--- asia | 26 +++++++++++++++++++++++--- 1 file changed, 23 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/asia b/asia index 7166380..5e27d85 100644 --- a/asia +++ b/asia @@ -2939,15 +2939,34 @@ Link Asia/Qatar Asia/Bahrain # Saudi Arabia # -# From Paul Eggert (2014-07-15): +# From Paul Eggert (2018-08-29): # Time in Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Arabian peninsula was not -# standardized until relatively recently; we don't know when, and possibly it +# standardized until 1968 or so; we don't know exactly when, and possibly it # has never been made official. Richard P Hunt, in "Islam city yielding to # modern times", New York Times (1961-04-09), p 20, wrote that only airlines # observed standard time, and that people in Jeddah mostly observed quasi-solar # time, doing so by setting their watches at sunrise to 6 o'clock (or to 12 # o'clock for "Arab" time). # +# Timekeeping differed depending on who you were and which part of Saudi +# Arabia you were in. In 1969, Elias Antar wrote that although a common +# practice had been to set one's watch to 12:00 (i.e., midnight) at sunset - +# which meant that the time on one side of a mountain could differ greatly from +# the time on the other side - many foreigners set their watches to 6pm +# instead, while airlines instead used UTC +03 (except in Dhahran, where they +# used UTC +04), Aramco used UTC +03 with DST, and the Trans-Arabian Pipe Line +# Company used Aramco time in eastern Saudi Arabia and airline time in western. +# (The American Military Aid Advisory Group used plain UTC.) Antar writes, +# "A man named Higgins, so the story goes, used to run a local power +# station. One day, the whole thing became too much for Higgins and he +# assembled his staff and laid down the law. 'I've had enough of this,' he +# shrieked. 'It is now 12 o'clock Higgins Time, and from now on this station is +# going to run on Higgins Time.' And so, until last year, it did." See: +# Antar E. Dinner at When? Saudi Aramco World, 1969 March/April. 2-3. +# http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/196902/dinner.at.when.htm +# newspapers.com says a similar story about Higgins was published in the Port +# Angeles (WA) Evening News, 1965-03-10, page 5, but I lack access to the text. +# # The TZ database cannot represent quasi-solar time; airline time is the best # we can do. The 1946 foreign air news digest of the U.S. Civil Aeronautics # Board (OCLC 42299995) reported that the "... Arabian Government, inaugurated @@ -2957,7 +2976,8 @@ Link Asia/Qatar Asia/Bahrain # # Shanks & Pottenger also state that until 1968-05-01 Saudi Arabia had two # time zones; the other zone, at UT +04, was in the far eastern part of -# the country. Ignore this, as it's before our 1970 cutoff. +# the country. Presumably this is documenting airline time. Ignore this, +# as it's before our 1970 cutoff. # # Zone NAME GMTOFF RULES FORMAT [UNTIL] Zone Asia/Riyadh 3:06:52 - LMT 1947 Mar 14 -- 2.17.1