender concert performed by woman. In 2017, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman declared a return to “moderate Islam”.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The Saudi Arabian Military Forces consists of the Royal Saudi Land Forces, the Royal Saudi Air Force, the Royal Saudi Navy, the Royal Saudi Air Defense, the Royal Saudi Strategic Missile Force, the Saudi Arabian National Guard, the Saudi Arabian Royal Guard, the Saudi Arabian Border Guard, the Saudi Arabian Emergency Force, the Special Security Forces, and the Special Security Unit, totalling nearly 480,700 active-duty personnel. In addition, there is the General Intelligence Presidency, Saudi Arabia's primary intelligence agency.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The kingdom has a long-standing military relationship with Pakistan, it has long been speculated that Saudi Arabia secretly funded Pakistan's atomic bomb programme and seeks to purchase atomic weapons from Pakistan, in near future. The SANG is not a reserve but a fully operational front-line force, and originated out of Ibn Saud's tribal military-religious force, the Ikhwan. Its modern existence, however, is attributable to it being effectively Abdullah's private army since the 1960s and, unlike the rest of the armed forces, is independent of the Ministry of Defense and Aviation. The SANG has been a counterbalance to the Sudairi faction in the royal family: The late prince Sultan, former Minister of Defense and Aviation, was one of the so-called 'Sudairi Seven' and controlled the remainder of the armed forces until his death in 2011.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia has one of the highest percentages of military expenditure in the world, spending around 8% of its GDP in its military, according to the 2020 SIPRI estimate, which places it as the world's third biggest military spender behind the United States and China, and the world's largest arms importer from 2015 to 2019, receiving half of all the US arms exports to the Middle East. Spending on defence and security has increased significantly since the mid-1990s and was about US$78.4 billion, as of 2019.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: According to the BICC, Saudi Arabia is the 28th most militarized country in the world and possesses the second-best military equipment qualitatively in the region, after Israel. Its modern high-technology arsenal makes Saudi Arabia among the world's most densely armed nations, with its military equipment being supplied primarily by the US, France, and Britain.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The United States sold more than $80 billion in military hardware between 1951 and 2006 to the Saudi military. On 20 October 2010, the US State Department notified Congress of its intention to make the biggest arms sale in American history—an estimated $60.5 billion purchase by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The package represents a considerable improvement in the offensive capability of the Saudi armed forces. 2013 saw Saudi military spending climb to $67bn, overtaking that of the UK, France and Japan to place fourth globally.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The United Kingdom has also been a major supplier of military equipment to Saudi Arabia since 1965. Since 1985, the UK has supplied military aircraft—notably the Tornado and Eurofighter Typhoon combat aircraft—and other equipment as part of the long-term Al-Yamamah arms deal estimated to have been worth £43 billion by 2006 and thought to be worth a further £40 billion. In May 2012, British defence giant BAE signed a £1.9bn ($3bn) deal to supply Hawk trainer jets to Saudi Arabia.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI, in 2010–14 Saudi Arabia became the world's second-largest arms importer, receiving four times more major arms than in 2005–2009. Major imports in 2010–14 included 45 combat aircraft from the UK, 38 combat helicopters from the US, four tanker aircraft from Spain, and over 600 armoured vehicles from Canada. Saudi Arabia has a long list of outstanding orders for arms, including 27 more combat aircraft from the UK, 154 combat aircraft from the US, and a large number of armoured vehicles from Canada. Saudi Arabia received 41 per cent of UK arms exports in 2010–14. France authorized $18 billion in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in 2015 alone. The $15 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia is believed to be the largest arms sale in Canadian history. In 2016, the European Parliament decided to temporarily impose an arms embargo against Saudi Arabia, as a result of the Yemen civilian population's suffering from the conflict with Saudi Arabia. In 2017, Saudi Arabia signed a 110 billion dollar arms deal with the United States.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia is Britain's largest arms customer, with more than £4.6 billion worth of arms bought since the start of Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. A recent poll conducted by YouGov for Save the Children and Avaaz stated that 63 per cent of British people oppose the sale of weapons to Saudi.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Following the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a nonbinding resolution was passed in the European Parliament on 25 October 2018, urging EU countries to impose an EU-wide arms embargo on Saudi Arabia. Germany became the first Western government to suspend future arms deal with the kingdom after Angela Merkel stated that "arms exports can't take place in the current circumstances."


title: Saudi Arabia

text: According to the new report from the Department of Global Affairs, Canada sold record-breaking amount of military hardware to Saudi Arabia in 2019, despite its poor human rights record.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The Saudi government, which mandates Muslim and non-Muslim observance of Sharia law under the absolute rule of the House of Saud, has been denounced by various international organizations and governments for violating human rights within the country. The authoritarian regime ruling the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is consistently ranked among the "worst of the worst" in Freedom House's annual survey of political and civil rights. According to Amnesty International, security forces continue to torture and ill- treat detainees to extract confessions to be used as evidence against them at trial. Saudi Arabia abstained from the United Nations vote adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, saying it contradicted sharia law. Mass executions, such as those carried out in 2016, in 2019, and in 2022, have been condemned by international rights groups.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabian law does not recognize sexual orientations or religious freedom, and the public practice of non-Muslim religions is actively prohibited. The justice system regularly engages in capital punishment, including public executions by beheading. In line with sharia law in the Saudi justice system, the death penalty can theoretically be imposed for a wide range of offenses, including murder, rape, armed robbery, repeated drug use, apostasy, adultery, witchcraft and sorcery, and can be carried out by beheading with a sword, stoning or firing squad, followed by crucifixion (exposure of the body after execution). In 2022, the Saudi Crown Prince stated that capital punishments in Saudi Arabia will be removed "except for one category mentioned in the Quran", namely homicide, under which certain conditions must be applied. In April 2020, Saudi Supreme Court issued a directive to eliminate the punishment of flogging from the Saudi court system, and it is to be replaced by imprisonment or fines.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Historically, Saudi women faced discrimination in many aspects of their lives, and under the male guardianship system were effectively treated as legal minors. Although they made up 70% of those enrolled in universities, women comprised 5% of the workforce in Saudi Arabia, the lowest proportion in the world at the time.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia is a notable destination country for men and women trafficked for the purposes of slave labour and commercial sexual exploitation. Men and women from Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and many other countries voluntarily travel to Saudi Arabia as domestic servants or other low-skilled labourers, but some subsequently face conditions indicative of involuntary servitude.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: In November 2022, human rights organizations said Saudi Arabia resumed secret executions for drug offences. In 2018, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had vowed to “minimise” capital punishment. The regime had said that only those found guilty of a murder or of manslaughter will be sentenced to death. However, November 2022 reports revealed that the authorities executed 17 people in 10 days over non-violent drug charges. It included 7 Saudis, 4 Syrians, 3 Pakistanis and 3 Jordanians. The executions majorly including beheading with a sword, bringing the total executions of 2022 to at least 137. It exceeded the combined number of executions of 2020 and 2021. The UN was not sure how many more people were on a death row. However, the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR) said nearly 54 more people, including 8 minors, were on death row.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia occupies about 80 per cent of the Arabian Peninsula (the world's largest peninsula), lying between latitudes 16° and 33° N, and longitudes 34° and 56° E. Because the country's southern borders with the United Arab Emirates and Oman are not precisely marked, the exact size of the country is undefined. The United Nations Statistics Division estimates and lists Saudi Arabia as the world's 12th largest state. It is geographically the largest country in the Middle East and the Arabian Plate.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia's diverse geography is dominated by the Arabian Desert, associated semi-desert, shrubland, steppes, several mountain ranges, volcanic lava fields and highlands. The Rub' al Khali ("Empty Quarter") in the southeastern part of the country is the world's largest contiguous sand desert. Though there are lakes in the country, Saudi Arabia is the largest country in the world by area with no permanent rivers. Wadis, non-permanent rivers, however, are very numerous. The fertile areas are to be found in the alluvial deposits in wadis, basins, and oases. The main topographical feature is the central plateau which rises abruptly from the Red Sea and gradually descends into the Nejd and toward the Persian Gulf. On the Red Sea coast, there is a narrow coastal plain, known as the Tihamah parallel to which runs an imposing escarpment. The southwest province of Asir is mountainous, and contains the Mount Sawda, which is the highest point in the country. Saudi Arabia is home to more than 2000 dormant volcanoes. Lava fields in Hejaz, known locally by their Arabic name of harrat (the singular is harrah), form one of Earth's largest alkali basalt regions, covering some , an area greater than the state of Missouri.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Except for the southwestern regions such as Asir, Saudi Arabia has a desert climate with very high day-time temperatures during the summer and a sharp temperature drop at night. Average summer temperatures are around , but can be as high as at its most extreme. In the winter the temperature rarely drops below with the exception of mostly the northern regions of the country where annual snowfall, in particular in the mountainous regions of Tabuk province, is not uncommon. The lowest recorded temperature to date, −12.0 °C (10.4 °F), was measured in Turaif.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: In the spring and autumn the heat is temperate, temperatures average around . Annual rainfall is very low. The Southern regions differ in that they are influenced by the Indian Ocean monsoons, usually occurring between October and March. An average of of rainfall occurs during this period, which is about 60 per cent of the annual precipitation. Saudi Arabia is home to approximately 1300 islands.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia is home to five terrestrial ecoregions: Arabian Peninsula coastal fog desert, Southwestern Arabian foothills savanna, Southwestern Arabian montane woodlands, Arabian Desert, and Red Sea Nubo-Sindian tropical desert and semi-desert.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Wildlife includes the Arabian leopard, wolf, striped hyena, mongoose, baboon, hare, sand cat, and jerboa. Animals such as gazelles, oryx, leopards and cheetahs were relatively numerous until the 19th century, when extensive hunting reduced these animals almost to extinction. The culturally important Asiatic lion occurred in Saudi Arabia until the late 19th century before it was hunted to extinction in the wild. Birds include falcons (which are caught and trained for hunting), eagles, hawks, vultures, sandgrouse, and bulbuls. There are several species of snakes, many of which are venomous. Saudi Arabia is home to a rich marine life. The Red Sea in particular is a rich and diverse ecosystem. More than 1200 species of fish have been recorded in the Red Sea, and around 10 per cent of these are found nowhere else. This also includes 42 species of deepwater fish.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The rich diversity is in part due to the of coral reef extending along its coastline; these fringing reefs are 5000–7000 years old and are largely formed of stony acropora and porites corals. The reefs form platforms and sometimes lagoons along the coast and occasional other features such as cylinders (such as the Blue Hole (Red Sea) at Dahab). These coastal reefs are also visited by pelagic species of Red Sea fish, including some of the 44 species of shark.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The Red Sea also contains many offshore reefs including several true atolls. Many of the unusual offshore reef formations defy classic (i.e., Darwinian) coral reef classification schemes, and are generally attributed to the high levels of tectonic activity that characterize the area.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Domesticated animals include the legendary Arabian horse, Arabian camel, sheep, goats, cows, donkeys, chickens, etc. Reflecting the country's dominant desert conditions, Saudi Arabia's plant life mostly consists of herbs, plants, and shrubs that require little water. The date palm ("Phoenix dactylifera") is widespread.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia is divided into 13 regions (; "manatiq idāriyya", sing. منطقة إدارية; "mintaqah idariyya"). The regions are further divided into 118 governorates (; "muhafazat", sing. محافظة; "muhafazah"). This number includes the 13 regional capitals, which have a different status as municipalities (; "amanah") headed by mayors (; "amin"). The governorates are further subdivided into sub-governorates (; "marakiz", sing. مركز; "markaz").


