The area includes a variety of natural landscapes, parks, and beaches with a recreational coastline to the Persian Gulf.

Several tombs, remnants, artifacts and historical references suggest that the area was inhabited more than two thousand years ago.

Years later, Sheikh Ahmed's brother and his family moved south to Al Khobar, which by that time was already inhabited.

The arrival of the Sheikh Ahmed's brother resulted in a population boost for Khobar and closer ties with the bigger city of Dammam.

When the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded in 1932, the area was the site of several small settlements that depended on fishing and pearls for their survival.

Over the span of a little more than half a century, the area has developed into a thriving hub of industry, commerce and science, and home to around two million people.

[2] The growing number of expatriates working in Dhahran required the building of housing, hospitals, schools for their children and other amenities.

The growth of the oil industry in the region had a similar impact on the small fishing villages of Dammam and Khobar.

Within two decades of the discovery of oil, the huts of the fishermen that crowded the shore, which constituted the only permanent dwellings in the area, had given way to concrete buildings and modern housing, highways and streets.

[2] Located on the Persian Gulf coast east of Dhahran, Khobar briefly became the shipping point for Saudi Arabian crude oil to the refinery in Bahrain.

[2] In the early 1980s, Dammam, the capital of the Eastern Province, was a separate city but so close to Khobar and Dhahran that one could pass from one to the other in a few minutes.

The discovery of oil in Dhahran and nearby fields and the growing importance of the entire region affected Dammam more than any other city in Saudi Arabia.

As oil production was growing in the early years, the Saudi Arabian government took steps to facilitate the evolution of Greater Dammam.

Residential areas are separate from commercial sections, roads are broad and straight and buildings conform to a master plan.