Saudi Arabia

Arab, Saudi - HijaziJPIMB

Population

7,500,000

Language

Arabic, Hijazi

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Makkah, Madinah and Tabuk regions (the Hejaz) and the southern highlands of Asir, al-Bahah and Jazan's mountains outside Fayfa: Jeddah, Mecca, Medina, Taif, Tabuk, Yanbu, Abha, Khamis Mushait

The Hijazi Arabs are the people of Saudi Arabia's western mountains and Red Sea coast, home to Mecca, Medina and Jeddah, about 7.5 million citizens including the highland southerners of Asir and al-Bahah. Centuries of hosting pilgrims made the Hijazi towns the most cosmopolitan in Arabia: many families descend from Hadrami, Bukhari, Indian, Javanese, Turkish and African pilgrims who stayed, and urban Hijazi Arabic is understood across the Arab world. Their Islam follows the older Shafi'i tradition, with discreet Mawlid celebrations and Sufi devotion that set them apart from the Wahhabi teaching of Najd, which has ruled the region since 1925. Jeddah's old quarter of coral-stone houses with carved wooden window screens, and the mizmar stick dance performed to drums and a reed pipe, are signs of Hijazi identity.

Arab, Saudi - NajdiJPIMBGRN

Population

5,500,000

Language

Arabic, Najdi

Religion

Islam - Sunni (Hanbali/Wahhabi-Salafi)

Location

Central Najd plateau and the north: Riyadh, al-Qassim, Ha'il, al-Jawf and Northern Borders regions; Najdi tribal families also in the Eastern Province, Najran and east of the Hejaz mountains

The Najdi Saudi Arabs are the people of the central Najd plateau, the homeland of the Al Saud dynasty and of the Wahhabi religious movement, and they hold the senior posts of the Saudi state, its clergy and its security forces. About 5.5 million Saudi citizens speak Najdi Arabic as townspeople of Riyadh, al-Qassim, Ha'il and the northern regions, while kin who still call themselves badu, Bedouin, keep a separate identity. Life turns on the tribe and the majlis, the sitting room where men receive guests over cardamom coffee and dates, recite Nabati poetry and settle disputes; the Ardah sword dance, once a war rite, is now the kingdom's national dance. Their religious identity is bound to the Hanbali-Wahhabi teaching born in the Najd village of Uyayna, and Dir'iyah's mudbrick Turaif quarter, the first Saudi capital, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the edge of Riyadh.

Arab, Gulf ShiaIMBDiscovery

Population

~1,500,000-1,800,000

Language

Gulf Arabic

Religion

Islam - Shia

Location

Eastern Province: Qatif governorate (Qatif, Saihat, Safwa, Awamiyah, Tarout Island), al-Ahsa oasis (Hofuf, Mubarraz and villages), Dammam-Khobar; Nakhawila in Medina

The Saudi Shia are the kingdom's Twelver Shia citizens, about 1.5 to 1.8 million people living mostly in the Eastern Province around the ancient oases of Qatif and al-Ahsa. Most are Baharna, an Arab oasis people of the Gulf coast who were Shia for centuries before the Saudi state took the region in 1913. Their faith sets them apart from the Sunni majority: they pray on a small clay tablet, follow Shia scholars in Iraq and Iran, and mourn the death of Husayn every Muharram in neighbourhood halls called husseiniyas. They are kept out of senior state posts, their religious life is closely watched, and since the protests of 2011-2013 many young men from Qatif have been imprisoned or executed. Al-Ahsa, with some 2.5 million date palms, is one of the largest oases in the world.

BedouinJPIMBGRN

Population

1,500,000

Language

Arabic, Najdi

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Interior deserts and their towns: Northern Borders, al-Jawf, Ha'il, al-Qassim, the Riyadh region (outer Riyadh, Afif, Dawadmi, al-Artawiyah), Hafr al-Batin and the al-Ahsa desert, the Taif plateau, Najran and the edge of the Rub al-Khali

Saudi Arabia's Bedouin are the families of the great desert tribes, Anazah, Shammar, Utaybah, Mutair, Harb, Qahtan, Al Murrah and others, who still call themselves badu, about 1.5 million people of whom at most 200,000 still move with their herds. A century ago Ibn Saud settled their warriors in farming colonies and made them the army that built the kingdom; their sons now fill the National Guard, which still recruits by tribe. Most live in towns such as Hafr al-Batin and the outer districts of Riyadh, but after the winter rains whole families move out to black goat-hair tents beside their camels, and camel beauty contests near Riyadh offer prizes worth millions. Their Islam is the strict Hanbali faith preached to the tribes in the settlement era, and their pride rests on lineage, Nabati poetry and hospitality.

Arab, TihamiJPIMBGRN

Population

1,100,000

Language

Arabic, Ta'izzi-Adeni

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Jazan's coastal plain (Jizan, Sabya, Abu Arish, Samtah, Ahad al-Masarihah, Baysh, Ad-Darb, Damad, Farasan Islands); also the Tihama of Asir and the southern Makkah coast; Tihama Yemeni nationals mainly in Jeddah, Mecca and Riyadh

The Tihami Arabs of Saudi Arabia are the people of the hot, humid Red Sea plain of Jazan, around 850,000 Saudi citizens whose speech and way of life continue those of Yemen's Tihama across the border. Their dialect, which other Saudis often hear as Yemeni, sets them apart from the Najdi and Hijazi Arabs, and many other Saudis look down on the south's poorer, darker-skinned coastal people. They farm sorghum, millet and mangoes in the wadis watered by summer monsoon rains, fish the Red Sea and live in growing towns such as Sabya, Abu Arish and Jizan; the round thatched huts of the old Tihama villages now stand mostly in heritage displays. On the Farasan Islands the whole community wades into the sea each spring for the parrotfish run of the Hareed festival. Their Sunni Islam is historically of the Shafi'i school, gentler than the Wahhabi tradition of the interior. Beside them live roughly 256,000 Tihama Yemenis from al-Hodeidah and the coastal plains of Hajjah and Taiz, Yemeni nationals who came to work, mostly in Jeddah, Mecca and Riyadh since Yemeni workers were moved out of the border provinces in 2021, if they make up the same share of the 1.8 million Yemenis in the kingdom as of Yemen's own people (about 14%).

Arab, Arabic Gulf SpokenJPIMB

Population

640,000

Language

Arabic, Gulf

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Eastern Province: al-Ahsa oasis (Hofuf, Mubarraz and villages), Dammam, al-Khobar, Dhahran, Jubail

Saudi Arabia's Gulf Arabs are the Sunni Arabs of the Eastern Province, about 640,000 people who speak the Gulf Arabic of Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar rather than the Najdi of the interior. They are the townspeople of the al-Ahsa oasis, the world's largest, whose old scholarly families taught the Maliki and other Sunni schools for centuries, and the coastal families of Dammam and al-Khobar, many of them Dawasir who crossed from Bahrain in 1923; Kuwaitis, Emiratis and Qataris living in the kingdom share their dialect and ways. Al-Ahsa's tailors are famed across the Gulf for the bisht, the gold-edged cloak worn on great occasions, and its spring-fed gardens grow Khalas dates and a local red rice. Their oases and towns are shared with Shia neighbours who form a separate community, and since the 1940s their coast has been the heart of the Saudi oil industry around Dhahran.