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia has the world's second-largest proven petroleum reserves and the country is the largest exporter of petroleum. It also has the fifth-largest proven natural gas reserves. Saudi Arabia is considered an "energy superpower". It has the second highest total estimated value of natural resources, valued at US$34.4 trillion in 2016.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia's command economy is petroleum-based; roughly 63% of budget revenues and 67% of export earnings come from the oil industry. It is strongly dependent on foreign workers with about 80% of those employed in the private sector being non-Saudi.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Challenges to the Saudi economy include halting or reversing the decline in per-capita income, improving education to prepare youth for the workforce and providing them with employment, diversifying the economy, stimulating the private sector and housing construction, and diminishing corruption and inequality.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The oil industry constitutes about 45% of Saudi Arabia's nominal gross domestic product, compared with 40% from the private sector (see below). Saudi Arabia officially has about of oil reserves, comprising about one-fifth of the world's proven total petroleum reserves.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: In the 1990s, Saudi Arabia experienced a significant contraction of oil revenues combined with a high rate of population growth. Per capita income fell from a high of $11,700 at the height of the oil boom in 1981 to $6,300 in 1998. Taking into account the impact of the real oil price changes on the kingdom's real gross domestic income, the real command-basis GDP was computed to be 330.381 billion 1999 USD in 2010. Increases in oil prices in the early 2000s helped boost per capita GDP to $17,000 in 2007 dollars (about $7,400 adjusted for inflation), but have declined since oil price drop in mid-2014.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) limits its members' oil production based on their "proven reserves." Saudi Arabia's published reserves have shown little change since 1980, with the main exception being an increase of about between 1987 and 1988. Matthew Simmons has suggested that Saudi Arabia is greatly exaggerating its reserves and may soon show production declines (see peak oil).


title: Saudi Arabia

text: From 2003 to 2013, "several key services" were privatized—municipal water supply, electricity, telecommunications—and parts of education and health care, traffic control and car accident reporting were also privatized. According to Arab News columnist Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg, "in almost every one of these areas, consumers have raised serious concerns about the performance of these privatized entities." The Tadawul All Share Index (TASI) of the Saudi stock exchange peaked at 16,712.64 in 2005, and closed at 8,535.60, at the end of 2013. In November 2005, Saudi Arabia was approved as a member of the World Trade Organization. Negotiations to join had focused on the degree to which Saudi Arabia is willing to increase market access to foreign goods and in 2000, the government established the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority to encourage foreign direct investment in the kingdom. Saudi Arabia maintains a list of sectors in which foreign investment is prohibited, but the government plans to open some closed sectors such as telecommunications, insurance, and power transmission/distribution over time. The government has also made an attempt at "Saudizing" the economy, replacing foreign workers with Saudi nationals with limited success.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: In addition to petroleum and gas, Saudi also has a significant gold mining sector in the ancient Mahd adh Dhahab region and significant other mineral industries, an agricultural sector (especially in the southwest but not only) based on vegetables, fruits, dates etc. and livestock, and large number of temporary jobs created by the roughly two million annual "hajj" pilgrims.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia has had five-year "Development Plans" since 1970. Among its plans were to launch "economic cities" (e.g. King Abdullah Economic City) to be completed by 2020, in an effort to diversify the economy and provide jobs. four cities were planned. The King has announced that the per capita income is forecast to rise from $15,000 in 2006 to $33,500 in 2020. The cities will be spread around Saudi Arabia to promote diversification for each region and their economy, and the cities are projected to contribute $150 billion to the GDP.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia is increasingly activating its ports in order to participate in trade between Europe and China in addition to oil transport. To this end, ports such as Jeddah Islamic Port or King Abdullah Economic City are being rapidly expanded and investments are being made in logistics. The country is historically and currently part of the Maritime Silk Road that runs from the Chinese coast to the south via the southern tip of India to Mombasa, from there through the Red Sea via the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean, there to the Upper Adriatic region to the northern Italian hub of Trieste with its rail connections to Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the North Sea.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Statistics on poverty in the kingdom are not available through the UN resources because the Saudi government does not issue any. The Saudi state discourages calling attention to or complaining about poverty. In December 2011, the Saudi interior ministry arrested three reporters and held them for almost two weeks for questioning after they uploaded a video on the topic to YouTube. Authors of the video claim that 22 per cent of Saudis may be considered poor (2009). Observers researching the issue prefer to stay anonymous because of the risk of being arrested.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: In September 2018, the Public Investment Fund completed a deal with a group of global lenders for a loan of $11 billion. The deal raised more than initially planned and was the first time the PIF had incorporated loans and debt instruments into its funding. According to data from Fitch Ratings, over two years starting from May 2016 Saudi Arabia went from having zero debt to raising $68 billion in dollar-denominated bonds and syndicated loans—one of the fastest rates among emerging economies.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Each year, about a quarter-million young Saudis enter the job market. With the first phase of Saudization into effect, 70% of sales jobs are expected to be filled by Saudis. However, the private sector still remains hugely dominated by foreigners. The rate of local unemployment is 12.9%, its highest in more than a decade. According to a report published by Bloomberg Economics in 2018, the government needs to produce 700,000 jobs by 2020 to meet its 9% unemployment target.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The unexpected impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the economy, along with Saudi Arabia's poor human rights records, laid unforeseen challenges before the development plans of the kingdom, where some of the programs under 'Vision 2030' were also expected to be affected. On 2 May, the Finance Minister of Saudi Arabia admitted that the country's economy was facing a severe economical crisis for the first time in decades, due to the pandemic as well as declining global oil markets. Mohammed Al-Jadaan said that the country will take "painful" measures and keep all options open to deal with the impact.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Serious large-scale agricultural development began in the 1970s. The government launched an extensive program to promote modern farming technology; to establish rural roads, irrigation networks and storage and export facilities; and to encourage agricultural research and training institutions.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: As a result, there has been a phenomenal growth in the production of all basic foods. Saudi Arabia is now completely self-sufficient in a number of foodstuffs, including meat, milk, and eggs.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The country exports wheat, dates, dairy products, eggs, fish, poultry, fruits, vegetables, and flowers to markets around the world. Dates, once a staple of the Saudi diet, are now mainly grown for global humanitarian aid.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: In addition, Saudi farmers grow substantial amounts of other grains such as barley, sorghum, and millet. As of 2016, in the interest of preserving precious water resources, domestic production of wheat has ended.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The Kingdom likewise has some of the most modern and largest dairy farms in the Middle East. Milk production boasts a remarkably productive annual rate of per cow, one of the highest in the world. The local dairy manufacturing company Almarai is the largest vertically integrated dairy company in the Middle East.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The Kingdom's most dramatic agricultural accomplishment, noted worldwide, was its rapid transformation from importer to exporter of wheat. In 1978, the country built its first grain silos. By 1984, it had become self-sufficient in wheat. Shortly thereafter, Saudi Arabia began exporting wheat to some 30 countries, including China and the former Soviet Union, and in the major producing areas of Tabuk, Hail, and Qasim, average yields reached .


