Islam, specifically Sunni Islam of the Hanbali school, is the state religion in Saudi Arabia. [6] According to official statistics, in 2022 90% of Saudi Arabia's 15 to 20 million citizens [17] were Sunni Muslims, [18] 10-12% are Shia, [4] many Twelver Shia populating the eastern regions and Zaydi Shia in the south of the country. [19]

It is the location of the cities of Mecca and Medina, where Prophet Muhammad lived and died, and are now the two holiest cities of Islam. The kingdom attracts millions of Muslim Hajj pilgrims annually, and thousands of clerics and students who come from across the Muslim world to study.

3 days ago · Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam, and most of its natives are adherents of the majority Sunni branch. In modern times, the Wahhābī interpretation of Sunni Islam has been especially influential, and Muslim scholars espousing that sect’s views have been a major social and political force.

Sep 23, 2004 · The Umayyads consolidated Islamic rule over what we know today as the traditional center of the Islamic world as seen in the map above: North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

Dec 19, 2013 · Muslims identify themselves with different strands of Islamic tradition. The main ones are Sunnism and Shiism. Accurate figures for the breakdown of the Muslim population into the various strands...

This map illustrates the varieties of religious affiliation in the Muslim populations of the Middle East. It shows the locations of adherents to the four schools of Sunni jurisprudence and the distribution of Shia populations.

Feb 27, 2025 · Mecca, city, western Saudi Arabia, located in the Ṣirāt Mountains, inland from the Red Sea coast. It is the holiest of Muslim cities. Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was born in Mecca, and it is toward this religious center that Muslims turn five times daily in …

Jan 5, 2016 · Sunni-led allies of Saudi Arabia have cut diplomatic ties with Shiite Iran, further polarizing the Middle East along the two major branches of Islam.

Jan 21, 2025 · Islamic traditions and rituals occupy an important place in Saudi Arabian culture; Islam is deeply rooted there. Saudi culture, meanwhile, tends to emphasize hospitality, such as how all...

Mouline, Nabil, and Ethan S. Rundell, 'Appendix: House of Saud and Map of Saudi Arabia', in Ethan S. Rundell (ed.), Clerics of Islam: Religious Authority and Political Power in Saudi Arabia (New Haven, CT, 2014; online edn, Yale Scholarship Online, 21 May 2015), https://doi.org/10.12987/yale/9780300178906.005.0001, accessed 19 Nov. 2023.