Sulaymani Ismaili ArabsDiscovery

Population

~300,000-400,000

Language

Arabic, Najdi (Southern dialect)

Religion

Ismaili Islam (Sulaymani branch)

Location

Najran Province: Najran oasis city and its villages, Hubuna, Yadamah, Badr al-Janub; families elsewhere in the kingdom

The Sulaymani Ismailis of Najran are a Shia community of roughly 300,000 to 400,000 Saudi citizens in the southwestern oasis province on the Yemeni border, most of them from the Yam and Hamdan tribes. Najran is the seat of their supreme guide, the Da'i al-Mutlaq, who leads the faithful in Saudi Arabia and Yemen from the Khushaywa compound and the Mansura mosque. Their faith, with its graded initiations and a hidden inner reading of the Qur'an kept from outsiders, sets them apart from the Sunni majority and from the Twelver Shia of the Eastern Province. The state has long treated it as deviant: officials called Ismailis infidels in 1997, and when religious police raided the Mansura mosque during Ashura in 2000 armed tribesmen rose up, followed by mass arrests and the transfer of Ismaili officials out of the province. Najran's mud-brick tower-houses and palm and citrus groves reflect its closeness to Yemen.

Deaf Saudi ArabianJPIMBGRN

Population

100,000

Language

Saudi Arabian Sign Language

Religion

Unknown

Location

Nationwide; Deaf schools, clubs and associations in Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam and other cities

Saudi Arabia's Deaf community, about 100,000 people, shares Saudi Arabian Sign Language, a language that grew up among the pupils of the country's first Deaf schools in Riyadh in 1964 and that other Arab Deaf people cannot follow. Boys and girls were schooled apart, so their signs still differ. Deaf Saudis gather in clubs and regional associations, and in 2013 and 2018 produced their own dictionaries of thousands of signs after rejecting a pan-Arab 'unified' sign language they could not understand. Interpreters now work at the Two Holy Mosques and on television news, but most teachers of Deaf children are hearing, interpreters are scarce in courts and clinics, and many Deaf adults struggle to find work.

FaifiJP

Population

50,000

Language

Faifi (fif), Semitic (classification disputed)

Religion

Islam

Location

Jabal Fayfa (Fayfa governorate), Jazan Province, near the Yemen border; migrants in Jazan's lowland towns and Saudi cities

The Faifi are the mountain people of Jabal Fayfa in the Jazan highlands, whose speech is so unlike other Arabic that linguists still argue whether it is an ancient form of Arabic or the last trace of an older southern Arabian language. About 50,000 people belong to the 18 tribes of the Khawlan bin Amir confederation that hold these peaks; fewer than 20,000 still live in the mountain governorate, and the rest have moved to Jazan's towns and the big cities. Their stone villages sit above terraces of Khawlani coffee and fruit trees on slopes that catch the monsoon rains, a green island in a desert country. The young speak Saudi Arabic with outsiders, and Faifi is passing out of use among families who leave the mountains.

MahraJPIMBGRN

Population

28,000

Language

Mehri

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Far eastern Najran Province (al-Kharkhir in the Empty Quarter, Sharurah, al-Wadiah) and Dammam in the Eastern Province

The Mahra of Saudi Arabia are camel-herding tribes of the southern Empty Quarter whose grazing grounds ran across what became the Saudi, Yemeni and Omani borders; they were allowed to settle on the Saudi side in the 1980s. About 20,000 of them speak Mehri, an ancient South Arabian language that is not Arabic and that outsiders cannot follow, while using Arabic with everyone else. Their centre was al-Kharkhir, a desert outpost some 850 kilometres east of Najran, whose few thousand people of four tribes lived in tents and a small housing project; the government abolished the town as a governorate in 2014 and moved its services and many residents to Sharurah, though families still camp in the valleys around it. Others live in Sharurah, al-Wadiah and the Eastern Province city of Dammam, and perhaps 8,000 more Mahra from Yemen's al-Mahra work in the kingdom as Yemeni nationals. For decades many have held Saudi identity numbers and passports without receiving national identity cards, which keeps them out of jobs and services open to other citizens.

UyghurJPIMBGRN

Population

~10,000-20,000

Language

Uighur

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Mecca, Taif, Medina and Jeddah

Saudi Arabia's Uyghurs call themselves Turkistanis, after East Turkestan, the homeland in China's far west that their families left between the 1930s and the 1960s, many crossing the Karakoram passes to Kashmir and India before sailing for Jeddah, others coming by way of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Most settled near the holy cities of Mecca and Medina and in Taif, became Saudi citizens and carry their home towns as family names, such as Kashgari. Families keep their history through oral accounts, old papers and community histories, and their laghman noodles, manti dumplings and pilaf have become part of Hejazi cooking. A small number of newer arrivals hold Chinese passports that China's missions stopped renewing around 2017; several have been detained and deported to China at Beijing's request, so the community keeps a low profile.

Afro-SaudisDiscovery

Population

no count (no source counts Afro-Saudis)

Language

Swahili (individual language)

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Mecca, Jeddah and Medina in the Hejaz; also Riyadh, Taif, the Tihama coast and the Eastern Province

Afro-Saudis are Saudi citizens of Black African descent, most of them in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina and the port of Jeddah. Many descend from West African pilgrims, Hausa, Fulani and Kanuri, who settled near the holy places over the last three centuries, and whose family names, Hawsawi, Fallatah and Bernawi, still tell where they came from; others descend from Africans enslaved in Arabia until slavery ended in 1962. They speak the same Arabic and keep the same Sunni faith as their neighbours, but in a society that ranks people by tribe they are often assumed to have none, are called 'abd' (slave), and find it hardest of all to marry into tribal families. Black Saudis are among the country's best-loved footballers, and Black Saudi writers and activists have begun to speak about racism in public. No one has counted them.