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The Kingdom has, however, stepped up fruit and vegetable production, by improving both agricultural techniques and the roads that link farmers with urban consumers. Saudi Arabia is a major exporter of fruits and vegetables to its neighbours. Among its most productive crops are watermelon, grapes, citrus fruits, onions, squash, and tomatoes. At Jizan in the country's well-watered southwest, the Al-Hikmah Research Station is producing tropical fruits including pineapples, paw-paws, bananas, mangoes, and guavas.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The olive tree is indigenous to Saudi Arabia. In 2018, the Al Jouf Agricultural Development Company received a certificate of merit from The Guinness World Records for the largest modern olive plantation in the world. The farm covers 7730 hectares and has 5 million olive trees. Also, the Guinness World Records took their production capacity of 15000 tonnes of high-quality olive oil into consideration, while the kingdom consumes double that.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The Al Jouf farms are located in Sakaka, a city in the north-western part of Saudi Arabia, which is a deeply-rooted in history. Sakaka dates back more than 4,000 years. The Al Jouf region has millions of olive trees and the expected number is expected to go up to 20 million trees soon. Consuming non-renewable groundwater resulted in the loss of an estimated four-fifths of the total groundwater reserves by 2012.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Water supply and sanitation in Saudi Arabia is characterized by challenges and achievements. One of the main challenges is water scarcity. In order to overcome water scarcity, substantial investments have been undertaken in seawater desalination, water distribution, sewerage and wastewater treatment. Today about 50% of drinking water comes from desalination, 40% from the mining of non-renewable groundwater and only 10% from surface water in the mountainous southwest of the country. Saudi Arabia is suffering from a major depletion of the water in its underground aquifers and a resultant break down and disintegration of its agriculture as a consequence. As a result of the catastrophe, Saudi Arabia has bought agricultural land in the United States, Argentina, and Africa. Saudi Arabia ranked as a major buyer of agricultural land in foreign countries.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: According to the Joint Monitoring Program (JMP) for Water Supply and Sanitation of the WHO and UNICEF, the latest reliable source on access to water and sanitation in Saudi Arabia is the 2004 census. It indicates that 97% of the population had access to an improved source of drinking water and 99% had access to improved sanitation. For 2015, the JMP estimates that access to sanitation increased to 100%. Sanitation was primarily through on-site solutions and only about 40% of the population was connected to sewers. In 2015, still 886 thousand people lacked access to "improved" water.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Although most tourism in Saudi Arabia still largely involves religious pilgrimages, there is growth in the leisure tourism sector. According to the World Bank, approximately 14.3 million people visited Saudi Arabia in 2012, making it the world's 19th-most-visited country. Tourism is an important component of the Saudi Vision 2030 and according to a report conducted by BMI Research in 2018, both religious and non-religious tourism have significant potential for expansion.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Starting December 2018, the kingdom offers an electronic visa for foreign visitors to attend sports events and concerts. The "sharek" visa process started on 15 December 2018 when the Saudi Ad Diriyah E Prix race started. In September 2019, the kingdom announced its plans to open visa applications for visitors, where people from about 50 countries would be able to get tourist visas to Saudi. In January 2020, it was announced that holders of a US, UK or Schengen visa are eligible for a Saudi electronic visa upon arrival.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The population of Saudi Arabia as of July 2013 is estimated to be 26.9 million, including between 5.5 million and 10 million non-nationalized immigrants, though the Saudi population has long proved difficult to accurately estimate due to Saudi leaders' historical tendency to inflate census results. Saudi population has grown rapidly since 1950 when it was estimated to be 3 million, and for many years had one of the highest population growth rates in the world at around 3 per cent a year.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The ethnic composition of Saudi citizens is 90% Arab and 10% Afro-Arab. Most Saudis live in the Hejaz (35%), Najd (28%), and the Eastern Province (15%). Hejaz is the most populated region in Saudi Arabia.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: As late as 1970, most Saudis lived a subsistence life in the rural provinces, but in the last half of the 20th century, the kingdom has urbanized rapidly. about 80% of Saudis live in urban metropolitan areas—specifically Riyadh, Jeddah, or Dammam.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Its population is also quite young with over half the population under 25 years old. A large fraction are foreign nationals. (The CIA Factbook estimated that foreign nationals living in Saudi Arabia made up about 21% of the population. Other estimates are 30% or 33%) Immigrants make up 38.3% of the total population, according to UN data (2019), mostly coming from the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. As recently as the early 1960s, Saudi Arabia's slave population was estimated at 300,000. Slavery was officially abolished in 1962.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The official language of Saudi Arabia is Arabic. The three main regional variants spoken by Saudis are Najdi Arabic (about 14.6 million speakers), Hejazi Arabic (about 10.3 million speakers), and Gulf Arabic (about 0.96 million speakers). Faifi is spoken by about 50,000. The Mehri language is also spoken by around 20,000 Mehri citizens. Saudi Sign Language is the principal language of the deaf community, amounting to around 100,000 speakers. The large expatriate communities also speak their own languages, the most numerous of which, according to 2018 data, are Bengali (~1,500,000), Tagalog (~900,000), Punjabi (~800,000), Urdu (~740,000), Egyptian Arabic (~600,000), Rohingya, North Levantine Arabic (both ~500,000) and Malayalam.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Virtually all Saudi citizens are Muslim (officially, all are), and almost all Saudi residents are Muslim. Estimates of the Sunni population of Saudi Arabia range between 85% and 90%, with the remaining 10–15% being Shia Muslim, practicing either Twelver Shi'ism or Sulaymani Ismailism. The official and dominant form of Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia is commonly known as Wahhabism (proponents prefer the name Salafism, considering "Wahhabi" derogatory), which was founded in the Arabian Peninsula by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab in the 18th century. Other denominations, such as the minority Shia Islam, are systematically suppressed.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: According to estimates there are about 1,500,000 Christians in Saudi Arabia, almost all foreign workers. Saudi Arabia allows Christians to enter the country as foreign workers for temporary work, but does not allow them to practice their faith openly. The percentage of Saudi Arabian citizens who are Christians is officially zero, as Saudi Arabia forbids religious conversion from Islam (apostasy) and punishes it by death. According to Pew Research Center there are 390,000 Hindus in Saudi Arabia, almost all foreign workers. There may be a significant fraction of atheists and agnostics in Saudi Arabia, although they are officially called "terrorists". In its 2017 religious freedom report, the US State Department named Saudi Arabia a Country of Particular Concern (CPC).


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Education is free at all levels, although higher education is restricted to citizens only. The school system is composed of elementary, intermediate, and secondary schools. Classes are segregated by sex. At secondary level, students are able to choose from 3 types of schools: general education, vocational and technical, or religious. The rate of literacy is 99% among males and 96% among females in 2020. For the youth, literacy rate rose up to approximately 99.5% for both sexes.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: According to the educational plan for secondary (high school) education 1435–1438 Hijri, students enrolling in the "natural sciences" path are required to take five religion subjects which are tawhid, fiqh, tafsir, hadith and Islamic education and Quran. However, in 2021 the Saudi Ministry of Education merged the multiple Islamic subjects into one single book as part of a series of reforms to revamp the school education system. In addition, students are required to take six science subjects which are maths, physics, chemistry, biology, geology and computer.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Higher education has expanded rapidly, with large numbers of universities and colleges being founded particularly since 2000. Institutions of higher education include the country's first university, King Saud University founded in 1957, the Islamic University at Medina founded in 1961, and the King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah founded in 1967. Princess Norah University, the largest women's university in the world, was founded in 1970. King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, known as KAUST, is the first mixed-gender university campus in Saudi Arabia and was founded in 2009. Other colleges and universities emphasize curricula in sciences and technology, military studies, religion, and medicine. Institutes devoted to Islamic studies, in particular, abound. Women typically receive college instruction in segregated institutions.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The "Academic Ranking of World Universities", known as Shanghai Ranking, ranked 4 Saudi institutions among its 2021 list of the 500 top universities in the world. The QS World University Rankings lists 14 Saudi universities among the 2022 world’s top universities and 23 universities among the top 100 in the Arab world. The 2022 list of U.S. News & World Report Best Global University Ranking ranked King Abdulaziz University among the top 50 universities in the world and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology among the top 100 universities in the world.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: In 2018, Saudi Arabia ranked 28th worldwide in terms of high-quality research output according to the scientific journal "Nature."


title: Saudi Arabia

text: This makes Saudi Arabia the best performing Middle Eastern, Arab, and Muslim country. Saudi Arabia spends 8.8% of its gross domestic product on education, compared with the global average of 4.6%. Saudi Arabia was ranked 66th in the Global Innovation Index in 2021, up from 68th in 2019.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Memorization by rote of large parts of the Qur'an, its interpretation and understanding (Tafsir) and the application of Islamic tradition to everyday life is at the core of the curriculum. Religion taught in this manner is also a compulsory subject for all University students. As a consequence, Saudi youth "generally lacks the education and technical skills the private sector needs" according to the CIA. Similarly, "The Chronicle of Higher Education" wrote in 2010 that "the country needs educated young Saudis with marketable skills and a capacity for innovation and entrepreneurship. That's not generally what Saudi Arabia's educational system delivers, steeped as it is in rote learning and religious instruction."


