Demographics

Popular Saudi and foreign opinion regards Jeddah as the most liberal and cosmopolitan of Saudi cities in spite of its historic role as port and gateway to the holy city of Mecca. For over one thousand years, Jeddah has received millions of pilgrims of different ethnicities and backgrounds, from Africa, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe and the Middle East, many of whom remained and became residents of the city. As a result, Jeddah is much more ethnically diverse than most Saudi cities and its culture more eclectic in nature (in contrast with the more geographically isolated, homogeneous, and religiously strict capital Riyadh). Added to the traditional diversity, the oil-boom of the past 50 years has brought hundreds of thousands of working immigrants and foreign workers from non-Muslim countries, the majority originating from continents such as North America (Unites States of America), Europe (Western Europe), and Asia (South and South-East Asia); there are also many Christian Arabs from the Middle East coming from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Palestine^.