Bengali, MuslimJPIMBDiscovery

Population

2,130,000

Language

Bengali

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Throughout the kingdom: Riyadh (Batha), Jeddah (Sharafiyah, Balad), Mecca, Medina, Dammam-Khobar, Jubail, Hofuf, Taif, Qassim and the south

Bangladeshis are the largest foreign community in Saudi Arabia, over two million people at the 2022 census, nine in ten of them men (some 54,000 more who hold Bangladeshi passports are Rohingya, a people of their own), and the kingdom takes two of every three Bangladeshis who go abroad to work. Most come from the villages of Comilla, Chittagong, Noakhali, Brahmanbaria, Tangail and Sylhet, speaking Bengali, Chittagonian or Sylheti at home, with a few Buddhist and Christian hill people, often after paying brokers several years' wages for a visa, and they sweep the streets of Riyadh and Jeddah, build, clean hospitals and malls, farm date palms, work in shops and factories, and, increasingly, serve as housemaids. The Batha market quarter of Riyadh, with its Bengali grocers, barbers and money-transfer shops, is their best-known gathering place, and Bangladesh International Schools in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam teach the children of the few who bring families. Nearly all are Sunni Muslims who pray in the kingdom's mosques and count work near Mecca and Medina a blessing, while a small Hindu minority worships in private. About 1,600 Bangladeshi workers' bodies come home from the kingdom each year, a toll of heat, accidents, overwork and fires.

Arab, Egyptian generalJPIMB

Population

~1,350,000 (1.32-1.40 million)

Language

Arabic, Egyptian

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Riyadh, Jeddah, Mecca, Medina, Dammam-Khobar, Tabuk and every major city

Egyptian Muslims are the largest Arab community in Saudi Arabia after the Yemenis, about 1.35 million of the nearly 1.5 million Egyptians living in the kingdom. Nubians from Aswan and Bedouin from Sinai and the deserts are among them. They have come in numbers since the oil boom of the 1970s, and today they are the teachers, doctors, pharmacists, engineers and accountants Saudis meet every day, as well as builders, drivers and shop workers. Families of professionals send their children to Egyptian-curriculum schools in Riyadh, Jeddah and the Eastern Province, while single labourers share rooms and send most of their pay home, some 8 billion dollars a year. Saudization quotas now reserve pharmacy, law, private teaching and other professions for Saudis, and many Egyptians have seen their contracts end.

Punjabi, WesternJPIMB

Population

1,320,000

Language

Western Panjabi

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Riyadh (Batha, Manfuha, Shumaisi), Jeddah (Aziziyah, Sharafiyah, Baghdadiyah), Mecca, Medina, Dammam-Khobar, Jubail, Taif and towns across the kingdom

Pakistani Punjabis are probably the largest single people among the kingdom's 2.6 million or more Pakistanis, about 1.3 million of them,, who have come since the oil boom of the 1970s and today make Saudi Arabia the destination of seven in ten Pakistani workers. They come from the canal colonies and barani districts of Punjab, from Sialkot, Gujrat, Gujranwala, Jhelum, Chakwal and Rawalpindi to the Saraiki-speaking south, and drive the kingdom's trucks and household cars, lay its roads, staff its workshops and restaurants, and serve as engineers, doctors and accountants. Punjabi is spoken among friends and on the phone home, Urdu in public, at the Pakistan International Schools and in the Pakistani shops of Jeddah's Aziziyah and Riyadh's Batha. Most are Sunni Muslims, many of them used to the shrine devotion and saints' days of Punjab that Saudi religious practice frowns on; for many, being near Mecca and Medina is a reason they came. A Shia minority keeps its rites indoors, and a small Christian minority, nearly all Punjabi in origin, meets in private homes.

Arab, SudaneseJPIMBGRN

Population

820,000

Language

Arabic, Sudanese

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Riyadh (Ghubairah, "Little Khartoum"), Jeddah, Mecca, Medina, Dammam

Sudanese are one of the oldest foreign communities in Saudi Arabia, about 820,000 people: pilgrims who stayed after the Hajj settled in Mecca, Medina and Jeddah for centuries, and since the oil boom Sudanese teachers, doctors, accountants and clerks have staffed Saudi schools, hospitals and offices, followed by drivers, herders and builders. Most speak Sudanese Arabic and are Sunni Muslims with roots in Sufi brotherhoods, which they keep private in the kingdom; Nubians (Danagla and Mahas), Beja, the Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit of Darfur, Nuba and Sudanese of West African descent live among them. The war that broke out in Sudan in April 2023 turned the community into a refuge: tens of thousands of relatives have arrived on temporary visas, and workers now support families displaced at home. In Riyadh's Ghubairah district, known as Little Khartoum, Sudanese restaurants and sweet shops line the street and men break the Ramadan fast together on carpets laid on the pavement.

Filipino, TagalogJPGRN

Population

726,000

Language

Tagalog

Religion

Christianity - Roman Catholicism

Location

Riyadh, Jeddah, al-Khobar and Dammam, Mecca and Medina; hospitals, households and work sites nationwide

Filipinos are Saudi Arabia's largest Christian community and one of its oldest Asian workforces, about 726,000 strong. They come from every region of the Philippines, Tagalogs, Cebuanos, Ilocanos, Hiligaynons, Bicolanos and Kapampangans, and Muslim Maranao, Maguindanao and Tausug from Mindanao. Migration began in 1973 with engineers for the oil boom; today Filipinos staff hospitals as nurses, work in households as maids and drivers, and fill jobs in construction, engineering, hotels and shops, and Saudi Arabia receives more Filipino workers than any other country. The community runs Philippine schools in Riyadh, Jeddah and the Eastern Province, and Manila Plaza in Riyadh's Batha district is its market of Filipino food, remittance counters and shops. Most are Catholics who keep their faith without churches, meeting quietly in homes on Fridays, while a Muslim minority, from Mindanao or converts made in the kingdom, worships openly in its mosques.

Pashtun, NorthernJPDiscovery

Population

~690,000 (est. 580,000-730,000)

Language

Northern Pashto

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Throughout the kingdom: Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam-Khobar, Mecca, Medina, Taif, the south and north

Pakistani Pashtuns, about 690,000 people, are the second-largest people among the kingdom's 2.6 million or more Pakistanis, after the Punjabis. They come mostly from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and its former tribal districts, from Swat, Dir, Bajaur, Mardan, Peshawar and Waziristan, where work in Saudi Arabia has supported families since the oil boom of the 1970s. Most are men working without their families as drivers of trucks, taxis and household cars, builders, farm and shop workers, sending their wages home. They speak Pashto among themselves and Urdu or Arabic at work, and are Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi school who hold to Pashtunwali, the Pashtun code of honour and hospitality.

Arab, Syrian (Muslim traditions)JPIMBGRNDiscovery

Population

450,000

Language

Standard Arabic

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam-Khobar, Mecca, Medina

Syrians in Saudi Arabia, about 450,000 people, are mostly working families rather than refugees: doctors, engineers, traders, teachers and restaurant owners, many of whom came long before Syria's war. About 100,000 lived in the kingdom before 2011, among them exiled scholars from Aleppo who taught in Mecca and merchant families of Jeddah; after 2011 relatives joined them on family visas, and the kingdom gave them residence permits instead of refugee status. With more women and children than most foreign communities, they keep Levantine family life alive in private, from weddings with dabke dancing to long family visits, while Syrian shawarma, kunafa and Damascene sweets have become part of everyday Saudi street food. Most are Sunni Arabs; Kurds, Turkmen, Circassians and Armenians share the nationality, and a small Christian minority worships only at home.

