Saudi Arabia Standard Time ( ar, التوقيت القياسي السعودي, At-Tawqīt al-qiyāsiyy as-suʿūdiyy), abbreviated as SAST, is the standard

time zone A time zone is an area which observes a uniform standard time for legal, Commerce, commercial and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries between Country, countries and their Administrative division, subdivisions instead of ...

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the A ...

. The time zone is 3 hours ahead of UTC ( UTC+03:00) with no daylight savings. SAST is defined by the

45th Meridian East The meridian 45° east of Greenwich is a line of longitude that extends from the North Pole across the Arctic Ocean, Europe, Asia, Africa, the Indian Ocean, the Southern Ocean, and Antarctica to the South Pole. The 45th meridian east forms a g ...

. Before a standardized time zone was introduced, the country used ''Arabic time'', in which clocks were set to midnight at sundown. Because of confusion between various other systems also used in the kingdom, the standardized use of a time zone was established.

History

Until 1968, Saudi Arabia used ''Arabic time,'' where clocks were set to 12 o'clock at sunset or when the

call to prayer A call to prayer is a summons for participants of a faith to attend a group worship or to begin a required set of prayers. The call is one of the earliest forms of telecommunication, communicating to people across great distances. All religions ...

for the sunset prayer was heard. This was because the

Islamic calendar The Hijri calendar ( ar, ٱلتَّقْوِيم ٱلْهِجْرِيّ, translit=al-taqwīm al-hijrī), also known in English as the Muslim calendar and Islamic calendar, is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 lunar months in a year of 354 or ...

defines sunset as marking the beginning of a new day. However this later conflicted with the introduction of western sun time, which defined, in congruence with Europe, the start of a new day to be midnight. With western sun time, clocks were set to six o'clock at sun set. While western sun time was intended to be approximately equal to GMT+3, it being reliant on sunset time, which changed with the seasons, meant that large disparity could emerge between western sunset time and GMT+3 as seasons progressed. In addition to this, the American

Military Assistance Advisory Group Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) is a designation for United States military advisors sent to other countries to assist in the training of conventional armed forces and facilitate military aid. Although numerous MAAGs operated around ...

introduced "Zulu time" which was aligned with GMT+4.

Saudi Air Saudia ( ar, السعودية '), formerly known as Saudi Arabian Airlines (), is the flag carrier of Saudi Arabia, based in Jeddah. The airline's main operational base is at King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah. King Khalid Interna ...

used GMT+3 for most of the country, except for

Dahran Dhahran ( ar, الظهران, ''Al-Dhahran'') is a city located in the Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia. With a total population of 240,742 as of 2021, it is a major administrative center for the Saudi oil industry. Together with the nearby cit ...

which was set at GMT+4. The American Arabian Oil Company, used to also observe daylight savings for its headquarters in Dahran. Similarly, the Trans-Arabian Pipeline Company also observed daylight savings for its pumps in the east of the country.

IANA time zone database

The

IANA time zone database The tz database is a collaborative compilation of information about the world's time zones, primarily intended for use with computer programs and operating systems. Paul Eggert is its current editor and maintainer, with the organizational backi ...

contains one zone for Saudi Arabia in the file zone.tab, which is named Asia/Riyadh.

References

Time in Saudi Arabia Time zones {{SaudiArabia-stub