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The religious sector of the Saudi national curriculum was examined in a 2006 report by Freedom House which concluded that "the Saudi public school religious curriculum continues to propagate an ideology of hate toward the 'unbeliever', that is, Christians, Jews, Shiites, Sufis, Sunni Muslims who do not follow Wahhabi doctrine, Hindus, atheists and others". The Saudi religious studies curriculum is taught outside the kingdom via Saudi-linked madrasah, schools, and clubs throughout the world. Critics have described the education system as "medieval" and that its primary goal "is to maintain the rule of absolute monarchy by casting it as the ordained protector of the faith, and that Islam is at war with other faiths and cultures". This radical teaching takes place in Saudi funded mosques and madrasas across the Islamic world from Morocco to Pakistan to Indonesia.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The approach taken in the Saudi education system has been accused of encouraging Islamic terrorism, leading to reform efforts. Following the 9/11 attacks, the government aimed to tackle the twin problems of encouraging extremism and the inadequacy of the country's university education for a modern economy, by slowly modernising the education system through the "Tatweer" reform program. The Tatweer program is reported to have a budget of approximately US$2 billion and focuses on moving teaching away from the traditional Saudi methods of memorization and rote learning towards encouraging students to analyse and problem-solve. It also aims to create an education system which will provide a more secular and vocationally based training.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: In 2021, the "Washington Post" newspaper published a report on the measures taken by Saudi Arabia to clean textbooks from paragraphs considered antisemitic and sexist. The paragraphs dealing with the punishment of homosexuality or same-sex relations have been deleted, and expressions of admiration for the extremist martyrdom. Antisemitic expressions and calls to fight the Jews became fewer. David Weinberg, director of international affairs for the Anti-Defamation League, said that references to demonizing Jews, Christians, and Shiites have been removed from some places or have toned down, noting the deletion of paragraphs that talk about killing gays, infidels and witches. The US State Department expressed in an email that it welcomed the changes to the materials affecting Saudi educational curricula. The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs supports a training program for Saudi teachers.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Health care in Saudi Arabia is a national health care system in which the government provides free health care services through a number of government agencies. Saudi Arabia has been ranked among the 26 best countries in providing high quality healthcare.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The Saudi Ministry of Health (MOH) is the major government agency entrusted with the provision of preventive, curative, and rehabilitative health care for the kingdom's population. The Ministry's origins can be traced to 1925, when a number of regional health departments were established, with the first in Makkah, Saudi Arabia. The various healthcare institutions were merged to become a ministerial body in 1950. Abdullah bin Faisal Al Saud was the first health minister and served in the position for three years, with his main role to set up the newly formed Ministry.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The Health Ministry created a friendly competition between each of the districts, and between different medical services and hospitals. This idea resulted in the creation of the "Ada'a" project launched in 2016. The new system is a nationwide performance indicator, for services and hospitals. Following the implementation of the new KPI tables, waiting times and other major measurements improved dramatically across the Kingdom.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: A new strategy has been developed by the Ministry, known as Diet and Physical Activity Strategy or DPAS for short. Many lifestyle issues in the country were causing bad lifestyle choices. This led to the Ministry advising that there should be a tax increase on unhealthy food, drink and also cigarettes in the region. This additional tax could be used to improve healthcare offerings. The tax was implemented in 2017. As part of the same strategy, calorie labels were added in 2019 to a number of food and drink products. Ingredients were also listed, not as an aim to reduce obesity, but also for citizens with health issues, to manage their diet. As part of the ongoing focus on tackling obesity, women-only gyms were allowed to open in 2017. A number of sports were offered in each of these gyms, including bodybuilding, running and swimming to maintain higher standards of health.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Smoking in Saudi-Arabia in all age groups was widespread. In 2009 the lowest median percentage of smokers was university students (~13.5%) while the highest was elderly people (~25%). The study also found the median percentage of male smokers to be much higher than that of females (~26.5% for males, ~9% for females). Before 2010, Saudi Arabia had no policies banning or restricting smoking.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The MOH has been awarded "Healthy City" certificates by the World Health Organization (WHO) for the cities of Unayzah and Riyadh Al Khabra as 4th and 5th Healthy Cities in Saudi Arabia.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The WHO had earlier classified three Saudi Arabian cities, Ad Diriyah, Jalajil, and Al-Jamoom as "Healthy city", as part of the WHO Healthy Cities Program. Recently Al-Baha has also been classified as a healthy city to join the list of global healthy cities approved by the World Health Organization.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: In May 2019, the then Saudi Minister of Health Dr. Tawfiq bin Fawzan AlRabiah received a global award on behalf of the Kingdom for combatting smoking through social awareness, treatment, and application of regulations. The award was presented as part of the 72nd session of the World Health Assembly, held in Geneva in May 2019. After becoming one of the first nations to ratify the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2005, it plans to reduce tobacco use from 12.7% in 2017, to 5% in 2030.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia has a life expectancy of 74.99 years (73.79 for males and 76.61 for females) according to the latest data for the year 2018 from the World Bank. Infant mortality in 2019 was 5.7 per 1,000. In 2016, 69.7% of the adult population was overweight and 35.5% was obese.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia's Central Department of Statistics & Information estimated the foreign population at the end of 2014 at 33% (10.1 million). The CIA Factbook estimated that foreign nationals living in Saudi Arabia made up about 21% of the population. Other sources report differing estimates. Indian: 1.5 million, Pakistani: 1.3 million, Egyptian: 900,000, Yemeni: 800,000, Bangladeshi: 400,000, Filipino: 500,000, Jordanian/Palestinian: 260,000, Indonesian: 250,000, Sri Lankan: 350,000, Sudanese: 250,000, Syrian: 100,000 and Turkish: 80,000.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: According to "The Guardian", there were more than half a million foreign-born domestic workers in Saudi Arabia. Most have backgrounds in poverty and come from Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. To go to work in Saudi Arabia, they must often pay large sums to recruitment agencies in their home countries. The agencies then handle the necessary legal paperwork.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: As the Saudi population grows and oil export revenues stagnate, pressure for "Saudization" (the replacement of foreign workers with Saudis) has grown, and the Saudi government hopes to decrease the number of foreign nationals in the country. Saudi Arabia expelled 800,000 Yemenis in 1990 and 1991 and has built a Saudi–Yemen barrier against an influx of illegal immigrants and against the smuggling of drugs and weapons. In November 2013, Saudi Arabia expelled thousands of illegal Ethiopian residents from the kingdom. Various Human Rights entities have criticized Saudi Arabia's handling of the issue.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Over 500,000 undocumented migrant workers—mostly from Somalia, Ethiopia, and Yemen—have been detained and deported since 2013. An investigation led by "The Sunday Telegraph", exposed the condition of African migrants who were detained in Saudi Arabia allegedly for containing COVID-19 in the kingdom. They were beaten, tortured, and electrocuted. Many of the migrants died due to heatstroke or by attempting suicide, after being severely beaten and tortured. The migrants lack proper living conditions, provision of food and water.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Foreigners cannot apply for permanent residency, though a specialized Premium Residency visa became available in 2019. Only Muslims can become Saudi citizens. Foreigners who have resided in the kingdom and hold degrees in various scientific fields may apply for Saudi citizenship, and exception made for Palestinians who are excluded unless married to a male Saudi national, because of Arab League instructions barring the Arab states from granting them citizenship. Saudi Arabia is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia has centuries-old attitudes and traditions, often derived from Arab civilization. The main factors that influence the culture of Saudi Arabia are Islamic heritage and Bedouin traditions as well as its historical role as an ancient trade centre.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Religion is a core aspect of everyday life in Saudi Arabia. It plays a dominant role in the country's governance and legal system, deeply influences culture and daily life, although the power of the religious establishment has been significantly eroded in the 2010s. The Hejaz region, where the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina are located, is the destination of the Ḥajj pilgrimage, and often deemed to be the cradle of Islam.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Islam is the state religion of Saudi Arabia. There is no law that requires all citizens to be Muslim, but non-Muslims and many foreign and Saudi Muslims whose beliefs are deemed not to conform with the government's interpretation of Islam must practice their religion in private and are vulnerable to discrimination, harassment, detention, and, for foreigners, deportation. Neither Saudi citizens nor guest workers have the right of freedom of religion. The dominant form of Islam in the kingdom—Wahhabism—arose in the central region of Najd, in the 18th century. Proponents call the movement "Salafism", and believe that its teachings purify the practice of Islam of innovations or practices that deviate from the seventh-century teachings of Muhammad and his companions. The Saudi government has often been viewed as an active oppressor of Shia Muslims because of the funding of the Wahhabi ideology which denounces the Shia faith. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi ambassador to the United States, stated: "The time is not far off in the Middle East when it will be literally 'God help the Shia'. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them."


