Basic Law of Saudi Arabia

The Basic Law of Saudi Arabia was issued by King Fahd through Royal Decree No. A/90 on 31 January 1992, in the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the First Gulf War. Comprising nine chapters and eighty-three articles, it functions as a constitution in most practical respects, laying out chapters on governance, rights and duties of citizens, and economic principles, even though Saudi religious and cultural convention avoids applying the word constitution to it. The Basic Law itself states this directly: its own text declares that the constitution of Saudi Arabia is the Quran and the Sunnah, the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad, and it establishes those texts, read according to a Sunni Salafi understanding, as the kingdom's supreme source of law, with the Basic Law itself operating as a subordinate framework of governance beneath them.