Peninsular Arab Republic

The Peninsular Arab Republic (Arabic: الجمهورية العربية الجزيرية al-jumhūriyah al-‘arabīyah al-jazīrīyah), informally known as the Peninsular Republic (جمهورية الجزيرة jumhūriyat al-jazīrah) or colloquially as The Peninsula (الجزيرة al-jazīrah), is one of 20 federated Arab republics which make up the Union of Arab Republics (UAR; commonly known as the Arab Union). It constitutes the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, its namesake, and has a population of approximately 34 million. The capital and largest city is Riyadh, the third largest city in the union, with nearly 10 million people. The Peninsular Republic is home to two of the three holiest cities according to Islam, namely Mecca and Medina, the third (and third holiest) being Jerusalem, capital of the Palestinian Arab Republic (which is also considered the holiest city in the other major Abrahamic faiths of Judaism and Christianity).

Prior to its establishment in 1987 by pan-Arabist revolutionary forces during the Arab Revolution as a secular republic, the territory that is now the Peninsular Republic was called Saudi Arabia, named after the House of Saud, the absolutist dynasty which had controlled the bulk of the peninsula since the 1930s. Following the House of Saud's overthrow, the new republican administration renamed the state and set about erasing major relics of the Saudi regime, which included a widespread crackdown and repression of monarchist and reactionary elements in society. In 1989, shortly before the end of the Arab Revolution, the Peninsular Arab Republic became the ninth Arab republic to join the Arab Union; the government administration that existed was absorbed by the unitary Arab Union government, and the Peninsular Republic, along with all other republics, only became a federated state and gained its own republican government following the Arab Union's restructuring as a federation following the passing of the 1999 constitution.