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia is one of the few countries that have "religious police" (known as "Haia" or "Mutaween"), who patrol the streets "enjoining good and forbidding wrong" by enforcing dress codes, strict separation of men and women, attendance at prayer ("salat") five times each day, the ban on alcohol, and other aspects of "Sharia" (Islamic law). However, since 2016 the power of religious police was curbed, which barred them from pursuing, questioning, requesting identification or arresting suspects. In the privacy of homes, behaviour can be far looser, and reports from WikiLeaks indicate that low ranked members of the ruling Saudi Royal family indulge in parties with alcohol, drugs, and prostitutes.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Until 2016, the kingdom only used the lunar Islamic calendar, not the international Gregorian calendar, but in 2016 the kingdom announced its switch to the Gregorian calendar for civil purposes. Daily life is influenced by Islamic observance. Some businesses decide to close three or four times a day for 30 to 45 minutes during business hours while employees and customers are sent off to pray. The weekend is Friday-Saturday, not Saturday-Sunday because Friday is the holiest day for Muslims. For many years only two religious holidays were publicly recognized – "ʿĪd al-Fiṭr" and "ʿĪd al-Aḍḥā". ("ʿĪd al-Fiṭr" is "the biggest" holiday, a three-day period of "feasting, gift-giving and general letting go").


title: Saudi Arabia

text: In 2004, approximately half of the broadcast airtime of Saudi state television was devoted to religious issues. 90 per cent of books published in the kingdom were on religious subjects, and most of the doctorates awarded by its universities were in Islamic studies. In the state school system, about half of the material taught is religious. In contrast, assigned readings over 12 years of primary and secondary schooling devoted to covering the history, literature, and cultures of the non-Muslim world come to a total of about 40 pages.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: "Fierce religious resistance" had to be overcome to permit such innovations as paper money (in 1951), female education (1964), and television (1965) and the abolition of slavery (1962). Public support for the traditional political/religious structure of the kingdom is so strong that one researcher interviewing Saudis found virtually no support for reforms to secularize the state.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Celebration of other (non-Wahhabi) Islamic holidays, such as the Muhammad's birthday and the Day of Ashura, (an important holiday for the 10–25 per cent of the population that is Shīʿa Muslim), are tolerated only when celebrated locally and on a small scale. Shias also face systematic discrimination in employment, education, the justice system according to Human Rights Watch. Non-Muslim festivals like Christmas, Easter, Halloween, and New Year were not tolerated until recently. No churches, temples or other non-Muslim houses of worship are permitted in the country. Proselytizing by non-Muslims and conversion by Muslims to another religion is illegal, and the distribution of "publications that have prejudice to any other religious belief other than Islam" (such as Bibles), was reportedly punishable by death. In legal compensation court cases ("Diyya") non-Muslim are awarded less than Muslims. Atheists are legally designated as terrorists. At least one religious minority, the Ahmadiyya Muslims, had its adherents deported, as they are legally banned from entering the country.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: In a recent move to promote a modern image, Saudi Arabia banned the religious group known as 'Tablighi Jamaat'. The announcement was made on social media by the country's Minister of Islamic Affairs who warned people against association during the Friday sermon.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Throughout history, women did not have equal rights to men in the kingdom; the U.S. State Department considers Saudi Arabian government's discrimination against women a "significant problem" in Saudi Arabia and notes that women have few political rights due to the government's discriminatory policies. However, since Mohammed bin Salman was appointed Crown Prince in 2017, a series of social reforms have been witnessed regarding women's rights.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Under previous Saudi law, all females were required to have a male guardian (), typically a father, brother, husband, or uncle (). In 2019, this law was partially amended to exclude women over 21 years old from the requirement of a male guardian. The new amendment also granted women rights in relation to the guardianship of minor children. Previously, girls and women were forbidden from traveling, conducting official business, or undergoing certain medical procedures without permission from their male guardians. In 2019, Saudi Arabia allowed women to travel abroad, register for divorce or marriage, and apply for official documents without the permission of a male guardian.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: In 2006, Wajeha al-Huwaider, a leading Saudi feminist and journalist said "Saudi women are weak, no matter how high their status, even the 'pampered' ones among them, because they have no law to protect them from attack by anyone." Following this, Saudi Arabia implemented the anti-domestic violence law in 2014. Furthermore, between 2017 and 2020, the country addressed issues of mobility, sexual harassment, pensions, and employment-discrimination protections. al-Huwaider and other female activists have applauded the general direction in which the country was headed.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Women face discrimination in the courts, where the testimony of one man equals that of two women in family and inheritance law. Polygamy is permitted for men, and men have a unilateral right to divorce their wives (talaq) without needing any legal justification. A woman can only obtain a divorce with the consent of her husband or judicially if her husband has harmed her. However, in 2022, women were granted the right to divorce and without the approval of a legal guardian under the new Personal Status Law. With regard to the law of inheritance, the Quran specifies that fixed portions of the deceased's estate must be left to the "Qur'anic heirs" and generally, female heirs receive half the portion of male heirs.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Obesity is a problem among middle and upper-class Saudis who have domestic servants to do traditional work but, until 2018, women were forbidden to drive and so they were limited in their ability to leave their home. As of April 2014, Saudi authorities in the education ministry have been asked by the Shoura Council to consider lifting a state school ban on sports for girls with the proviso that any sports conform to Sharia rules on dress and gender segregation, according to the official SPA news agency. The religious police, known as the "mutawa", imposed many restrictions on women in public in Saudi Arabia. The restrictions include forcing women to sit in separate specially designated family sections in restaurants, to wear an abaya and to cover their hair. However, in 2016, the Saudi cabinet has drastically reduced the power of the religious police and barred it "from pursuing, questioning, asking for identification, arresting and detaining anyone suspected of a crime", making them effectively "non-existent" in the public sphere anymore.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: A few Saudi women have risen to the top of the medical profession; for example, Dr. Ghada Al-Mutairi heads a medical research centre in California and Dr. Salwa Al-Hazzaa is head of the ophthalmology department at King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh and was the late King Fahad's personal ophthalmologist.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Wahhabism is hostile to any reverence given to historical or religious places of significance for fear that it may give rise to 'shirk' (idolatry), and the most significant historic Muslim sites (in Mecca and Medina) are located in the western Saudi region of the Hejaz. As a consequence, under Saudi rule, an estimated 95% of Mecca's historic buildings, most over a thousand years old, have been demolished for religious reasons. Critics claim that over the last 50 years, 300 historic sites linked to Muhammad, his family or companions have been lost, leaving fewer than 20 structures remaining in Mecca that date back to the time of Muhammad. Demolished structures include the mosque originally built by Muhammad's daughter Fatima, and other mosques founded by Abu Bakr (Muhammad's father-in-law and the first Caliph), Umar (the second Caliph), Ali (Muhammad's son-in-law and the fourth Caliph), and Salman al-Farsi (another of Muhammad's companions).


