Hofuf

Hofuf
Hofuf Location in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Coordinates: 25°23′N 49°35′E / 25.383°N 49.583°E / 25.383; 49.583
Country	Saudi Arabia
Province	Hofuf
Established
Joined Saudi Arabia 1913
Government
- Mayor	Bin Jalawi
- Provincial Governor	Muhammed Bin Fahd
Population (2005)
- Total	400,000
	Hofuf Municipality estimate
Postal Code	(5 digits)
Area code(s)	+966-3
Website	[1]

Al-Hofuf also Hofuf or Al-Hufuf (Arabic: الهفوف‎) is the major urban center in the huge Al-Ahsa Oasis in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.

Overview

The city proper has a population of 287,841 (2004 census} and is part of a larger populated oasis area of towns and villages of around 600,000. It is located inland, southwest of Abqaiq and the Dhahran-Dammam-Al-Khobar metropolitan area on the road south to Haradh. It is the closest city to the famous Ghawar oil field, one of the world's largest conventional (land-based) fields.

Hofuf is one of the major cultural centers in Saudi Arabia. A lot of well known families live there. The faculties of agriculture, veterinary medicine and animal resources for King Faisal University are located in the city (the others being in Dammam). The Hofuf campus also has facilities where Saudi women can study medicine, dentistry and home economics.

Legend places this as the burial place of Laila and Majnoon, the star-crossed pair of the most popular love story in the Arab and Muslim world. The Queen of Sheba is also fabled to have visited this city from her kingdom in Yemen.

Ethnography

The city of Hofuf--one of the largest in the traditional al-Hasa/Ahsa district after the city of Qatif, is historically one of the primary centers of Shia Islam in the modern kingdom of Saudi Arabia. However, in view of the suppression of Shiism by the Wahhabi religious authorities who dominate most aspects of political and administrative life of the Saudi state, no Shia was openly allowed to practice his/her beliefs or confess to being a Shia. Only after 2003 invasion of Iraq and the rise of the Shia fortunes has the Saudi government allowed for some local, but subdued expressions of Shia identity in the region. As such, the Shia cities like Hofuf, Mubarraz, Qatif etc. are listed as having Wahhabi or Sunni Muslim majorities. This is of course an error. A quick review of the British colonial sources, such as J.G. Lorimer (Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, 1915, vol. 8, Oman and Central Arabia, pp. 642-679), imparts to the reader city and village-level ethnic and religious statistics taken at the time that the area was still an Ottoman district (until 1912-1914) and free of religious suppression that follows with the Saudi takeover.

Like the rest of the al-Hasa/Ahsa oasis, Hofuf city boasts to a Shia majority, although thanks to the discovery of the largest oil deposits in the world--the Ghawar Field in this Shia region, a very large numbers of outsiders with various religious afliations have now settled the primary cities of Ahsa, such a Hofuf.

Transport

Airport

Although the city has two airports, it is served by King Fahd International Airport which is 130km away. The local airports; the old one is abandoned, and the new is being used by Saudi Aramco along with limited service from Saudi Arabian Airlines offering only two weekly flights to Jeddah.

Railway

The town has a railway junction where the direct line from the Persian Gulf to the capital splits from the indirect line.

See also

• an aerial map showing the location of Al-Hofuf in relation to other towns in the oasis
• Al-Ahsa - or Al-Hasa - Oasis

External links

• Hofuf on www.The-Saudi.net

References

• FallingRain Map - elevation = 164m

Coordinates: 25°23′N 49°35′E / 25.383°N 49.583°E / 25.383; 49.583

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