MalayaliJPIMBGRNDiscovery

Population

~364,000 (330,000-450,000)

Language

Malayalam

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam-Khobar and Jubail; smaller groups in Mecca, Medina, Taif, Abha and other towns

Malayalis from Kerala were the first great wave of Indian workers in Saudi Arabia, arriving with the oil boom of the 1970s, and today about 364,000 live in the kingdom, one in six of Kerala's emigrants. They range from labourers, drivers and grocery-shop workers to engineers, accountants, nurses and the owners of supermarket and trading chains. Their heartland at home is Malappuram and the Muslim districts of northern Kerala, so Muslims are the largest part of the community, alongside Hindus and Christians who can worship only in private. Malayali life in the kingdom is unusually organised: Muslim League, leftist and religious associations run welfare cells, ambulance and body-repatriation help, Onam festivals and Malayalam classes, and in October 2025 Kerala's chief minister came to Dammam, Jeddah and Riyadh for Malayalam language festivals.

Nepali, generalJPIMBDiscovery

Population

300,000

Language

Nepali (individual language)

Religion

Hinduism

Location

Riyadh, Jeddah and Mecca, Dammam and al-Jubail, Tabuk and NEOM; construction camps and workplaces nationwide

Nepalis in Saudi Arabia are almost all men on two-year labour contracts, one of the kingdom's largest migrant workforces; the 2022 census counted fewer than 5,000 Nepali women, since Nepal restricts women from going to the Gulf as housemaids. They build the Riyadh Metro, the giga-projects of Vision 2030 and NEOM, guard buildings, stack Amazon warehouses and staff hotels, supermarkets and cleaning companies, living in company labour camps with men from the same districts. They come both from the hills, Hindu Bahun, Chhetri and Dalit families and Buddhist Magar, Tamang and Gurung, and from the southern plains of Madhesh, whose Maithili-, Bhojpuri- and Awadhi-speaking Madhesis and Tharu, Muslims among them, make up a large part of the Nepalis in the kingdom. Hindus and Buddhists keep Dashain and Tihar quietly in their rooms, while Nepali Muslims can pray in Saudi mosques.

RohingyaJPIMBGRN

Population

~300,000 (220,000-350,000)

Language

Rohingya

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Mecca (al-Nakasa, al-Kakiya and other informal quarters), Jeddah, Medina

The Rohingya of Saudi Arabia, called Burmawi by Saudis, are one of the oldest and largest Rohingya communities outside Myanmar, about 300,000 people. The first families came as pilgrims around 1949 and stayed near the holy places, and later waves fled persecution in the 1960s and 1970s; three in four of today's community were born in the kingdom. They live mostly in crowded informal quarters of Mecca such as al-Nakasa, with smaller communities in Jeddah and Medina, and work as street vendors, porters, cleaners, drivers and Hajj-season labourers. Children grow up speaking Arabic at school and in the mosque but keep Rohingya at home. They are stateless: some hold free Saudi residence permits issued to them as Myanmar nationals since 2013, others travel on Pakistani or Bangladeshi passports (about 54,000 on Bangladeshi ones) yet remain Rohingya by language and descent, not Bangladeshis or Pakistanis, and those without valid papers face detention and deportation.

South Asian, Telugu-speakingJPIMB

Population

~260,000 (est. 200,000-350,000)

Language

Telugu

Religion

Hinduism

Location

Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam and Al-Khobar, Jubail, Khamis Mushait

Telugu speakers from the south Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, about 260,000 people, are one of the largest Indian language communities in Saudi Arabia. Villages in northern Telangana's Nizamabad, Jagtial and Karimnagar districts have sent men to the Gulf for decades as masons, drivers and labourers, while Andhra Pradesh sends both workers and many engineers, IT staff, doctors and accountants. Most are Hindus who keep their faith in private: each autumn Telangana women in Riyadh, Jeddah and the Eastern Province stack flowers into tall Bathukamma towers and dance around them at family gatherings, and Sankranti and Telugu Language Day bring hundreds of families together. A Christian minority, mostly from coastal Andhra, meets in private fellowships.

Arab, PalestinianJPIMBGRN

Population

230,000

Language

Levantine Arabic

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Jeddah above all, then Riyadh, the Eastern Province, Mecca and Medina

Palestinians are one of the oldest foreign communities in Saudi Arabia, about 230,000 people, more than half of them in Jeddah. Refugees and graduates from the West Bank, Gaza and the camps of Jordan, Lebanon and Syria came from the 1950s as the kingdom's first teachers, engineers, doctors and civil servants, and many families are now in their third or fourth generation without citizenship, holding Palestinian or Jordanian passports or Egyptian travel documents. Monthly fees on expatriates' dependants from 2017 sent many families home, and the community is smaller than the half million of a decade ago. Most are Sunni Muslims, with a small Greek Orthodox and Catholic minority, and they keep their identity alive through embroidered dresses, maqluba and musakhan at family gatherings, and the keys and deeds of homes their grandparents left in 1948.

KenyanIMBDiscovery

Population

~200,000 (150,000-310,000)

Language

English

Religion

Christianity - Neo-Pentecostalism

Location

Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam and Al-Khobar, Mecca; live-in domestic workers in homes across the kingdom

Saudi Arabia is the main destination for Kenyan workers abroad, and about 200,000 Kenyans now live there, most of them young women working as live-in maids, nannies and cleaners in Saudi homes, with men as drivers, security guards and cleaners. Their numbers have more than doubled since 2022, as Kenya's government made labour migration to the Gulf a national policy and Saudi Arabia took most of the workers it placed. They come from all of Kenya's peoples and speak Swahili and English among themselves. Most are Christians who cannot worship openly in the kingdom, and many endure 16-hour days, confiscated passports and isolation inside the homes they serve.

Tamil (Hindu traditions)JPDiscovery

Population

~180,000 (est. 140,000-230,000)

Language

Tamil

Religion

Hinduism

Location

Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam and Al-Khobar, Jubail; smaller numbers in every city

Hindu Tamils in Saudi Arabia, about 180,000 people, come from two countries: labourers, drivers, technicians, engineers and office staff from Tamil Nadu in south India, and a smaller number of Tamils from Sri Lanka's north, east and tea-growing hill country, many of them domestic workers. Most Indian Tamils are men living without their families, in construction camps, the oil and petrochemical towns of Dammam and Jubail, and the offices and shops of Riyadh and Jeddah. The kingdom has no temple and forbids public non-Muslim worship, so Murugan, Vinayagar and Amman are honoured at small shrines in flats and rooms, and Pongal and Deepavali are kept indoors among friends. A Christian minority from the far south of Tamil Nadu and from Sri Lanka's Catholic parishes meets quietly in private homes.

