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Saudi Arabia
Index
This edition of Saudi Arabia: A Country Study replaces
the previous edition published in 1984. Like its predecessor, the
present book attempts to treat in a compact and objective manner
the dominant historical, social, economic, political, and
national security aspects of contemporary Saudi Arabia. Sources
of information included scholarly books, journals, and
monographs; official reports and documents of governments and
international organizations; and foreign and domestic newspapers
and periodicals. Relatively up-to-date economic data were
available from several sources, but the sources were not always
in agreement. Most demographic data should be viewed as
estimates.
Chapter bibliographies appear at the end of the book; brief
comments on some of the more valuable sources for further reading
appear at the conclusion of each chapter. Measurements are given
in the metric system; a conversion table is provided to assist
those who are unfamiliar with the metric system (see
table 1,
Appendix). The Glossary provides brief definitions of terms that
may be unfamiliar to the general reader.
The transliteration of Arabic words and phrases posed a
particular problem. For many of the words--such as Muhammad,
Muslim, Quran, and shaykh--the authors followed a modified
version of the system adopted by the United States Board on
Geographic Names and the Permanent Committee on Geographic Names
for British Official Use, known as the BGN/PCGN system; the
modification entails the omission of all diacritical markings and
hyphens. In numerous instances, however, the names of persons or
places are so well known by another spelling that to have used
the BGN/PCGN system may have created confusion. For example, the
reader will find Mecca rather than Makkah and Medina rather than
Al Madinah. In addition, although the government of Saudi Arabia
officially rejects the use of the term Persian Gulf and
refers to that body of water as the Arabian Gulf, the authors
followed the practice of the United States Board on Geographic
Names by using Persian Gulf or gulf.
Saudi Arabia uses the lunar Islamic calendar, in which the
first year was that of the Prophet's migration to Medina in A.D.
622. The year has 354 days in twelve lunar months, a month being
the time between two new moons, approximately twenty-nine and
one-half days. Months alternately consist of twenty-nine and
thirty days; to adjust for a slight overlap, an additional day is
added eleven times during normal years. Months thus have no fixed
relation to the seasons but make a complete circuit every thirtythree Gregorian years; Gregorian years are used in this book.
Data as of December 1992
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