Photo of the Day 471

Oil Refinery, Ras Tanurah, Saudi Arabia

Photograph by Thomas J. Abercrombie

Gas flares fire the night at Saudi Aramco's Ras Tanurah refinery, north of Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Each day sparkling towers here produce more than half a million barrels of refined petroleum, the largest output of any refinery in the Middle East.

(Photo shot on assignment for "Saudi Arabia—Beyond the Sands of Mecca," January 1966, National Geographic magazine)

Photo of the Day 270

Tribal Leaders, Saudi Arabia, 2003

Photograph by Reza

Tribal leaders gather around a fire in the tent of a prominent sheik in Saudi Arabia. Such meetings, called majlis, are customary throughout the kingdom. They can be simple social gatherings or, if the host is powerful, an official audience, where a Bedouin camel herder asking help with a grazing issue might be followed by a billionaire property baron requesting a construction permit.

(Text adapted from and photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Kingdom on Edge: Saudi Arabia," October 2003, National Geographic magazine)

Photo of the day 232

Desert at Dawn, Saudi Arabia, 2003

Photograph by Reza

A lone man walks over sand dunes in the Saudi Arabian desert. This oil-rich kingdom on the Arabia Peninsula covers some 770,000 square miles (2 million square kilometers), more than 98 percent of which is desert.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Kingdom on Edge: Saudi Arabia," October 2003, National Geographic magazine)