UgandansDiscovery

Population

~130,000 (128,000-150,000)

Language

English and Luganda (common languages); Swahili; Runyankore-Rukiga, Lusoga, Acholi, Ateso, Lugbara and others at home

Religion

Christianity (Catholic, Anglican and Pentecostal)

Location

Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, Mecca and Medina; live-in domestic workers in homes across the kingdom

Ugandans are one of the largest African communities in Saudi Arabia, about 130,000 people, and almost all of them are women working as live-in housemaids, a migration that grew from a few thousand in 2017 to more than 80,000 departures a year by 2021-2022. Nine in ten Ugandans recruited for jobs in the Middle East go to the kingdom, and their remittances are a major source of income for families back home. They speak Luganda, English and Swahili among themselves and rarely see one another, since most live inside their employers' homes; Uganda's embassy keeps shelters in Riyadh and Jeddah for women who flee abuse. In December 2025 Ugandan dancers performed the Kadodi of Bugisu at Riyadh's Global Harmony festival, the community's first public cultural showcase in the kingdom.

IndonesianJPDiscovery

Population

~110,000 (95,000-125,000)

Language

Indonesian

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Jeddah, Mecca, Riyadh, Medina, Dammam and private households across the kingdom

About 110,000 Indonesians other than the Javanese live in Saudi Arabia, three in four of them women working as live-in maids, cooks and nannies in Saudi homes. They are Sundanese from West Java and Banten, Sasak and Sumbawans from Lombok and Sumbawa, Madurese and smaller numbers from Sumatra and Sulawesi. Many came before Indonesia stopped sending domestic workers to Middle Eastern households in 2015, and tens of thousands more each year have arrived since on visit and Umrah visas outside official channels, without the protection of a registered contract. Shafi'i Sunni Muslims, they gather when they can in pengajian Quran study circles and at the embassy in Riyadh and the consulate in Jeddah, above all for the 17 August Independence Day celebration. Indonesia agreed in 2025 to reopen regulated recruitment to the kingdom, though new placements were still held up in mid-2026.

Arab, JordanianJPIMBGRN

Population

100,000

Language

Standard Arabic

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Riyadh, Jeddah, the Eastern Province, Mecca and Medina, and the northern border regions

East Bank Jordanians in Saudi Arabia number about 100,000, half of the roughly 200,000 Jordanian passport holders in the kingdom, the rest being Jordanians of Palestinian origin. Saudi Arabia has long been the first destination of Jordanians working abroad: since the oil boom of the 1970s Jordanian teachers, doctors, engineers, accountants and military advisers have staffed its schools, hospitals and ministries, and their remittances keep many families in Irbid, Salt, Karak and Ma'an. Tribes such as the Howeitat, Shammar, Anizzah and Sirhan live on both sides of the border, so some Jordanians in Tabuk and al-Jawf visit cousins rather than strangers. The community has shrunk since monthly fees on expatriates' dependants began in 2017, which sent thousands of families home. They speak Jordanian Levantine Arabic, are Sunni Muslims with a small Orthodox and Catholic minority, and gather over mansaf, lamb in dried-yoghurt sauce on rice, at weddings and family gatherings.

EthiopiansDiscovery

Population

~80,000 (62,000-96,000)

Language

Amharic (primary), Oromo, Tigrinya, others

Religion

Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity and Sunni Islam (mixed)

Location

Riyadh, Jeddah, Mecca, Medina, Dammam; irregular migrants also along the Yemen border (Jazan, Asir, Najran)

Ethiopians have come to Saudi Arabia since the 1980s, women recruited as live-in maids and young men walking the perilous route through Djibouti or Somalia, across the Gulf of Aden and through war-torn Yemen to the Saudi border. The roughly 80,000 counted here are the Ethiopians who are neither Amhara nor Tigrayan: mostly Oromo, Ethiopia's largest people, many of them Muslims from Arsi, Hararghe and Jimma, with Gurage, Silte, Hadiya, Wolaytta and others. Most documented Ethiopians are women working in Saudi homes, nearly three for every man, while the irregular migrants, mostly men, live outside any count, and hundreds of thousands have been deported since 2017. Over the coffee ceremony in shared rooms and on rare days off, Afaan Oromo and Amharic mix; Muslims pray openly, while Orthodox and Protestant Ethiopians can only worship secretly in homes.

NigerianIMBDiscovery

Population

~80,000 (census 79,547)

Language

English

Religion

Christianity - Neo-Pentecostalism

Location

Mecca and Jeddah above all; also Medina, Riyadh and Dammam

Nigerians in Saudi Arabia are unlike most African communities there: about 80,000 people, as many women as men, and many of them families who have lived near the holy cities for generations. Most are Hausa, Fulani and Kanuri Muslims from northern Nigeria, descendants or successors of the pilgrims who for centuries walked and later flew to Mecca and stayed, working as traders, artisans, cleaners and domestic workers; others are doctors, engineers and teachers recruited for their skills. Many were born in the kingdom without Saudi papers, and those who overstay Hajj or Umrah visas live in poor quarters of Mecca and Jeddah, facing detention and deportation. Hausa is the common language of most, though children who grow up in the Hejaz speak Arabic first.

Sinhalese, generalJPIMBGRNDiscovery

Population

~57,500 (est. 52,500-62,500)

Language

Sinhala

Religion

Buddhism - Theravada

Location

Riyadh, Jeddah and Mecca, Dammam and al-Khobar; employer homes across the kingdom

Sinhalese in Saudi Arabia are Sri Lankan migrant workers, Buddhists for the most part with a Catholic minority, who make up about two-thirds of the kingdom's roughly 85,000 Sri Lankans. Labour migration began with the oil boom of the 1970s, and for decades Saudi households hired Sri Lankan women as live-in housemaids; today men and women come in about equal numbers among skilled workers, with housemaids, drivers, nurses, technicians and service staff the main jobs. Because no temple or public non-Muslim worship is allowed, their largest religious gathering is Vesak, which the Sri Lankan embassy and the Sri Lanka Community Club celebrate each May in Riyadh with lanterns, a Dharma talk, free dansal food and devotional songs by pupils of the Sri Lankan International School.

