Nejd
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Nejd
Nejd
a province of Saudi Arabia. Area, approximately 1 million sq km. Population, approximately 4 million, 40 percent of which is nomadic. The capital is Riyadh.
The primary occupation of the populace is nomadic stock raising. Agriculture is practiced in the oases, where wheat, barley, durra, dates, pomegranates, peaches, and citrus fruits are grown. Raw agricultural products are processed in the cities and hand-crafted goods are made. There are military-related industrial plants in Harad and a cement plant in Riyadh.
In the fifth century and the first half of the sixth, Nejd was ruled by the Kindah, an Arab clan. From the seventh to the ninth centuries it was first part of the Arab caliphate and then of other feudal political formations on the Arabian Peninsula. In the 18th century Nejd became the center of the Wahhabi movement; the Wahhabis established the Saudi emirate, a feudal theocratic state that existed (with interruptions) in the 19th and early 20th centuries. After World War I, the Saudi emirate of Nejd led the struggle for the unification of northern and central Arabia, which led to the formation in the mid-1920’s of a dual kingdom of Hejaz and Nejd, known as Saudi Arabia since 1932.