The top-level domain (TLD) you mentioned, “XN—MGBA7C0BBN0A”, is an internationalized country code top-level domain (ccTLD). This category of TLDs are specially encoded domain names that are displayed in an end-user application, like a web browser, in their language-native script or alphabet, such as Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Hindi etc. This particular domain is used for the Arabic language as they don’t use Latin script that is commonly used in many other TLDs.
Specifically, “XN—MGBA7C0BBN0A” represents “السعودية.” in Arabic script, which when translated to English is “Al-Saudiah”, denoting the country of Saudi Arabia. In technical terms, the part before “—”, i.e. “XN”, indicates that this is an internationalized domain name (IDN). The string after “—” is an ASCII Compatible Encoding (ACE) representation of the domain, specifically, it is Punycode-encoded.
An interesting thing about this xn— format is that it’s not intended for humans to read, it’s designed for software. When you type the Punycode version of a domain into your browser, the browser decodes it into Unicode characters to request the correct domain from the DNS (Domain Name System).
Punycode, which was described in detail in IETF’s RFC 3492, is a way to represent Unicode within the limited character subset of ASCII used for Internet host names. DNS, which stands for Domain Name System, is a system used to translate hostnames (like www.google.com) into IP addresses (like 74.125.224.72). It was designed to support only ASCII characters, so Punycode is used whenever a hostname contains characters outside the ASCII range.
This unique approach to URL structure allows internet users in regions which do not use Latin scripts to access websites using their native languages completely, enhancing the accessibility and utility of the internet across cultural and language barriers, facilitating true globalization of the World Wide Web.
According to IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) which has the responsibility for the IP address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, “السعودية.” (XN—MGBA7C0BBN0A) is “delegated” which means it is designated and functional now.
Sources used for this answer were largely online resources which provide technical information about top-level domains and their structure. This includes the website for IANA (https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/) and IETF’s RFC 3492 on Punycode (https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3492.txt).