Arab, Lebanese generalJPIMB

Population

53,000

Language

Levantine Arabic

Religion

Islam (mixed Sunni and Shia) and Christianity

Location

Riyadh, Jeddah and the Eastern Province (Khobar, Dammam)

About 53,000 Lebanese live in Saudi Arabia, most of them in Riyadh and Jeddah, one of the most mixed communities in the kingdom: Sunni and Shia Muslims, Maronite, Orthodox and Catholic Christians, Armenians and a few Druze. Lebanese bankers, contractors, engineers, doctors, advertisers and restaurateurs have worked in the kingdom since the oil boom; Rafic Hariri made his fortune there in construction before becoming Lebanon's prime minister, and his company Saudi Oger employed thousands until it collapsed in 2017. The community has shrunk as Saudi relations with Beirut soured over Hezbollah, reaching a full diplomatic break in 2021, though Lebanon's economic collapse since 2019 has pushed others to seek Gulf jobs. Lebanese restaurants serving manakish, tabbouleh and grills are a fixture of Saudi city life, and Christian families keep their faith privately at home.

Amhara, EthiopianJPIMBGRN

Population

~52,000 (48,000-56,000)

Language

Amharic

Religion

Christianity - Tewahedo Orthodox

Location

Riyadh, Jeddah, Mecca, Medina and Dammam, mostly in their employers' homes

Amhara in Saudi Arabia are about a third of the kingdom's Ethiopians, most of them young women from the highlands of Wollo, Gojjam and Gondar who work as live-in maids in Saudi homes, and men who crossed Yemen on foot to find work without papers. Amharic, their language, is the common tongue of all Ethiopians in the kingdom, used even on the Saudi labour ministry's information pages for domestic workers. Most are Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, who can only pray secretly in private homes and keep the church's long fasts while cooking for their employers, but many women from Wollo are Muslims, and some first came on pilgrimage. Since 2023 the war between the Fano militias and the federal army in the Amhara region has pushed more young people abroad, while Saudi Arabia keeps deporting thousands of Ethiopians every month.

Arab, MoroccanJPIMBGRN

Population

48,800

Language

Arabic, Moroccan

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Riyadh, Jeddah, Mecca, Medina and the Eastern Province cities

Moroccans are a community of about 49,000 in Saudi Arabia, served by an embassy in Riyadh and a consulate general in Jeddah. Many are women in domestic and service work, alongside teachers, imams and Quran reciters, engineers, health workers and traders; the domestic workers have long reported withheld passports and lost wages, and a community association has campaigned for those jailed after disputes with employers. They speak Darija, a Maghrebi Arabic that Saudis find hard to follow, and a quarter or so are Amazigh (Berbers), Shilha of the Souss, Riffians and Middle Atlas Imazighen, who speak Tashelhit, Tarifit or Central Atlas Tamazight at home. Their Maliki Sunni Islam, with its Sufi lodges and saint festivals, differs from the Hanbali practice around them, though Moroccan scholars have taught in Mecca and Medina for a thousand years.

ChadianIMBDiscovery

Population

~46,000 (census 46,193)

Language

French

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Jeddah above all; also Mecca, Riyadh and Medina

Chadians in Saudi Arabia are a community of families rather than migrant workers, about 46,000 people with more women than men. Most descend from Muslim pilgrims of Chad's Sahel belt, Arabic-speaking Chadian Arabs, Kanembu, Maba, Hausa and Fulani among them, who for generations crossed Sudan to Mecca and stayed; many of today's Chadians were born in the kingdom and have never lived in Chad. Jeddah holds the largest share, with others in Mecca, Riyadh and Medina, and the men work as drivers, guards, traders, porters and tailors. Because Saudi citizenship is almost impossible to obtain, they live on residence permits that must be renewed, and their children's schooling and health care have depended on those papers.

SomaliJPIMBGRN

Population

46,000

Language

Somali

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Jeddah and Mecca above all, also Riyadh, Medina and Dammam

Somalis in Saudi Arabia live mostly in Jeddah and Mecca, across the Red Sea from their homeland, linked to it by pilgrimage, by trade and by the sheep, goats and camels shipped from Berbera and Bosaso for the kingdom's Hajj sacrifices. Some families came as workers in the oil-boom years and stayed, others fled the civil war after 1991, and many young men and women crossed the Gulf of Aden and Yemen without papers to find work washing cars, carrying baggage, cleaning homes or trading. Most are ethnic Somalis, with smaller numbers of Somalia's minorities, Somali Bantu, Benadiri and Bajuni. Sunni Muslims of the Shafi'i school, they share the faith of their hosts but organise their lives through clan networks that collect money for weddings, funerals and the cost of sending a deported relative home. Since 2013 Saudi Arabia has deported tens of thousands of Somalis without residence papers, all flown to Mogadishu whatever part of Somalia they came from.

MalianIMBDiscovery

Population

~38,000 (census 38,360)

Language

French

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Mecca, Jeddah and Medina; also Riyadh

Malians in Saudi Arabia are about 38,000 people, as many women as men, a community of families more than of contract workers. Most are Muslims of the Sahel, Fulani, Soninke, Songhai and Bambara among them, descended from or following the pilgrims who have travelled from Mali to Mecca since the age of Mansa Musa, and many were born in the kingdom without Saudi papers. They live mostly in the West African quarters of Mecca and Jeddah and near Medina, working as traders, tailors, Qur'an teachers, porters and domestic workers. Pilgrimage binds them to home: Mali lost at least 70 of its pilgrims in the 2015 crush at Mina.

EritreanDiscovery

Population

~35,000 (30,000-39,000)

Language

Tigre

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Jeddah above all, also Riyadh, Mecca and Dammam

Eritreans are one of the oldest African communities in Saudi Arabia: they began arriving in the 1960s and 1970s, when the kingdom backed the Muslim-led struggle for independence from Ethiopia, and many families have now raised two or three generations in Jeddah. Unlike Eritreans in Europe, most here are Sunni Muslims from the lowland peoples, Tigre and Saho, with Bilen, Hedareb, Afar and Arabic-speaking families, and their children grow up speaking Arabic. For over forty years the community has run its own Eritrean International School in Jeddah's al-Mushrifa district, whose parent committee is still elected at community meetings. Many came to escape war and later Eritrea's open-ended national service, and since Saudi Arabia grants no asylum, those without valid residence fear deportation to a country they fled.

NigeriensDiscovery

Population

~34,000 (census 33,579)

Language

Hausa and French (common languages); Zarma-Songhai, Fulfulde, Kanuri, Tamasheq and others at home

Religion

Sunni Islam (Maliki school)

Location

Mecca and Jeddah above all; also Medina and Riyadh

Nigeriens in Saudi Arabia, citizens of Niger rather than of neighbouring Nigeria, are about 34,000 people, slightly more women than men, a community of families. Most are Hausa-speaking Muslims, with Zarma, Fulani and Kanuri among them, from families that came on the Hajj and stayed, and many were born in the kingdom without Saudi papers. They share the West African quarters of Mecca and Jeddah with Nigerians and Chadians, working as traders, porters, cleaners, tailors and domestic workers, and those who overstay pilgrim visas face detention and deportation. Hausa is their common tongue at home, while their children grow up speaking the Arabic of the Hejaz.

