Map of Ash Sharqiyah

History

The Eastern Province was home to the Dilmun civilization for several millennia which was an important trading center from the late 4th millennium BC to 800 BC. At the height of its power, Dilmun controlled the Persian Gulf trading routes. Dilmun was very prosperous during the first 300 years of the second millennium.

The Dilmun civilization was the centre of commercial activities linking traditional agriculture of the land—then utterly fertile due to artesian wells that have dried since, and due to a much wetter climate—with maritime trade between diverse regions such as the Meluhha (suspected to be Indus Valley Civilisation), Magan (Oman), and Mesopotamia.

Geography

Approximately two-thirds of the province is desert, comprising, from south to north, the Rub' al Khali, Dahna and Nafud deserts, with the Rub' al-Khali alone making up more than half of the area of the province. Areas such as Hafr al-Batin and the Al-Ahsa Oasis have become important sites for desert farming due to the advancements made during the Green Revolution in farming and irrigation techniques.

The entire eastern coast of the kingdom lies in the Eastern Province. The region borders, from north to south, the countries of Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Yemen.

Economy

The economy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is largely dependent on oil. As such, the Eastern Province, being the province with most of Saudi Arabia's oil reserves enjoys a high economic position. Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company of Saudi Arabia and an organization of major significance in the petroleum industry, is based in Dhahran in the Dammam metropolitan area. It became the fifth company in the world to reach a market capitalization of $1 trillion ($1,000,000,000,000) on December 11, 2019. After going public the same day in what is considered the largest Initial public offering ever as of December 2019, the next day, on December 12, 2019, the company reached a market cap of $2 trillion, becoming the first and only company in the world to break the record.

Demographics

According to the Population Characteristics Surveys conducted by the General Authority for Statistics, the Eastern Province had a population of 4,900,325 as of December 2017, of which 3,140,362 were Saudis and 1,759,963 were foreign nationals. The Eastern Province is the third most populous province in Saudi Arabia, after Mecca Province and Riyadh Province. With an estimated population of 1,225,000 as of 2019, Dammam is the most populous city in the province and the sixth most populous city in the country. The governorate with the largest population is the Al-Ahsa Governorate. It is also the largest governorate in terms of land area. The province had the lowest dependency ratio in the kingdom at around 36%, as of 2016.