Abha, in the Asir region of Saudi Arabia, has a moderate climate with heavy rainfalls that provides green pastures and agricultural plateaus.
Aseeri Houses
Medium: 18kb Aseeri Houses shown in the picture above are the traditional homes seen in the Al Maa village, Abha, Saudi Arabia. |
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Open Air Market
Medium: 17kb The Open Air Market is always an interesting place to spend the afternoon. |
Abha's homes are made of stone and mud and were built by hand. Some homes are over 300 years old and still inhabited. The slight graduation from one layer to the next gives these houses the overall impression of truncated pyramids. Foundations are usually stones. The houses are built in shelf-like, overlapping, vertical rows that act as rain guides, keeping the rain from saturating the walls and washing them away.
Abha's well known daily market is always busy with activity and people. Locals bargain for fruits, vegetables, coffee beans and other wares. Local handicrafts like ornate silver Bedouin jewelry and hand woven basketry are specialty items.
 
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The Battle for Saudi Arabia: Royalty, Fundamentalism, and Global Power by As'ad AbuKhalil & Asad AbuKhalil Saudi Arabia is an enigma to most Americans. The country is home to Islam's holiest sites and the world's largest proven oil reserves. A strategic partner to the U.S. in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is also the homeland of Osama bin Laden, and fifteen of the nineteen hijackers who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. Although officially considered a "moderate" Islamic state by the U.S., Saudia Arabia enforces the same state religious ideology as did the Taliban. |
Saudi Arabian Trivia - Weather
Summer in Saudi Arabia is hot with temperatures in some areas reaching 49°C (120°F). Winter is cooler with an average temperature of 23²C (74°F) in Jeddah and 14°C (58°F) in Riyadh. Winter temperatures can drop below freezing in the central and northern parts of the country and SNOW sometimes occur in the higher elevations in the south-west.