Jazan Province sits in the southwest corner of Saudi Arabia, between the Red Sea and the Yemeni border. It is the second smallest province by area yet the sixth most populous and it combines mountain coffee farms, a large island group and one of the Kingdom’s biggest industrial and refining hubs.
Location and borders
Aseer Province lies to the north and east, the Republic of Yemen to the south and southeast and the Red Sea forms the western edge. The province marks the meeting point of Saudi Arabia with the Red Sea and Yemen and its shoreline runs 260 km.
Population of Jazan Province
The 2022 Saudi Census recorded 1,404,997 residents, about 4.4 percent of the national population, making Jazan one of seven provinces above the one million mark. The province covers 13,000 km2, or 0.7 percent of the Kingdom, with a density of 108 people per km2. Sabya, Abu Arish and Samtah are the main population centers, and Jazan City is a thirty to forty minute drive from most of them.
Administrative organization
Sixteen governorates and forty-one centers fall under the province: Jazan, Sabya, Abu Arish, Samtah, al-Horrath, Damad, al-Rayth, Baish, Farasan, al-Dayer, Ahad al-Masarihah, al-Edabi, al-Ardah, al-Darb, Harub, Fayfa and at-Tuwal.
Prince Mohammed Bin Abdulaziz Bin Mohammed Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has been governor since May 8, 2025, with Prince Nasser Bin Mohammed Bin Abdullah Bin Jalawi Al Saud as deputy governor from the same date. Two of the governorates are covered in detail in our guides to al-Aridah Governorate and Ahad al-Masarihah Governorate.
Geography and islands
Mountains, plains and islands give the province unusual variety, and 48.93 percent of residents live on islands or coastal plains. Inhabited islands make up 5.35 percent of its territory, including Farasan al-Kabir, Sajid and Qamah. The Farasan Islands archipelago holds an estimated two hundred islands of varying size, 15.6 percent of the 1,285 islands in the Kingdom.
Inland, Jabal al-Oraif northeast of Fayfa rises above 2,632 m, the highest point in the province and the tenth highest in the country. The coast draws visitors year round, and several stretches feature in our list of the best beaches in Saudi Arabia.
Climate
Tropical winds shape the weather. Summers are very hot and winters mild, except in the mountain highlands, where temperatures stay moderate and rain falls through the year. That pattern makes the province a strong cool-season destination, as noted in our guide to winter tourism in Saudi Arabia.
Economy of Jazan Province
Agriculture and fishing carry the local economy. The province supplies 40 percent of national fish production and ranks second after Aseer in agricultural holdings, among five provinces classified as agricultural areas. Thirteen dams store 313.440 million m3 of water, and the average per capita share of drinking water is about seventy-six liters per day.
- Jazan City for Basic and Transformation Industries, seventy km north of Jazan City, with its own industrial port on a lane carrying 13 to 15 percent of global trade
- Jazan Refinery, with capacity of four hundred thousand barrels per day
- King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Airport, three km from the capital, handling up to nine hundred thousand passengers a year
Population and production figures come from the General Authority for Statistics.
Coffee and farming
The highlands are the center of coffee growing in the Kingdom. Farming employs 20 percent of the provincial workforce, 1.6 percent of the land carries coffee (about 400,000 trees), and annual production reaches 360 t. Vegetables, fruits, field crops, jasmine, kadi and aromatic plants round out the harvest, and the province is also known for honey.
Education
Jazan University, founded in 2005 in the provincial capital, runs branches close to every governorate. More than 1,363 schools serve over 190,268 students across primary, middle and secondary levels.
Tourism
Attractions include al-Marjan Island, Jazan Heritage Village, Jazan Valley Dam Lake, al-Najdi Mosque and Palace in Farasan, al-Dosariyah Castle, Wadi Lajab and the mountain highlands. Coastal habitat work across the Kingdom, such as the mangrove planting scheme in Jubail, has parallels along the Jazan shoreline.
Key takeaways
- 1,404,997 residents across sixteen governorates and forty-one centers
- Farasan Islands hold about 15.6 percent of the Kingdom’s islands
- 40 percent of national fish production and 360 t of coffee a year
- Jazan Refinery processes up to four hundred thousand barrels per day
Between the coffee terraces of Fayfa and the industrial port at Baish, Jazan Province offers one of the widest ranges of landscape and activity in the Kingdom.