TurkJPIMBGRNDiscovery

Population

~30,000 (est. 26,000-35,000)

Language

Turkish

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Riyadh, Jeddah, Mecca, Dammam, with smaller groups in Tabuk, Taif and Abha

Turks in Saudi Arabia are about 30,000 Turkish citizens who came to work, most of them since construction firms from Türkiye arrived in the 1970s: contractors and engineers, barbers, bakers, restaurant and furniture-shop owners, doctors and teachers, many with their families, Kurds and Zazas from eastern Türkiye among them. Their children studied at a network of Turkish international schools in Riyadh, Jeddah, Mecca, Dammam, Tabuk, Taif and Abha, eight of which Saudi Arabia closed in 2021 during a diplomatic rift before Ankara announced their reopening in 2022. The Hejaz was Ottoman for four centuries, and many Saudi families descend from Ottoman officials, soldiers and pilgrims, among them Queen Iffat, wife of King Faisal; those families speak Arabic and live as Saudis. Voting from Saudi Arabia in Türkiye's elections, the community has split between a more conservative Jeddah and a more secular-leaning Riyadh.

Arab, TunisianJPIMBGRN

Population

24,800

Language

Arabic, Tunisian

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Riyadh, Jeddah and the Hejaz, Taif, the Eastern Province cities

Tunisians in Saudi Arabia are a community of about 25,000, most of them skilled workers and their families: doctors and nurses in Saudi hospitals, teachers and university staff, engineers and technicians, many hired through Tunisia's state technical-cooperation agency. Served by an embassy in Riyadh and a consulate general in Jeddah, they are part of the 150,000 Tunisians the Tunisian government counts across the Gulf. Nearly all are Arabs, with a few Amazigh speakers from Djerba and the south. They speak Tunisian Arabic (Derja), a Maghrebi dialect laced with French, Italian and Amazigh words that Saudis struggle to follow, and many are more at ease in French than in Gulf Arabic. Their Maliki Sunni Islam, with its Zitouna scholarly tradition and saints' shrines, and the secular habits of Tunisian public life set them apart from Saudi Hanbali practice.

Americans, U.S.JPGRN

Population

20,000

Language

English

Religion

Christianity - Protestantism

Location

Riyadh; Dhahran, Al-Khobar and Dammam (Eastern Province); Jeddah

About 20,000 Americans live in Saudi Arabia, heirs to the oil workers the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco) brought to the Eastern Province from the 1930s. The Aramco residential camp in Dhahran, laid out like a small American suburb with lawns, a golf course and its own schools, is still the community's historic heart, while most Americans now live in walled compounds in Riyadh and Jeddah and work in energy, defence, health care, universities and the Vision 2030 building projects. Most are Christian at least in name, and those who practise meet in private fellowships inside compounds and homes, since no church may stand anywhere in the kingdom. In March 2026 Iranian drones struck the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh during the regional war, and many families left for a time.

BritishJPGRNDiscovery

Population

18,000

Language

English

Religion

Unaffiliated

Location

Riyadh, Jeddah, Dhahran/Al-Khobar/Dammam (Eastern Province)

About 18,000 Britons live in Saudi Arabia, professionals, defence contractors, teachers and their families who live mostly in walled compounds in Riyadh, Jeddah and the Eastern Province oil towns. Britain was the first Western power to recognise the Saudi state, in the 1927 Treaty of Jeddah, and British firms remain bound up with the kingdom through BAE Systems' support for the Saudi air force, Aramco contracts and British International Schools in Riyadh and Jeddah. The Vision 2030 projects at Diriyah, NEOM and the Red Sea coast have drawn growing numbers of British architects, engineers and project managers. Compound life, with its sports clubs, Friday brunches and private Christian gatherings, sets the rhythm of the community, nearly all of whom stay only a few years.

Moor, generalJP

Population

18,000

Language

Hassaniyya

Religion

Islam

Location

Medina, Mecca and Jeddah (Hejaz); Riyadh

Mauritanians in Saudi Arabia number about 18,000, most of them Hassaniya-speaking Moors, with Black Mauritanians of the Senegal valley, Haalpulaar, Soninke and Wolof, among them. Their link to Arabia is old: Mauritanian scholars, known as Shinqitis, have taught in the mosques of Medina and Mecca for centuries, and today Mauritania supplies more teachers to Saudi Islamic universities than any other country. Alongside these scholars, students and their families, a newer group of Haratine women, descendants of Mauritania's enslaved caste, has come since 2015 to work in Saudi homes, one reason women outnumber men among Mauritanians here. They speak Hassaniya Arabic and follow the Maliki school, with a tradition of desert Quranic schools that Saudi institutions hold in high regard.

GhanaianIMBDiscovery

Population

~14,000 (census 14,200)

Language

English

Religion

Christianity - Protestantism

Location

Jeddah, Riyadh and Dammam; also Mecca and Medina

Ghanaians in Saudi Arabia are a small community of about 14,000, with slightly more women than men. Many are Muslims from northern Ghana and the Hausa-speaking zongo quarters of Ghana's cities, some from families that came on the Hajj and stayed, while women recruited by agents work as housemaids and nannies and a smaller group of Christian professionals works for Aramco and other firms in the Eastern Province. Ghana's embassy in Riyadh and consulate in Jeddah have handled a steady stream of domestic workers who were deceived, overworked or unpaid, and Ghana suspended recruitment of housemaids to the Gulf in 2017. Community life runs through hometown and professional groups in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam.

Han Chinese, MandarinJPIMBGRN

Population

14,000

Language

Mandarin Chinese

Religion

Non-Religious / Atheism

Location

Riyadh, Jeddah, the Eastern Province (Dammam, Jubail) and project sites such as NEOM in Tabuk province

About 14,000 Chinese citizens live in Saudi Arabia, nearly nine in ten of them men, most of them engineers, technicians and managers posted by Chinese firms building the kingdom's new power plants, solar parks, railways, tunnels and housing. More than 1,900 Chinese companies now work in the country, and since 2024 several hundred teachers from China have come to teach Mandarin in Saudi secondary schools. Most live in company compounds on fixed contracts without their families, and keep Chinese New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival among themselves, with Chinese restaurants and WeChat groups as their meeting places. Most are not religious; the few Christians among them can only meet in private.

Algerian, Arabic-speakingJPIMBGRN

Population

9,600

Language

Arabic, Algerian

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Jeddah, Mecca and Medina (Western Region), Riyadh, Eastern Province, a few in the southern regions

Algerians in Saudi Arabia are a small community of about 9,600, most of them Arabs, with Kabyles, Chaoui and Mozabites, Amazigh peoples who also speak Algerian Arabic. They include families with children, students at Saudi universities on government scholarships, and people drawn to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, which Algerian pilgrims and scholars have frequented for centuries. They speak Algerian Arabic (Darja) at home, often mixed with French, and keep the Maliki school of Sunni Islam, while the kingdom follows the Hanbali school. Algeria's embassy in Riyadh and consulate in Jeddah gather them for meetings with visiting ministers and send their children to summer camps in Algeria.

