Last Thursday, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman issued a royal decree, announcing Feb. 22 as the Founding Day of the Saudi State. This marks a national occasion of annual celebration from this year onwards.

This is the celebration of the existence of the Saudi State over the last three centuries with its three phases, and that culminated in the third phase the unification and establishment of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as the most important unified entity in the modern era at the hands of the historical unifying personality — King Abdul Aziz.

The royal order is a glimpse of genius and a big gesture that only comes from a great genius like Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman, may God bestow him long life.

He is a man of history who is passionate about history and is well versed in its details, meanings and connotations. This is well known to historians and all the intellectuals who knew him and attended his council ever since he was emir of the Riyadh region.

If we go back to his previous dialogues and meetings on television and the press, we would have found it full of historical citations regarding the Arabian Peninsula and beyond in the Arabian Sea and the history of countries and peoples in the region.

This memory redefines the citizen’s relationship with his homeland beyond the history of the modern entity in which we live now. It is the memory of the emergence of light in the Arabian Peninsula after a long period of darkness that extended for hundreds of years.

It also commemorates the indefatigable struggle for the continuation of the Saudi State after every occasion it had gone through until it ended up with this State that nurtures a homeland, which has become an exemplary example for safe, stable and prosperous nations that leap into the future and outperform countries that preceded it in modernization and development.

The Founding Day is a confirmation that this country is not new to history, and that this great homeland is not the result of a short struggle, but rather it is the fruit of a long-time building by heroes who recorded their names in annals of history in shining letters.