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Six cultural sites in Saudi Arabia are designated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Al-Hijr Archaeological Site (Madâin Sâlih); the Turaif district in the city of Diriyah; Historic Jeddah, the Gate to Mecca; Al-Ahsa Oasis; Rock Art in the Hail Region; and Ḥimā Cultural Area. Ten other sites submitted requests for recognition to UNESCO in 2015.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: There are six elements inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list: Al-Qatt Al-Asiri, female traditional interior wall decoration in Asir; Almezmar, drumming and dancing with sticks; Falconry, a living human heritage; Arabic coffee, a symbol of generosity; Majlis, a cultural and social space; Alardah Alnajdiyah, dance, drumming and poetry in Saudi Arabia.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: In June 2014, the Council of Ministers approved a law that gives the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage the means to protect Saudi Arabia's ancient relics and historic sites. Within the framework of the 2016 National Transformation Program, also known as Saudi Vision 2030, the kingdom allocated 900 million euros to preserve its historical and cultural heritage. Saudi Arabia also participates in the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas (ALIPH), created in March 2017, with a contribution of 18.5 million euros.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: In 2017, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman promised to return Saudi Arabia to the "moderate Islam" of the era before the 1979 Iranian revolution. A new centre, the King Salman Complex for the Prophet's Hadith, was established that year to monitor interpretations of the Prophet Mohammed's hadiths to prevent them being used to justifying terrorism.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: In March 2018, the Crown Prince met the Archbishop of Canterbury during a visit to the UK, pledging to promote interfaith dialogue. In Riyadh the following month King Salman met the head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. In July 2019, UNESCO signed a letter with the Saudi Minister of Culture in which Saudi Arabia contributed US$25 million to UNESCO for the preservation of heritage.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabian dress strictly follows the principles of hijab (the Islamic principle of modesty, especially in dress). The predominantly loose and flowing, but covering, garments are suited to Saudi Arabia's desert climate. Traditionally, men usually wear a white ankle-length garment woven from wool or cotton (known as a thawb), with a keffiyeh (a large checkered square of cotton held in place by an agal) or a ghutra (a plain white square made of a finer cotton, also held in place by an agal) worn on the head. For rare chilly days, Saudi men wear a camel-hair cloak (bisht) over the top. In public women are required to wear a black abaya or other black clothing that covers everything under the neck with the exception of their hands and feet, although most women cover their head in respect of their religion. This requirement applies to non-Muslim women too and failure to abide can result in police action, particularly in more conservative areas of the country. Women's clothes are often decorated with tribal motifs, coins, sequins, metallic thread, and appliques.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: During the 1970s, cinemas were numerous in the kingdom although they were seen as contrary to Wahhabi norms. During the Islamic revival movement in the 1980s, and as a political response to an increase in Islamist activism including the 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the government closed all cinemas and theatres. However, with King Abdullah and King Salman's reforms, cinemas re-opened, including one in KAUST.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: From the 18th century onward, Wahhabi fundamentalism discouraged artistic development inconsistent with its teaching. In addition, Sunni Islamic prohibition of creating representations of people have limited the visual arts, which tend to be dominated by geometric, floral, and abstract designs and by calligraphy. With the advent of the oil-wealth in the 20th century came exposure to outside influences, such as Western housing styles, furnishings, and clothes. Music and dance have always been part of Saudi life. Traditional music is generally associated with poetry and is sung collectively. Instruments include the rabābah, an instrument not unlike a three-string fiddle, and various types of percussion instruments, such as the ṭabl (drum) and the ṭār (tambourine). Of the native dances, the most popular is a martial line dance known as the arḍah, which includes lines of men, frequently armed with swords or rifles, dancing to the beat of drums and tambourines. Bedouin poetry, known as nabaṭī, is still very popular.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Censorship has limited the development of Saudi literature, although several Saudi novelists and poets have achieved critical and popular acclaim in the Arab world—albeit generating official hostility in their home country. These include Ghazi Algosaibi, Mansour al-Nogaidan, Abdelrahman Munif, Turki al-Hamad and Rajaa al-Sanea. In 2016, the General Entertainment Authority was formed to oversee the expansion of the Saudi entertainment sector.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: The first concerts in Riyadh for 25 years took place the following year. Other events since the GEA's creation have included comedy shows, professional wrestling events and monster truck rallies. In 2018 the first public cinema opened after a ban of 35 years, with plans to have more than 2,000 screens running by 2030.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Developments in the arts in 2018 included Saudi Arabia's debut appearances at the Cannes Film Festival and the Venice Biennale. Guetta's comments come as Saudi Arabia increasingly attracts big name western music acts to perform in the kingdom.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabian cuisine is similar to that of the surrounding countries in the Arabian Peninsula and the wider Arab world, and has influenced and been influenced by Turkish, Indian, Persian, and African food. Islamic dietary laws are enforced: pork is not allowed and other animals are slaughtered in accordance with halal. Kebabs and falafel are popular, as is "shāwarmā" (shawarma), a marinated grilled meat dish of lamb, mutton, or chicken. As in other Arab countries of the Arabian Peninsula, "machbūs" (kabsa), a rice dish with lamb, chicken, fish or shrimp, is among the national dishes as well as the dish mandi. Flat, unleavened taboon bread is a staple of virtually every meal, as are dates, fresh fruit, yoghurt, and hummus. Coffee, served in the Arabic style, is the traditional beverage but tea and various fruit juices are popular as well. Arabic coffee is a traditional beverage in Arabian cuisine. The earliest substantiated evidence of either coffee drinking or knowledge of the coffee tree is from the 15th century, in the Sufi monasteries of Arabia.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Football is the national sport in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Arabia national football team is considered one of Asia's most successful national teams, having reached a joint record 6 AFC Asian Cup finals, winning three of those finals (1984, 1988, and 1996) and having qualified for the World Cup four consecutive times ever since debuting at the 1994 tournament.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: In the 1994 FIFA World Cup under the leadership of Jorge Solari, Saudi Arabia beat both Belgium and Morocco in the group stage before falling to defeat Sweden in the round of 16. During the 1992 FIFA Confederations Cup, which was played in Saudi Arabia, the country reached the final, losing 1–3 to Argentina.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Scuba diving, windsurfing, sailing and basketball (which is played by both men and women) are also popular with the Saudi Arabian national basketball team winning bronze at the 1999 Asian Championship. More traditional sports such as horse racing and camel racing are also popular. A stadium in Riyadh holds races in the winter. The annual King's Camel Race, begun in 1974, is one of the sport's most important contests and attracts animals and riders from throughout the region. Falconry, another traditional pursuit, is still practised.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Women's sport is controversial due to the suppression of female participation in sport by conservative Islamic religious authorities, however the restrictions have eased since then. Until 2018 women were not permitted in sport stadiums. Segregated seating, allowing women to enter, has been developed in three stadiums across major cities. Since 2020, the progress of women's integration into the Saudi sport scene began to develop rapidly. 25 Saudi sport federations established a national women’s team, including a national football and basketball team, as well as the participation of women in tennis, golf, motorsport, boxing, fencing, weightlifting, and pole dancing. In November 2020, the Saudi Arabian Football Federation announced the launch of the first nationwide Saudi women's premier league.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia, in its vision for modernization, introduced the nation to a number of international sporting events, bringing sports stars to the kingdom. However, in August 2019, the kingdom's strategy received criticism for appearing as a method of sportswashing soon after Saudi's US-based 2018 lobbying campaign foreign registration documentations got published online. The documents showed Saudi Arabia as allegedly implementing a 'sportswashing' strategy, inclusive of meetings and official calls with supreme authorities of associations like the Major League Soccer (MLS), World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), National Basketball Association (NBA). The strategy is being viewed as a method of sportswashing following the chaos spread across Yemen for 6 years.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Television was introduced in Saudi Arabia in 1954. Saudi Arabia is a major market for pan-Arab satellite and pay-TV. It controls the largest share of the pan-Arab broadcasting market; among the major Saudi-owned broadcasting companies are the Middle East Broadcasting Center, Rotana and the Saudi Broadcasting Authority. The Saudi government closely monitors media and restricts it under official state law. Changes have been made to lessen these restrictions; however, some government-led efforts to control information have also drawn international attention. As of 2022, Reporters Without Borders rates the kingdom's press "Very Serious" situation.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Most of the early newspapers in the Persian Gulf region were established in Saudi Arabia. The first newspaper founded in the country and in the Persian Gulf area is Al Fallah, which was launched in 1920, and the first English-language newspaper is Arab News, which was launched in 1975. All of the newspapers published in Saudi Arabia are privately owned.