FrenchJPGRNDiscovery

Population

~6,500-10,000

Language

French

Religion

Christianity - Roman Catholicism

Location

Riyadh, Jeddah, Al-Khobar/Dhahran, AlUla

Between 6,500 and 10,000 French citizens live in Saudi Arabia, a community that has grown through the 2020s with defence, energy, transport and tourism contracts. Most live in Riyadh and Jeddah, with smaller groups in Al-Khobar on the Gulf coast and in AlUla, where a French agency created under a 2018 agreement helps develop the Nabataean tombs of Hegra and the old mud-brick town. Family life revolves around three French international schools and the Alliance Française centres, which also teach French to thousands of Saudis. Most French residents are secular or Catholic in name; the Catholic bishop whose vicariate covers Saudi Arabia from Bahrain is himself French, but Mass can only be celebrated in private.

Arab, IraqiJPIMBGRNDiscovery

Population

6,400

Language

Arabic, Mesopotamian

Religion

Islam - Shia

Location

Riyadh, Jeddah, the Eastern Province (Dammam, Khobar) and Hafr al-Batin

Iraqis are one of the smallest Arab communities in Saudi Arabia, about 6,400 people, most of them Arabs with a few Kurds, Turkmen and Assyrian or Chaldean Christians, unusual among the kingdom's foreigners in that women outnumber men. Relations broke off when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, and the 33,000 Iraqis who fled the crushed southern uprising of 1991 spent up to seventeen years in the desert camp of Rafha before most were resettled in the United States and elsewhere or went home after 2003. Ties reopened only slowly, with the Saudi embassy in Baghdad in 2015 and the Arar border crossing for trade in 2020, so today's community is a mix of long-settled families, some living in Hafr al-Batin near the border for four decades, Iraqi wives and relatives of Saudis, and professionals in Riyadh, Jeddah and the Eastern Province. They speak the Mesopotamian Arabic of Baghdad and the south, and are Sunni and Shia Muslims, whose Shia families keep their religious gatherings private.

MalayJPGRN

Population

6,300

Language

Malay (individual language)

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Jeddah, Mecca, Riyadh, Medina, Dhahran and the Eastern Province

About 6,300 Malaysians live in Saudi Arabia, most of them Malays with some Chinese Malaysians and Kadazan-Dusun, Iban and other peoples of Sabah and Sarawak, nearly all on contracts in oil and gas, health care and services, with their families, students at the kingdom's Islamic universities, and the staff who look after Malaysia's 31,600 pilgrims each Hajj season. Malay identity is bound to Islam, and for many the chance to live within reach of Mecca and Medina is part of the pull. They are Shafi'i Sunni Muslims who keep Malay ways at home, from Hari Raya visits between families to Malay cooking, and gather around the embassy in Riyadh and the consulate general in Jeddah. Older Saudi families of Malay and Patani descent, settled in Mecca since the days of the sailing pilgrimage, now speak Arabic and count as Saudis.

ThaiJPGRNDiscovery

Population

~6,300 (6,000-9,000)

Language

Thai

Religion

Islam (Sunni, Shafi'i)

Location

Mecca and Jeddah (most), Medina; a few hundred in Riyadh, the Eastern Province, Tabuk, Khamis Mushait and Najran

About 6,300 Thais live in Saudi Arabia, and most of them are Muslims from Thailand's south living in Mecca and Jeddah: students at the Islamic universities, spouses and long-settled families, and workers in the pilgrimage trade. Many come from the far south, where most Muslims speak Patani Malay at home and Thai at school and with officials. A smaller group of Thai workers, many of them men in their fifties and sixties who have stayed for decades, is scattered from Riyadh to the Eastern Province, Tabuk and Najran. Relations froze for three decades after a Thai servant stole jewels from a Saudi prince's palace in 1989 and Saudi Arabia stopped issuing work visas to Thais; ties were restored in 2022 and a labour agreement signed, so new Thai workers, most of them Buddhists, have begun to arrive. Buddhist Thais have no temple in the kingdom and keep their faith in private.

ItalianJPGRN

Population

~3,000-4,000

Language

Italian

Religion

Christianity - Roman Catholicism

Location

Riyadh, Eastern Province (Dammam, Al-Khobar, Jubail), Jeddah

A few thousand Italians live in Saudi Arabia, engineers, managers and technicians who follow Italian contracts in the kingdom rather than any colonial or merchant past. The largest employers are offshore and fabrication work for Saudi Aramco in the Eastern Province, Italian builders on the Riyadh Metro and the Vision 2030 projects, and design, fashion and hospitality firms, and many workers come on rotation without their families. Italians live in Western compounds, keep their food and family customs, and meet through company circles, the embassy in Riyadh, the consulate in Jeddah and an association of Italian entrepreneurs. Most are Catholic in name, and those who practise attend private Masses, since no church may be built in the kingdom.

Arab, OmaniJPIMBGRN

Population

3,100

Language

Arabic, Omani

Religion

Islam - Ibadi and Sunni

Location

Riyadh, Jeddah and the Eastern Province cities (Dammam, al-Khobar); no breakdown by region published

Omanis are one of the smallest Gulf communities in Saudi Arabia, about 3,100 Omani Arabs among the 3,700 Omani nationals, three in four of them men; Omani Baluch are counted with the Baloch. As citizens of a fellow Gulf Cooperation Council state they need no sponsor and come as students, employees, traders and spouses of Saudis, served by Oman's embassy in Riyadh and consulate general in Jeddah. Many follow Ibadi Islam, Oman's own school of Islam, which is neither Sunni nor Shia and has no mosque or teacher of its own anywhere in the kingdom. They are recognisable by the embroidered kumma cap and the tasselled Omani dishdasha, beside the Saudi ghutra and thobe.

KoreanJPGRN

Population

3,000

Language

Korean

Religion

Non-Religious

Location

Riyadh and the Eastern Province (2,440); Jeddah and the western region (571)

About 3,000 South Koreans live in Saudi Arabia, four in five of them in Riyadh and the Eastern Province and the rest in Jeddah and the west. They follow a much larger wave: in the oil boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s more than 100,000 Korean construction workers a year came to build the kingdom's highways, ports and housing, famous for working through the night under floodlights, and went home as Korea grew rich. Today's community is small but growing again: engineers and managers of Korean builders on Vision 2030 projects, and more and more Korean nurses in Saudi hospitals and cabin crew for Saudi airlines, so that almost half are women. About half have no religion and a quarter to a third are Christians, who can worship only in private.