Location and area
Jazan lies in the south-west of the Kingdom, the point where Saudi Arabia meets both the Red Sea and Yemen. The Red Sea borders it to the west, the Asir Region to the north and east, and Yemen to the south and south-east.
It covers about 13,000 km², 0.7% of the Kingdom, making it the second-smallest region. Its land is a mix of mountains, coastal plains and islands; inhabited islands make up 5.35% of its territory.
Population
The 2022 Saudi census counted 1,404,997 people in Jazan, 4.4% of the Kingdom's population. It is the sixth region by population and one of seven with more than a million residents, and with about 108 people per km² it is among the most densely settled. Its main population centres are Sabya, Abu Arish and Samtah, and 48.93% of its people live on the islands and coastal plains.
The city of Jazan had 200,911 residents in the 2022 census, about 14.3% of the region, making it the second-largest settlement after Sabya; Abu Arish Governorate had 187,060. From the main towns, Jazan city is 30 to 40 minutes by car.
Emirate, governorates and history
The city of Jazan is the administrative capital and seat of the Emirate. Besides the capital, the region has 16 governorates and 41 administrative centres. Category A: Sabya, Abu Arish, Samtah, Baish, Farasan and Al-Darb. Category B: Al-Harth, Damad, Al-Raith, Al-Dayer, Ahad al-Masarihah, Al-Edabi, Al-Aridah, Harub, Fayfa and Al-Tuwal. On 8 May 2025 (10 Dhu al-Qa'dah 1446 AH) Prince Mohammed bin Abdulaziz bin Mohammed bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was appointed governor and Prince Nasser bin Mohammed bin Abdullah bin Jalawi Al Saud deputy governor.
Human settlement here goes back to the Lower Palaeolithic, and the name Jazan appears in an ancient Musnad inscription. In the tenth year after the Hijrah a delegation of the Hakami tribe led by Abduljad bin Rabi'ah visited the Prophet in Madinah and embraced Islam; the region later became known as al-Mikhlaf al-Sulaymani. After the Makkah Treaty of 21 October 1926, al-Hassan al-Idrisi ceded rule in 1930 and the region joined the Saudi state.
Mountains, valleys and climate
The highest peak is Jabal al-Oraif, north-east of Fayfa, at more than 2,632 m, the tenth-highest in the Kingdom after nine peaks in Asir. The region has 13 dams with a storage capacity of 313.44 million m³, making it one of the three regions that benefit most from dam water, and each resident receives about 76 litres of drinking water a day. Among its valleys are Wadi Jazan, with its dam lake, and Wadi Lajab.
Tropical winds shape the climate: summers are very hot and winters mild, except on the mountain heights, where temperatures stay moderate and rain falls throughout the year.
The Farasan Islands
Off the coast lies the Farasan archipelago, an estimated 200 islands, 15.6% of the Kingdom's 1,285 islands; the inhabited ones include Farasan al-Kabir, Sajid and Qumah. Farasan Governorate covers about 1,050 km² and had 13,529 residents in 2022; Farasan al-Kabir, at about 380 km², is the Kingdom's largest island. The islands were declared a protected area in 1996, joined UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme in 2021, and hold the Kingdom's largest concentration of the endangered Farasan gazelle. A bridge built in 1985 links Sajid to Farasan al-Kabir.
Their landmarks include the Najdi Mosque (1928), the al-Rifai house built in 1923 and now a cultural centre, Bait al-Jarmal on Qumah, a fort built by the Germans during the Second World War, and rocks inscribed in Himyarite script at Wadi Matar. The village of al-Qessar, one of the first inhabited sites on Farasan, has some 400 houses of stone in several quarters and was once a summer retreat where islanders spent more than three months a year.
Landmarks of the mainland
Al-Dosariyah Castle stands on a hilltop in the centre of Jazan, overlooking the port and the Red Sea. It has two floors and four round towers over about 900 m². King Abdulaziz ordered its restoration in 1932, and on completion in early 1933 it became the first Saudi military garrison of the period; today it is a museum and a tourist site linked to the city's inner market.
In Abu Arish, Masjid al-Qubab takes its name from its 18 domes, and al-Abbasah Mosque dates from 1845; the town's Wednesday market has been held for more than a century. Further south, on the coast near the Yemeni border, lie the ruins of al-Sharjah, an Islamic port that flourished until the fifteenth century.
Farming, coffee and fishing
Agriculture and fishing are the pillars of the economy. Jazan supplies 40% of the Kingdom's fish, has 154,876 agricultural holdings (second only to Asir), is one of the Kingdom's five farming regions, and agriculture employs 20% of its workforce. It grows vegetables, fruit and field crops, jasmine (full), a symbol of the region's identity, kadi, aromatic plants and honey; its mango comes mainly from Baish, Sabya and Abu Arish.
The mountain heights are the home of coffee growing in the Kingdom. Coffee farms cover 1.6% of the region, with about 400,000 trees producing 360 tonnes a year at a quality grade of 83–90%. In 2022 UNESCO inscribed the knowledge and practices of cultivating Khawlani coffee, grown by the Khawlani tribes for more than 300 years on water-saving terraces, on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Industry, ports and services
The 106 km² south-western economic zone, 70 km north of Jazan city and 20 km west of Baish, holds Jazan City for Basic and Transformational Industries, an industrial port that is one of the largest on the Kingdom's Red Sea coast by design capacity and a gateway to the Horn of Africa, and the Jazan Refinery, with a capacity of 400,000 barrels a day. The Port of Jazan, opened in 1976, has twelve berths and is the Kingdom's largest port for livestock imports from the Horn of Africa.
King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Airport, 3 km from the city centre, opened in 1978 and handles 900,000 passengers a year; a new airport with a capacity of 6.3 million has been under construction since 2018 at al-Sabkha, about 30 km north. Jazan University, founded in 2005 (1426 AH), has branches across the governorates, and the region has more than 1,363 schools with over 190,268 pupils. The city's North Corniche Park covers about a million m², and Jazan hosts a winter festival, a mango festival and a festival of jasmine and aromatic plants.