I remember my mother telling me that when she got married in 1960 her family paid a dowry of a thousand pounds to my father for her hand in marriage. That was a lot of money back then. Dowries are found in many other societies and cultures in the world. It is common throughout the Middle East where the groom provides the dowry to the family of the bride...
This small collection of verses was written as a poetic diary of my thoughts and impressions, influenced by my life and travel within Saudi Arabia during the past eight years (circa 1980s), intending, hopefully, for them to be handed on to my three granddaughters - Emma Louise, Sarah Jane and Lisa Maria - in the fullness of time.
Newly crowned King Saud arrives in Dhahran for an extended stay during the first week of January 1954, followed by a long hunting trip throughout the Kingdom. Dhahran District Manager Ken Webster reports on His Majesty’s visit in detail and continues his regular family correspondence describing daily Aramco operations and newsworthy developments.
On June 18th at The Colony, Lahore's leading performing arts center and creative hub, Engr. Syed Naushad Yousaf Shah and his wife attended the premiere screening of the internationally acclaimed Pakistani short movie, Darya Kay Iss Paar - This Bank of the River. The film was made by a dear friend of Syed's, both alumni of the University of Engineering & Technology, UET, Lahore.
In September 1979, Mark Lowey completed a nearly two-year stint working in the oil fields of the Eastern Province in Saudi Arabia. Together with a colleague, he traveled to Kathmandu and then Pokhara, the gateway to the Himalayas’ Annapurna region in cemtral Nepal.
Dear colleagues, The blessed holiday of ‘Id al-Adha next week comes at a time of cautious optimism for all of us. On the positive side, COVID-19 vaccines are proving effective and there are hopeful signs that a global recovery is underway.
There’s no doubt that many of the boons that we enjoy today were not available to our fathers and grandfathers, their days often fraught with hardship. Just in a few decades, the Kingdom and world in general, have seen remarkable change and advancement.
For the people of Paris, May 1709 was a time of anger. Inflation was running out of control, driving up the price of wheat daily. Louis XIV, who had been king of France for more than 65 years, ruled with absolute authority, yet his regime was starting to unravel.
As any resident or passerby of the cities of Aramco knows, the cities of Dhahran, Ras Tanura, Abqaiq and Udailyah are extremely clean and well maintained. And that reality wouldn’t be possible without the efforts of the domestic workers that spend hours working in the hot, Arabian sun.
Khalid H. Al-Dabbagh has recently been appointed to the Aramco Board of Directors. Currently, Al-Dabbagh serves as the chairman of the Board of Directors for SABIC and director on the Board of Governors of the GCC Board Directors Institute. Aramco recently appointed former HSBC CEO Stuart T. Gulliver to the Board of Directors.
The desert is a book that can be read. Which direction is the wind blowing? What color is the sand? Where is the Polar star? What shape does a footprint take? These are questions a tracker asks himself. Someone who can read the sand by day and the sky at night.
AramcoWorld, Saudi Aramco's flagship publication, is widely recognized as a leading source of nonpolitical coverage of the history, geography, arts and cultures of Saudi Arabia, the Middle East and the wider Islamic world, with an emphasis on the interweavings of the plural cultures of East and West, past and present.
I knew my grandfather Milton after he retired in 1960 until his death in 1970. I fantasize about the questions I would ask him now. Sadly, I didn’t really understand the breadth of his distinguished career until 2013.
Aramco’s efforts to promote and develop low carbon fuel solutions are gaining attention. During a recent media visit to company facilities by news agency Bloomberg, Aramco’s chief technology officer, Ahmad O. Al-Khowaiter said that Aramco is exploring investment and partnership opportunities in blue hydrogen to meet increasing global demand for low carbon energy solutions, following the company’s first-ever delivery of the low carbon fuel source to Japan last year.
1953 is a memorable year in the history books. Most notably for Aramcons, it is the year when King Ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia, dies in the fall at the age of 73. His son, Crown Prince Saud, is named the new king by the royal family and another son, Faisal, is named crown prince.
Three kilometers long and less than one wide, the island of Pulau Rhun is so tiny, says Indonesian photojournalist Muhammed Fadli, that it doesn’t even appear on many older maps.
A group of Aramco Retiree Golfers, determined to play the top golf courses on their “Bucket List” in North America and around the world, bagged world-renowned Pinehurst May 3-7, 2021. The courses hosted the Men’s U.S. Open Championships in 1999, 2005 and 2014 and the U.S. Women's Open Championship in 2014.
Big changes are happening at Reilly Financial Advisors, and we want to make sure everyone at Aramco is kept in the loop! It seems that while Vice President – Middle East Mark Shane was helping Aramcons craft and maintain their retirement plans, he was also working on his own.
Ken and Mildred Webster presented their younger daughter, Susan, with her own horse for her 12th birthday in January 1953. This was truly a momentous occasion in Susan’s childhood, as she was “horse crazy” from an early age and spent most of her free time riding and honing her horsemanship at The Hobby Farm for years prior to this special gift.
The Khaybar area, 200 km from Medina Al Munawarah City, has a number of pre-Islamic dams, with the most impressive being the Al Bint, meaning “a girl” in Arabic. The dam has a height of 30 meters and a length of 130 meters of standing structure. It is mostly in good condition, but approximately one-third of the dam has fallen.