Nadene Goldfoot
Biblically, according to Gen.10, Eber was the forefather of both Abraham as well as of Joktan, the ancestor of the southern Arabs. Several Arab tribes are counted among the descendants of Abraham. Arabs trace their ancestor to Ishmael, who is in the Torah.
Saudi Arabia traces its roots back to the earliest civilizations of the Arabian Peninsula. Over the centuries, the peninsula has played an important role in history as an ancient trade center and as the birthplace of Islam, one of the world's major monotheistic religions.
The first concrete evidence of human presence in the Arabian Peninsula dates back 15,000 to 20,000 years. Bands of hunter-gatherers roamed the land, living off wild animals and plants.
As the European ice cap melted during the last Ice Age, some 15,000 years ago, the climate in the peninsula became dry. Vast plains once covered with lush grasslands gave way to scrubland and deserts, and wild animals vanished. River systems also disappeared, leaving in their wake the dry river beds (wadis) that are found in the peninsula today.
This climate change forced humans to move into the lush mountain valleys and oases. No longer able to survive as hunter-gatherers, they had to develop another means of survival. As a result, agriculture developed – first in Mesopotamia, then the Nile River Valley, and eventually spreading across the Middle East.
The development of agriculture brought other advances. Pottery allowed farmers to store food. Animals, including goats, cattle, sheep, horses and camels, were domesticated, and people abandoned hunting altogether. These advances made intensive farming possible. In turn, settlements became more permanent, leading to the foundations of what we call civilization – language, writing, political systems, art and architecture.
Located between the two great centers of civilization, the Nile River Valley and Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula was the crossroads of the ancient world. Trade was crucial to the area’s development; caravan routes became trade arteries that made life possible in the sparsely populated peninsula.
The people of the peninsula developed a complex network of trade routes to transport agricultural goods highly sought after in Mesopotamia, the Nile Valley and the Mediterranean Basin. These items included almonds from Taif, dates from the many oases, and aromatics such as frankincense and myrrh from the Tihama plain.
Spices were also important trade items. They were shipped across the Arabian Sea from India and then transported by caravan.
The huge caravans traveled from what is now Oman and Yemen, along the great trade routes running through Saudi Arabia’s Asir Province and then through Makkah and Madinah, eventually arriving at the urban centers of the north and west.
Jews were living in Medina, having fled from Jerusalem after 70 CE when it was burned down by the Romans noticed by the Arabs telling their stories outside their tents to an audience. Much was learned by Mohammad this way which was incorporated into his Koran. Some Arabs were even converting to Judaism. Jews remained in Yemen the longest.
The people of the Arabian Peninsula remained largely untouched by the political turmoil in Mesopotamia, the Nile Valley and the eastern Mediterranean. Their goods and services were in great demand regardless of which power was dominant at the moment – Babylon, Egypt, Persia, Greece or Rome. In addition, the peninsula’s great expanse of desert formed a natural barrier that protected it from invasion by powerful neighbors.
Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, was born in Mecca in about 570 and first began preaching in the city in 610, before migrating to Medina in 622. From there, he and his companions united the tribes of Arabia under the banner of Islam and created a single Arab Muslim religious polity in the Arabian Peninsula.
Beginning with Selim I's acquisition of Medina and Mecca in 1517, the Ottomans, in the 16th century, added to their empire the Hejaz and Asir regions along the Red Sea and the al-Hasa region on the Persian Gulf coast, these being the most populous parts of what was to become Saudi Arabia. They held the land which then belonged to the Ottoman Empire till they lost it at the end of WWI in 1917.
The emergence of the Saudi dynasty began in central Arabia in 1744. In that year, Muhammad ibn Saud, the tribal ruler of the town of Ad-Dir'iyyah near Riyadh, joined forces with the religious leader Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab, the founder of the Wahhabi movement. This alliance, formed in the 18th century, provided the ideological impetus to Saudi expansion and remains the basis of Saudi Arabian dynastic rule today. Over the next 150 years, the fortunes of the Saud family rose and fell several times as Saudi rulers contended with Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, and other Arabian families for control of the peninsula.
Your love belongs to me.
At night when you're asleep
Into your tent I'll creep.
The stars that shine above,
Will light our way to love.
You'll rule this land with me;ource: LyricFind
Valentino played the starring role of Sheik Ahmed
Ben Hassan. The film was a major success and
defined not only his career but his image and
legacy. Valentino tried to distance the character
from a stereotypical portrayal of an Arab man. Asked if Lady
Diana (his love interest) would have fallen for a "savage" in real life, Valentino replied, "People are not savages because they have dark skins. The Arabian civilization is one of the oldest in the world ... the Arabs are dignified and keen-brained." So all the women were in love with a sheik.
British archaeologist Howard Carter and his workmen discover a step leading to the tomb of King Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt on November 4, 1922. The world news was centered in Egypt and Sheiks.
Unification. In 1902, Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, leader of the Al Saud, returned from exile in Kuwait to resume the conflict with the Al Rashid, and seized Riyadh—the first of a series of conquests creating the Third Saudi State, and ultimately leading to the creation of the modern state of Saudi Arabia in 1930.
On March 3, 1938, an American-owned oil well in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, drilled into what would soon be identified as the largest source of petroleum in the world.
On February 14, 1945, the two countries' partnership is sealed during a historic meeting between king Abdel Aziz bin Saud and president Franklin D Roosevelt on board the cruiser USS Quincy in the Suez Canal. The agreement sees the US guarantee military protection for the kingdom in return for privileged access to oil reserves, which were discovered in enormous quantities in the 1930s.
Saudi leaders warmly welcome Donald Trump's arrival in office, and in May 2017 he is received with pomp for his first overseas presidential visit.
He calls for the isolation of Iran. The US and Saudi Arabia announce huge contracts exceeding $380 billion, including $110 billion for the sale of US arms to Riyadh.
In October 2018, Khashoggi is killed and dismembered by Saudi agents in the kingdom's Istanbul consulate. But his murder does little to disturb relations with the White House under Trump.
The president vows in the aftermath to "remain a steadfast partner" of Saudi Arabia.
Update: 7/17/22
Resource;
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://www.saudiembassy.net/history#:~:text=Saudi%20Arabia%20traces%20its%20roots,the%20world's%20major%20monotheistic%20religions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sheik_of_Araby
https://www.wionews.com/photos/united-states-saudi-arabia-a-crisis-peppered-partnership-498032#partners-since-1945-498020--update
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