The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the largest country on the Arabian Peninsula. It borders Jordan on the north, Iraq on the north and north-east, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates on the east, Oman on the south and south-east, and Yemen on the south, with the Persian Gulf to its north-east and the Red Sea to its west. It is called "the land of the two holy mosques", a reference to Mecca and Medina, Islam's two holiest places.
The kingdom occupies eighty percent of the Arabian Peninsula. Most of the country's boundaries with the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Yemen are undefined, so the exact size of the country remains unknown. The Saudi government's estimate is 2,217,949 square kilometers. Other reputable estimates vary between 2,149,690 square kilometers and 2,240,000 square kilometers.
The climate is dry and hot. Dry desert with great extremes of temperature and the terrain is mostly uninhabited, sandy desert. In most parts of the country, vegetation is limited to weeds, xerophytic herbs and shrubs. Animals include the ibex, wildcats, baboons, wolves, and hyenas in the highlands. Small birds are found in the oases. The coastal area of the Red Sea, especially the coral reefs, have a rich marine fauna. Saudi Arabia has a coastline of 2,640 kilometers.
Saudi Arabia consists mostly of semi-desert and desert with oases. Almost half of the total country is uninhabitable desert with annual precipitation up to 100 mm in most regions. The western regions are plateau and the east is lowland. The southwest region has mountains as high as 3000 metres, and is an area is known for greenest and freshest climate in all of the country. The capital, Riyadh, which is to the center-east has an average temperature in July of 42?C and 14?C in January. In contrast, Jedda on the western coast has 31?C in July and 23?C in January.
Less than 2 percent of the total area is suitable for cultivation, and in the early 1990s, population distribution varied greatly among the towns of the eastern and western coastal areas, the densely populated interior oases, and the vast, almost empty deserts, such as the Rub' al Khali (desert), the Arabian Desert and East Sahero-Arabian xeric shrublands. There are no permanent rivers and lakes in Saudi Arabia.
