Jennifer Stewart, age 15, of Bennington, Vt., for her question:
HOW OLD IS THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA?
Saudi Arabia is a kingdom that makes up about nine tenths of the Arabian Peninsula in Southwest Asia. It became an independent monarchy in 1932 when King Abdui Aziz II Ibn Saud united all of the territory under his control.
The area had been occupied by Semitic tribes since about 700 B.C. In A.D. 570 Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was born there in the town of Mecca. He became an important leader and founded the Islamic religion. By the time he died in 632, much of Arabia was under Muslim rule.
Eventually the Muslim empire broke up into lots of individual states and then for more than a thousand years many warring tribes controlled the various areas that make up most of Arabia.
During the 1500s the Ottoman Turks captured parts of western Arabia and British forces established protectorates along the eastern and southern coasts. But Arabian tribal leaders still ruled most of the inland region.
In 1902 Ibn Saud, with only 15 men, took the city of Riyadh. He had the support of orthodox Muslim groups. And then over the next 30 years, Than Saud drove out the Turks and captured the states of Hejaz and Asir.
The kingdom that Ibn Saud started in 1932 was several centuries behind the rest of the world. In 1933 he made a most important decision that started to move his country out of the Middle Ages and into the 20th Century. Ibn Saud granted a United States oil company a concession to look for oil.
Oil was discovered in 1938 and almost immediately the kingdom's treasury started to build. The start of World War II, however, delayed the large scale oil production that was to come. By 1960 the country's income had increased 30 times. With the new income, Ibn Saud started many national projects to improve his country.
Neutral during most of World War II, Saudi Arabia declared war on Germany near the end and became a charter member of the United Nations.
In 1945, Saudi Arabia, along with other Arab countries, formed the Arab League. The purpose of the organization is for defense and economic development.
After reigning as king for 51 years, Ibn Saud died in 1953.
Saudi Arabia is about three times the size of Texas. Much of the land is arid and nothing more than a vast desert. Most of the people are engaged in agriculture, even though oil is the most important product of the kingdom. However, only 5 percent of the land is farmed and the soil isn't very fertile.
To the north of the kingdom are Jordan, Iraq and Kuwait, along with an area of neutral territory west of Kuwait. To the west is the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea. To the south is the Yemen Arab Republic and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. To the southeast is Oman and to the east is the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and the Persian Gulf.