title: Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia received access to the Internet in 1994. According to World Bank, as of 2020, 98% of the population of Saudi Arabia are Internet users which puts it in the 8th rank among countries with the highest percentage of internet users. Saudi Arabia has one of the fastest 5G internet speeds in the world. The kingdom is also the 27th largest market for e-commerce with a revenue of US$8 billion in 2021, placing it ahead of Belgium and behind Norway.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: Manchester City Football Club are an English football club based in Manchester that competes in the Premier League, the top flight of English football. Founded in 1880 as St. Mark's (West Gorton), they became Ardwick Association Football Club in 1887 and "Manchester City" in 1894. The club's home ground is the Etihad Stadium in east Manchester, to which they moved in 2003, having played at Maine Road since 1923. Manchester City adopted their sky blue home shirts in 1894, in the first season with the current name. Over the course of its history, the club has won eight league titles, six FA Cups, eight League Cups, six FA Community Shields, and one European Cup Winners' Cup, making them the fifth most successful club in English football.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: The club joined the Football League in 1892, and won their first major honour, the FA Cup, in 1904. Manchester City The club had its first major period of success in the late 1960s and early 1970s, winning the league title, FA Cup, League Cup, and European Cup Winners Cup under the management of Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison. After losing the 1981 FA Cup Final, Manchester City went through a period of decline, culminating in relegation to the third tier of English football for the only time in their history in 1998. They since regained promotion to the top tier in 2001–02 and have remained a fixture in the Premier League since 2002–03.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: Manchester City received considerable financial investment both in playing staff and facilities following its takeover by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan through the Abu Dhabi United Group in 2008. This started a new era of unprecedented success, with the club winning the FA Cup in 2011 and the Premier League in 2012, both their first since the 1960s, followed by another league title in 2014. Under the management of Pep Guardiola, Manchester City won the Premier League in 2018, becoming the only team in the competition history to attain 100 points in a single season. In 2018–19, they won four trophies, completing an unprecedented sweep of all domestic titles in England and becoming the first English men's team to win the domestic treble. This was followed by two consecutive Premier League titles in 2020–21 and 2021–22, the third and fourth in the Guardiola era, as well as the club's first-ever Champions League final in 2021, which they lost to Chelsea.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: Although Manchester City have yet to win a UEFA Champions League title, by the 2022–23 season they had qualified to play in the competition for twelve consecutive seasons and reached the knockout stages for ten consecutive seasons. Furthermore, the club was ranked third in the UEFA coefficient standings at the end of the 2021–22 campaign, reaching its highest ever position.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: Manchester City topped the Deloitte Football Money League at the end of the 2020–21 season, making it the football club with the highest revenue in the world, approximated at €644.9 million. In 2021, "Forbes" estimated the club was the sixth most valuable in the world, worth $4 billion. Manchester City are owned by City Football Group Limited, a British-based holding company valued at £3.73 (US$4.8) billion in November 2019.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: City gained their first honours by winning the Second Division in 1899; with it came promotion to the highest level in English football, the First Division. They went on to claim their first major honour on 23 April 1904, beating Bolton Wanderers 1–0 at Crystal Palace to win the FA Cup; the Blues narrowly missed out on a League and Cup double that season after finishing runners-up in the league campaign, but they still became the first club in Manchester to win a major honour. In the seasons following the FA Cup triumph, the club was dogged by allegations of financial irregularities, culminating in the suspension of seventeen players in 1906, including captain Billy Meredith, who subsequently moved across town to Manchester United. A fire at Hyde Road destroyed the main stand in 1920, and in 1923 the club moved to their new purpose-built stadium at Maine Road in Moss Side.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: In the 1930s, Manchester City reached two consecutive FA Cup finals, losing to Everton in 1933, before claiming the Cup by beating Portsmouth in 1934. During the 1934 run, the club broke the record for the highest home attendance of any club in English football history, as 84,569 fans packed Maine Road for a sixth-round FA Cup tie against Stoke City – a record which stood until 2016. The club won the First Division title for the first time in 1937, but were relegated the following season, despite scoring more goals than any other team in the division. Twenty years later, a City team inspired by a tactical system known as the Revie Plan reached consecutive FA Cup finals again, in 1955 and 1956; just as in the 1930s, they lost the first one, to Newcastle United, and won the second. The 1956 final, in which the Blues defeated Birmingham City 3–1, saw City goalkeeper Bert Trautmann continuing to play on after unknowingly breaking his neck.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: After being relegated to the Second Division in 1963, the future looked bleak with a record low home attendance of 8,015 against Swindon Town in January 1965. In the summer of 1965, the management team of Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison was appointed. In the first season under Mercer, Manchester City won the Second Division title and made important signings in Mike Summerbee and Colin Bell. Two seasons later, in 1967–68, City claimed the league championship for the second time, beating their close neighbours Manchester United to the title on the final day of the season with a 4–3 victory at Newcastle United. Further trophies followed: City won the FA Cup in 1969 and a year later triumphed in the European Cup Winners' Cup, defeating Górnik Zabrze 2–1 in the 1970 final. As of 2022, this is the club's only European honour. The Blues also won the League Cup that year, becoming the second English team to win a European trophy and a domestic trophy in the same season.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: The club continued to challenge for honours throughout the 1970s, finishing one point behind the league champions on two occasions and reaching the final of the 1974 League Cup. One of the matches from this period that is most fondly remembered by supporters of Manchester City is the final match of the 1973–74 season against arch-rivals Manchester United, who needed to win to have any hope of avoiding relegation. Former United player Denis Law scored with a backheel to give City a 1–0 win at Old Trafford and confirm the relegation of their rivals. The final trophy of the club's most successful period to date was won in 1976, when Newcastle United were beaten 2–1 in the League Cup final.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: A long period of decline followed the success of the 1960s and 1970s. Malcolm Allison rejoined the club to become manager for the second time in 1979, but squandered large sums of money on several unsuccessful signings, such as Steve Daley. A succession of managers then followed – seven in the 1980s alone. Under John Bond, City reached the 1981 FA Cup final but lost in a replay to Tottenham Hotspur. The club were twice relegated from the top flight in the 1980s (in 1983 and 1987), but returned to the top flight again in 1989 and finished fifth in 1991 and 1992 under the management of Peter Reid. However, this was only a temporary respite, and following Reid's departure Manchester City's fortunes continued to fade. City were co-founders of the Premier League upon its creation in 1992, but after finishing ninth in its first season they endured three seasons of struggle before being relegated in 1996. After two seasons in Division One, City fell to the lowest point in their history, becoming the second ever European trophy winners to be relegated to their country's third-tier league after 1. FC Magdeburg of Germany.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: After relegation, the club underwent off-the-field upheaval, with new chairman David Bernstein introducing greater fiscal discipline. Under manager Joe Royle, City were promoted at the first attempt, achieved in dramatic fashion in a Second Division play-off final against Gillingham. A second successive promotion saw City return to the top division, but this proved to have been a step too far for the recovering club, and in 2001 City were relegated once more. Kevin Keegan replaced Royle as manager in the close season, and achieved an immediate return to the top division as the club won the 2001–02 First Division championship, breaking club records for the number of points gained and goals scored in a single season in the process. The 2002–03 season was the last at Maine Road and included a 3–1 derby victory over rivals Manchester United, ending a 13-year run without a derby win. Additionally, City qualified for European competition for the first time in 25 years via UEFA fair play ranking. In the close 2003–04 season, the club moved to the new City of Manchester Stadium. The first four seasons at the stadium all resulted in mid-table finishes. Former England manager Sven-Göran Eriksson became the club's first foreign manager when appointed in 2007. After a bright start, performances faded in the second half of the season, and Eriksson was sacked on 2 June 2008; he was replaced by Mark Hughes two days later.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: By 2008, Manchester City were in a financially precarious position. Thaksin Shinawatra had taken control of the club the year before, but his political travails saw his assets frozen. Then, in August 2008, City were purchased by the Abu Dhabi United Group. The takeover was immediately followed by a flurry of bids for high-profile players; the club broke the British transfer record by signing Brazilian international Robinho from Real Madrid for £32.5 million. There wasn't a huge improvement in performance compared to the previous season despite the influx of money however, with the team finishing tenth, although they did well to reach the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup. During the summer of 2009, the club took transfer spending to an unprecedented level, with an outlay of over £100 million on players Gareth Barry, Roque Santa Cruz, Kolo Touré, Emmanuel Adebayor, Carlos Tevez, and Joleon Lescott. In December 2009, Mark Hughes – who had been hired shortly before the change in ownership but was originally retained by the new board – was replaced as manager by Roberto Mancini. City finished the season in fifth position in the Premier League, narrowly missing out on a place in the Champions League but qualifying for the UEFA Europa League.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: Continued investment in players followed in successive seasons, and results began to match the upturn in player quality. City reached the FA Cup final in 2011, their first major final in over 30 years, after defeating derby rivals Manchester United in the semi-final, the first time they had knocked their rival out of a cup competition since 1975. The Blues defeated Stoke City 1–0 in the final, securing their fifth FA Cup and the club's first major trophy since winning the 1976 League Cup. In the same week, the club qualified for the UEFA Champions League for the first time since 1968 with a 1–0 win over Tottenham Hotspur in the penultimate Premier League match. On the last day of the 2010–11 season, City beat out Arsenal for the third place, thereby securing qualification directly into the Champions League group stage.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: Strong performances continued to follow in the 2011–12 season, with the club beginning the campaign in commanding form, including a 5–1 victory over Tottenham at White Hart Lane and a 6–1 humbling of Manchester United at Old Trafford. Although the strong form waned halfway through the season, and City at one point fell eight points behind United with only six games left to play, a slump by United allowed the blue side of Manchester to draw back level with two games to go, setting up a thrilling finale to the season with both teams going into the last day equal on points (City led by eight goals on goal difference). Despite the Blues only needing a home win against Queens Park Rangers, a team in the relegation zone, they fell 1–2 behind by the end of normal time, leading some of United's players to finish their game, a 1–0 win at Sunderland, celebrating in the belief that they had won the league. However, two goals in injury time – the second by Sergio Agüero in the fourth added minute – resulted in an almost-literal last-minute 3–2 title victory, City's first in 44 years, with which they became only the fifth team to win the Premier League since its creation in 1992. In its aftermath, the event was described by media sources from the UK and around the world as the greatest moment in Premier League history. The game was also notable for former City player Joey Barton's sending off, where he committed three separate red card-able incidents on three players in the space of only a couple of seconds, resulting in a 12-match ban.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: The following season, City failed to capitalise on the gains made in the first two full campaigns of Mancini's reign. While the Blues rarely seemed likely to drop below second in the table, they posed little title challenge throughout the season. In the Champions League, the club was eliminated at the group stage for the second successive season (this time finishing fourth and losing out on Europa League football as well), while a second FA Cup final in three seasons ended in a 1–0 defeat to relegated Wigan Athletic. Mancini was dismissed two days later, ostensibly as he had failed to reach his targets for the season, but BBC Sports Editor David Bond reported he had been sacked for his poor communication and relationships with players and executives. The Chilean Manuel Pellegrini was named City's new manager afterwards.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: In Pellegrini's first season, City won the League Cup and regained the Premier League title on the last matchday of the season. However, the team's league form was less impressive in the next couple of years: although they finished as runners-up in 2014–15, the 2015–16 campaign saw City end up fourth on goal difference, their lowest position since 2010. On the other hand, Pellegrini delivered another League Cup win and, more importantly, he guided City to the Champions League semi-finals, which they narrowly lost to future champions Real Madrid. This was the club's highest-ever finish in the Champions League, but Pellegrini's reign was nonetheless ended in anticipation of City's dream manager.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: Pep Guardiola, former head coach of Barcelona and Bayern Munich, was confirmed to become Manchester City's new manager on 1 February 2016, months before Pellegrini finished his term, and has remained in charge to this day. In the Guardiola era, City won the 2017–18 Premier League title with the highest points total in history and broke numerous other club and English league records along the way. They also won the League Cup that season and Sergio Agüero became the club's all-time leading goalscorer.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: The following season, Guardiola guided the club to retain their Premier League and League Cup titles, the first time in history that City had completed any successful title defence. The team then went on to win the FA Cup final and complete an unprecedented domestic treble of English men's titles.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: In 2020, UEFA banned Manchester City from European competitions for two seasons for alleged breaches of the UEFA Financial Fair Play Regulations; the club appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, who overturned the ban within months, finding that some allegations were above the five-years-old limit for such UEFA investigations, while the other allegations were unproven. The CAS also reduced UEFA's fine from €30 to €10 million.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: In April 2021, it was announced that City had joined the proposed European Super League as one of its twelve founder members together with the five other "Big Six" English football clubs. However, the announcement led to widespread condemnation from The Football Association, the Premier League, UEFA and FIFA, as well as from the UK's Conservative government and Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Within 48 hours of the initial announcement on 20 April, City announced that they had withdrawn from the Super League to be followed shortly by the other five English clubs. By the following day, only three of the original founders – Barcelona, Real Madrid and Juventus – remained committed, and it seemed that the proposal had collapsed.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: In the COVID-19 affected 2020–21 Premier League season, Manchester City regained their title from Liverpool, becoming champions for the third time in four years. They ended the season twelve points ahead of second-placed Manchester United, winning the title with three games to spare. They also won the League Cup for a record-equalling fourth consecutive and eighth time in total, beating Tottenham 1–0 in the final. City's league victory was the tenth league and cup title of Guardiola's five-year tenure, making him the most successful manager in the club's history. The season was highlighted by City's European breakthrough, with the club reaching their first-ever Champions League final, where they met Chelsea, making it the third all-English final in the competition's history. However, the Blues were defeated 1–0 at the Estádio do Dragão in Porto, courtesy of a Kai Havertz goal. Still, City's breakthrough marked their most successful European campaign to date.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: A report from German outlet Der Spiegel in April 2022 claimed, based on leaked internal documents, that the Abu Dhabi owners had previously made payments into the club disguised as sponsorship payments by Emirati companies like Etihad and Etisalat (the same claim that the club had successfully defended against at CAS in 2020), Sheikh Mansour's Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) had allegedly indirectly paid for underage players to sign with the club, and that Manchester City had allegedly used a fictitious contract between Roberto Mancini and Mansour‘s Al Jazira Club to pay large compensation fees to the former manager in addition to his salary. It also claimed that these three cases were under investigation by the Premier League for the last three years. In response, Manchester City dismissed these claims as untrue and classified them as another attempt to undermine the reputation and integrity of the club.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: The Blues produced another campaign to remember in 2021–22, retaining their league title, following another close title race with Liverpool and making it four titles in five seasons. In another case of "typical City", needing four points from their last two fixtures, the Blues had fallen behind by two goals in both games, only to recover to a 2–2 draw against West Ham away, and to a 3–2 win at home to Aston Villa in the season finale. These last three goals were all scored in a five-minute blitz between the 76th and 81st minutes, in moments that would sit alongside the famous victories in the 1999 play-off final against Gillingham and the 2011–12 Premier League finale against QPR. City also reached the Champions League semi-finals again that season (and for only the third time in their history), but were beaten there by Real Madrid 6–5 on aggregate a.e.t. over two closely fought and very dramatic games.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: Manchester City's home colours are sky blue and white. Traditional away kit colours have been either maroon or (from the 1960s) red and black; however, in recent years several colours have been used. The origins of the club's home colours are unclear, but there is evidence that the club has worn blue since 1892 or earlier. A booklet entitled "Famous Football Clubs – Manchester City" published in the 1940s indicates that West Gorton (St. Marks) originally played in scarlet and black, and reports dating from 1884 describe the team wearing black jerseys bearing a white cross, showing the club's origins as a church side. The infrequent yet recurrent use of red and black away colours comes from former assistant manager Malcolm Allison's belief that adopting the colours of AC Milan would inspire City to glory. Allison's theory worked, with City winning the 1969 FA Cup final, 1970 League Cup final and 1970 Cup Winners' Cup final in red and black stripes as opposed to the club's home kit of sky blue.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: City had previously worn three other badges on their shirts, prior to their current badge being implemented in 2016. The first, introduced in 1970, was based on designs which had been used on official club documentation since the mid-1960s. It consisted of a circular badge which used the same shield as the present badge (including a ship, based on the City of Manchester coat of arms), inside a circle bearing the name of the club. In 1972, this was replaced by a variation which replaced the lower half of the shield with the red rose of Lancashire. In 1976, a heraldic badge was granted by the College of Arms to the English Football League for use by City. The badge consisted of the familiar ship above a red rose but on a circular device instead of a shield (blazoned as ""A roundel per fess azure and argent in chief a three masted ship sails set pennons flying or in base a rose gules barbed and seeded proper"").


