Historians have noted that the first car appeared in Saudi Arabia in 1921 brought by King AbdulAziz 11 years before the unification of the country when he was nicknamed the Sultan of Nejd. Cars became widespread in certain areas in the kingdom in 1926 to become another mode of transportation next to camels which were the main method of transport.
Cars replaced camels as the main mode of transportation in the 1950s and were widely used across the country. Car ownership increased even more in the 1970s. Different car brands were called different names by locals, where the ‘Dementy’ was considered the most famous car brand, along with ‘Internash’ and ‘al-Fert’.
The first cars to exist in Saudi Arabia were accompanied with several funny stories about how some desert tribes ran away when they first saw a car being driven through the desert, while others thought it was the devil. The car became one of the most important means of transportation in the Arabian Peninsula, and was immortalized by thousands of poems even specifying the vehicle’s type and strength. Car are still mentioned in popular poetry even with the emergence of different means of transport, including trains, planes and ships.
Source Credit: Al Arabiya
Read full story: http://bit.ly/2FcutoE
