Dhahran

King Abdulaziz Air Base, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

Dhahran, Arabic Al-Ẓahrān, town, northeastern Saudi Arabia. It is located in the Dammam oil field, just south of the Persian Gulf port of Dammam and near the site of the original discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia in 1938. It now serves as the administrative headquarters of Saudi Aramco. A major U.S. Air Force installation (now King Abdulaziz Air Base) was built there in 1945, and a number of other U.S. military installations were later established in the area. It was one of the main marshaling and deployment points for U.S. troops during the Persian Gulf War, and in 1996 a terrorist attack on a U.S. troop barracks there killed more than a dozen soldiers (see Khobar Towers bombing of 1996).

The town has petroleum-extraction and shipping facilities, a stabilizing plant, a modern international airport, and rail connections to Riyadh and Dammam. The government-sponsored King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals was founded there in 1963. Pop. (2004) 97,678; (2010) 120,521.