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: On occasions when Manchester City played in a major cup final, the club wore shirts bearing the City of Manchester coat of arms, as a symbol of pride in representing the city at a major event. This practice originated from a time when the players' shirts did not normally bear a badge of any kind. The club has since abandoned the practice; for the 2011 FA Cup final, its first in the 21st century, City used the usual badge with a special legend, but the Manchester coat of arms was included as a small monochrome logo in the numbers on the back of players' shirts.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: A new club badge was adopted in 1997, as a result of the previous badge being ineligible for registration as a trademark. This badge was based on the arms of the city of Manchester, and consisted of a shield in front of a golden eagle. The eagle is an old heraldic symbol of the city of Manchester; a golden eagle was added to the city's badge in 1958 (but had since been removed), representing the growing aviation industry. The shield featured a ship on its upper half representing the Manchester Ship Canal, and three diagonal stripes in the lower half symbolised the city's three rivers – the Irwell, the Irk and the Medlock. The bottom of the badge bore the motto ""Superbia in Proelio"", which translates as "Pride in Battle" in Latin. Above the eagle and shield were the three stars, added for decorative purposes.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: On 15 October 2015, following years of criticism from the fans over the design of the 1997 badge, the club announced they intended to carry out a fan consultation on whether to discontinue the current badge and institute a new design. After the consultation, the club announced in late November 2015 the badge would be replaced in due course by a new version which would be designed in the style of the older, circular variants. A design purporting to be the new badge was unintentionally leaked two days early prior to the official unveiling on 26 December 2015 by the IPO when the design was trademarked on 22 December. The new badge was officially unveiled at Manchester City's home match against Sunderland on 26 December.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: The following players have previously made a league or cup appearance (or have appeared on the substitutes bench for the first team) and are currently on loan at other teams:


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: The following players have previously made cup appearances or have appeared on the substitutes bench for the first team.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: Since 2003, Manchester City have not issued the squad number 23. It was retired in memory of Marc-Vivien Foé, who was on loan to the club from Lyon at the time of his death on the field of play while playing for Cameroon in the 2003 FIFA Confederations Cup.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: Each season since the end of the 1966–67 season, the members of the Manchester City Official Supporters Club have voted by ballot to choose the player on the team they feel is the most worthy of recognition for his performances during that season. The following table lists the recipients of this award since 2000.


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: The following former Manchester City players and managers have been inducted into the "Manchester City F.C. Hall of Fame", and are listed according to the year of their induction:


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: The following former Manchester City players and managers have been inducted into the "English Football Hall of Fame" (a.k.a. the "National Football Museum Hall of Fame"), and are listed according to the year of their induction within the various categories:


title: Manchester City F.C.

text: The following former Manchester players have been inducted into the Premier League Hall of Fame. Inaugurated in 2020, but delayed for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Hall of Fame is intended to recognise and honour players that have achieved great success and made a significant contribution to the league since its founding in 1992.