Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Eastern Province known for?

The world's first Saudi crude came up here at Dammam No. 7 in 1938, and Dhahran has held the headquarters of Saudi Aramco ever since. Dammam is the provincial capital and its main port, ringed by the sister cities of Dhahran and Khobar along the Persian Gulf shore. Inland, the Al-Ahsa oasis waters millions of date palms from its artesian springs.

The Ghawar field beneath the sands is the largest conventional oil field ever found.

Where is Eastern Province?

Eastern Province covers the whole eastern flank of Saudi Arabia, the single region that holds the kingdom's entire Persian Gulf coastline. It is the largest of the country's regions by far. Roughly two-thirds of it is open desert.

The Rub' al Khali, the great sand sea known as the Empty Quarter, fills the south and alone accounts for more than half the province, while the ad-Dahna belt of red dunes curves in from the north-west. The rest tapers to a narrow, populated strip along the water. Bahrain sits just offshore, linked to Khobar by the King Fahd Causeway, a run of bridges and embankments that crosses roughly 25 km of shallow gulf.

Dammam anchors the coast as the provincial capital and chief port. About 60 km inland from that shore lies the Al-Ahsa oasis, the largest oasis in the world, a green sheet of date palms fed by underground water in the middle of the sand. The land is low and flat almost everywhere.

From the gulf beaches the ground rises only gently before it gives way to dune and gravel plain running west toward the interior of the peninsula.

What is Eastern Province like?

Two Arabias meet along this coast. One is the oil frontier of Dammam, Dhahran and Khobar, built up fast in the twentieth century around the wells and the company town of Saudi Aramco. The other is far older.

Al-Ahsa has drawn farmers and caravans to its springs for thousands of years, and Qatif on the coast keeps one of the oldest continuously settled communities on the whole Persian Gulf. Arabic is the language of the province, as across the kingdom. Dates define the table here.

The Al-Ahsa oasis pours out millions of them from groves so vast the palm belt was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The coastal cities pull in a mixed working population from across the country and beyond, drawn by the refineries and the port. Yet the rhythm of the oasis towns stays tied to the land and the harvest.

Markets in Hofuf still trade the crop the springs have watered since long before the first drill turned. It is a province of derricks and date palms at once, the newest wealth of Saudi Arabia laid over some of its oldest ground.

What is the history of Eastern Province?

The oasis at Al-Ahsa gave this land its long history, watering settled farmers and pilgrim caravans on the Persian Gulf side of Arabia for millennia. Ibn Saud took the region from the Ottomans in 1913, folding the old province of al-Hasa into the state he was building. Then came the discovery that changed everything.

Drillers struck oil at Dammam No. 7 in 1938, the first commercial crude in the kingdom, and the quiet fishing and farming coast turned within a generation into the engine room of Saudi Arabia. Dhahran grew up around that first field as the home of Saudi Aramco.

What is the climate of Eastern Province?

The climate here is hot and dry. Summers on the Persian Gulf coast turn brutal, the desert heat thickened by humidity off the water, so Dammam and Khobar swelter under haze from late spring into autumn. Inland at Al-Ahsa the air is drier but no cooler.

Rain barely falls. The comfortable months run from about November into March, when winter softens the coast and the oasis, and the shore is warm rather than punishing.

How do you get to Eastern Province?

Most travellers fly into King Fahd International Airport, which spreads across the desert north-west of Dammam and serves the whole coast. Trains link Dammam to Riyadh across the interior. There is also a land route few provinces can match: the King Fahd Causeway carries a steady stream of cars over the Persian Gulf between Khobar and Bahrain, putting Manama within an easy drive.

Roads then fan south down the coast and inland to the Al-Ahsa oasis.