The world's largest economies by 2050: Saudi Arabia

“The world’s largest economies by 2050” (Saudi Arabia)

Saudi Arabia is the largest and greatest regional power on the Arabian Peninsula, washed by the Persian Gulf in the north-east and by the Red Sea in the west. It is a country with a profound and fascinating past. In the first quarter of the 7th century, on the Arabian Peninsula — a territory equal to one third of Europe — around the ancient Arab cities of Mecca and Medina, a new and victorious religion arose, many years after the birth of the great world religions of Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity: Islam, whose motto became the words “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His prophet.” First uttered in Mecca fourteen centuries ago, these words were passed from mouth to mouth and from people to people, spreading from northern China, India, Indonesia and Malaysia to the countries of North Africa, Europe, Russia and North America.

“The world’s largest economies by 2050” (Saudi Arabia)

That is why Saudi Arabia is also called the “Land of the Two Holy Mosques”, meaning Mecca and Medina, the two principal, most sacred and most ancient cities of Islam. Muhammad was born in Mecca in 570 and began to teach the Islamic faith there, inspired by the Almighty and one of the greatest prophets and a mighty genius. Putting the essence of his mission into the mouth of Allah, in the sixth sura of the Quran Muhammad speaks in the name of the Almighty: “Say: Indeed, my prayer and my devotion, my life and my death are for Allah, Lord of the worlds, who has no partner. This I am commanded, and I am the first of those who submit.”

“The world’s largest economies by 2050” (Saudi Arabia)

The Prophet Muhammad was able to embody the spirit of his people in the Islamic religion, divined the Arabs’ timely desire to move from polytheism to monotheism, and managed to take account of the strengths and weaknesses of the other world religions — by the will of the Almighty, of course. The Islamic religion gave the warlike and naturally courageous Arabs the chance to unite into a formidable force under the shadow of one God, one Almighty, and to become the modern and greatest empire of their time, which conquered the whole civilised world and spread Islam. In this connection one may cite Washington Irving (the American writer): “But the time had come at last when the warring tribes of Arabia were united by one faith and inspired by one common cause, when a mighty genius appeared who welded these scattered members into one, breathed his own enthusiasm and courage into them and led a giant out of the desert to shake and subdue the kingdoms of the earth.” Muhammad was a truly great man, alongside other prophets such as Jesus Christ and the Buddha. What energy there was in that age! What an era, and what changes! He was able to steer the scattered energy of his people in the right direction, towards creation and great achievements.

“The world’s largest economies by 2050” (Saudi Arabia)

Of course, Muhammad’s followers were few at first, and for thirteen years he and his followers faced hostility from the polytheists of holy Mecca. In 622, Muhammad and his followers had to move to Medina (then known as Yathrib) because of the continuing persecution. It was not easy for Muhammad. That event, the Hijra — the migration to Medina — marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar, also known as the Hijri calendar. Medina received him with particular favour. In 629, after eight years of fighting the tribes of Mecca, Muhammad conquered Mecca with an army of 10,000 Muslims and with little resistance. In 632 Muhammad fell ill and died a few months after his farewell pilgrimage to Mecca. He was buried in holy Medina. By the time of his death most of the Arabian Peninsula had accepted Islam.

“The world’s largest economies by 2050” (Saudi Arabia)

The greatest empire of its time, the Arab Caliphate — a state founded after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 and lasting until the 10th–11th centuries — made an enormous contribution to world culture, especially under the Abbasids, when the centre of Arab culture moved from Syria to Iraq, to Baghdad, founded in 762. For almost three centuries Baghdad was the focus of the finest cultural forces of the Muslim world. The achievements of Arab culture enriched the culture of many peoples, in particular those of medieval Europe. This applies above all to the development of philosophy, medicine, mathematics, astronomy and geography, of philology and history, chemistry and mineralogy. Architecture and art flourished.

“The world’s largest economies by 2050” (Saudi Arabia)

Arab culture became known for the absence of any sharp differentiation between the sciences and for the encyclopaedic character of its scholars’ learning. A philosopher and mathematician was often also a major historian, physician, geographer, poet and philologist. Because medieval Europe lost much knowledge after the collapse of the Roman Empire and entered the Dark Ages, many works of ancient Greek and Roman thinkers, philosophers and scholars were preserved and translated into Arabic and supplemented with new knowledge by Arab and non-Arab thinkers. Europe later rediscovered the knowledge it had lost in the Dark Ages through Arab and our own scholars (al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, al-Khwarizmi, al-Farghani, al-Biruni, al-Kashi and others) and through the Persian peoples (Omar Khayyam, who studied at the madrasas of Balkh, Samarkand and Bukhara, and many others), who wrote their works mainly in the language of the science of their time, Arabic.

“The world’s largest economies by 2050” (Saudi Arabia)

A major achievement of late medieval Arab culture was the historian, philosopher and sociologist Ibn Khaldun’s (1332–1406) creation of a historical and philosophical theory of social development. In his historical work “Muqaddimah” (An Introduction to History), Ibn Khaldun analysed the causes of the rise and decline of countries and peoples. He drew attention to the reduction of state expenditure on a hired army and opposed taxation and tariffs that hindered trade and production. In his opinion, a bureaucracy is incapable of managing commercial activity effectively because of weak motivation and training. He held that in countries where the state takes part in trade and production, a relative decline in economic income and, in time, decay should be expected. Ibn Khaldun regarded these economic principles as the essential condition for building a civilised society. He discovered the value and necessity of the division of labour in social and economic life even before Adam Smith (the Scottish economist and philosopher, one of the founders of economic theory and of classical political economy, 1723–1790). He also anticipated David Ricardo (the English economist, a classic of political economy, 1772–1823) in discovering the labour theory of value, and examined the role of the state in stabilising the economy before John Maynard Keynes (the English economist, founder of the Keynesian school in economics, 1883–1946).