What an idiotic thread by this obsessed Pashtun. He might take a look at the wonderful state of his native lands today and their equally "wonderful" state 100 years ago.
You are making a thread about KSA before oil was discovered and in order to do so you are posting black and white photos of a one of the few people who lived/live in the Rub' al-Khali (empty Quarter) in the Southernmost part of KSA (Najran)? Afro-Arabs mostly. How is that remotely representative?
Here are some photos of the isolated (historically too) and impoverished Pashtun inhabited areas of mighty Afghanistan and Northwestern Pakistan.
Mind you my post shows Peshawar (largest Pashtun city back then too) and not a bunch of nomads in the Rub' al Khali.
I could post some 100 year old photos of Pashtun Kuchi nomads (if they even exist) but I can do with recent ones instead to prove the point.
You are trying to belittle people who created 3 of the 11 largest empires (more than any other ethic group in the top 15) who hailed from modern-day KSA and Arabia, who ruled most of the Muslim world for 800 years and whose linguistic, religious, cultural, architectural, military etc. influence is only rivaled by that of very few other peoples.
As for wealth, Arabia was one of the richest areas of the planet millennia before oil was even discovered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incense_Route
You are also trying to portray Arabia, the second longest inhabited place on planet earth and home to some of the oldest recorded civilizations and cities, and to almost 20 World UNESCO Heritage Sites alone, as the equivalent of your native lands (Pashtun inhabited lands of Afghanistan and Northwestern Pakistan).
But yes, most of modern-day KSA was poor and survived on agriculture, livestock, sea trade etc. and sparsely populated compared to today but which region of the Middle East and Muslim world was not that? You can find such photos and worse in each country of the region and Muslim world back then. Be it Albania or Indonesia.
Those obsessive clowns think that Arab history began 100 years ago so in order to somehow "prove" that, contrary to logic, history, facts and everything else, they nitpick by posting black and white photos of mostly Afro-Arabs living on the edge of the Rub' al-Khali. What this is supposed to proof nobody knows but I don't think it is should be a surprise that what is modern-day KSA and all of the Muslim world 100 years ago, especially on the countryside or when nomadic peoples are used as an example whatever their ethnicity, was mostly poor agricultural/livestock based economies and that most people, especially villagers, lived simple lives.
At least there were no famines in what is modern-day KSA, people were independent (not under foreign rule) and they somehow survived rather effortlessly compared to many other regions of the Muslim world back then. Moreover that time period was one of the worst in Middle Eastern history.
A few examples:
Killed 3 million people:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_famine_of_1917-1918
Killed as many as 8-10 million people (over 50% of the population)
I wonder how it was back then for such a thing to occur. Probably everyone else in the Muslim world lived as people do in Dubai too.