من يهد الله فهو المهتد ومن يضلل فلن تجد له وليا مرشدا
سورة الكهف(17)
…He whom Allah guideth, he indeed is led aright, and he whom He sendeth astray, for him thou wilt not find a guiding friend.
(Koran, The Cave 17)

The Ikhwan movement had its origins in the puritan, fundamentalist reformation of Abdul Wahhab in the early eighteenth century. Mohammed Ibn Abdul Wahhab Ibn Suleiman Ibn Ali Ibn Ahmad Ibn Rashid Ibn Buraid Al-Musharraf from the Bani Tamim tribe was born in 1703 in the town of Uwainah. He acquired his religious knowledge at the hand of his father, the Qadhi (or religious judge) of Huraimleh, who died in 1740. As Abdul Wahhab grew up he became increasingly disenchanted with the abuses he saw around him in the way the Islamic religion had developed. In particular he deplored the widespread growth of superstitious ritual, the worship of shrines and saints, and the belief in spirits to whom prayers for miracles could be made. He preached that the faith should be returned to its true purity, without any trappings or additions which had not been sanctioned by the Prophet himself. Any object of worship other than God Himself he deemed to be false, and any knowledge other than that gleaned directly from the Koran was thought by his followers to be the evil.

In 1740 Abdul Wahhab approached Amir Uthman Ibn Hamad Ibn Muammar for his support. This was granted at first but later withdrawn when the movement drew criticism from the Amir of Al-Hasa, Suleiman Ibn Mohammed Ibn Uraiar. Abdul Wahhab found himself banished from Uwainah. He moved to Dara’iyah where he was welcomed by its Amir, named Mohammed, of the little-known house of Saud. The two made a pact agreeing to attempt a reformation of Islam by force of arms. Sheikh Abdul Wahhab was to have complete control of religious life in Arabia in return for his support for Mohammed Ibn Saud in secular matters. The Holy War which followed was spectacularly successful, and much of Arabia was forcibly converted to the Wahhabi doctrine. It was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that the movement was finally crushed by the power of Egypt, and even then it lingered on in the desert areas, especially in Najd. The Wahhabi tradition remained strong in the house of Saud and was passed from father to son. Ibn Saud himself was brought up and educated as a Wahhabi. On his sudden rise to power, the stage was set for the Wahhabi revival which took shape in the form of the Ikhwan brotherhood.

By 1912 Ibn Saud had won a kingdom for himself in the desert, but its survival rested entirely upon the fickle loyalty of the bedouin and, like so many Arab kingdoms before, it would be bound to disintegrate in time unless some method was found of securing the permanent allegiance of the tribesmen. To achieve this, Ibn Saud conceived the brilliant idea of creating settlements around the oases in his kingdom where the bedouin would be able to cease their nomadic ways and grow regular crops. The Prince realized that once such settlements were well established, their members would have every reason to support a strong and stable central government which would enable them to farm in peace. In this way, he aimed to counteract the anarchy which had so often prevailed in the past. In the settlements Ibn Saud hoped to cultivate the Wahhabi faith so that the setters would be bound to him, not only in a common desire for peace, but also in a common religious creed.

Each tribe had water wells in the desert which it regarded as being under its exclusive control. By means of generous subsidies and gifts, Ibn Saud encouraged the tribal chiefs to build solid dwelling places around the wells. Despite Ibn Saud’s painstaking efforts to establish successful settlements, the bedouin proved reluctant and there were many setbacks. These were overcome mainly by the King’s unstinting generosity; with large subsidies of money and gifts of camels and other animals, Ibn Saud was eventually able to gain the support of the recalcitrant tribesmen by making co-operation so obviously worth their while.

The first permanent village established under this scheme was founded in 1913 at Artawiya. It was the inhabitants of this settlement who first called themselves by the name of the Ikhwan, or Brotherhood. Soon the movement had spread all over Central Arabia, being particularly strong in Najd. Religious leaders, known as ulemas, were appointed to each settlement and instructed the inhabitants in the Wahhabi faith with such success that the Ikhwan soon became renowned for their religious fanaticism. Although the creation of the settlements is one of the most fundamentally important events of recent Arabian history, I find that few details of them have been given in any of the English histories which I have read. As it has always been my intention in writing this book to fill in some of the gaps which history has ignored, I have included a list of the more significant settlements, accompanied by details of the tribes who lived there and the chieftains who governed them. (See Appendix 6.)

The Ikhwan settlements were intended to do more than just create political stability. They also had a military purpose, for Ibn Saud now possessed for the first time reserve of men whose whereabouts were known, and whose loyalty could be relied upon. A further advantage was that the Ikhwan were always ready to fight. Despite the material benefits to be gained by staying in one place, the tribesmen did not give up their nomadic way of life without regret. There was a saying among them that the pleasure had gone out of the bedouin life when Faisal Ad-Dawish (the chief of the Mutair) first built a mud hut. In particular, they missed the traditional raiding of each others’ sheep and camels which was so entrenched in the bedouin way of life as to be more a sport than genuine warfare. This restlessness, coupled with their religious intolerance, made them eager to make war upon the infidel. Since an infidel in their eyes was almost anyone who was not a member of the Ikhwan, the movement became a weapon in the hands of Ibn Saud which he could unleash at will against his enemies.

The Ikhwan had no fear of death in action, for to die in battle was certain road to paradise, where they knew with utter conviction that they would find cool streams, pleasant breezes, beautiful women and everything else which the heart of all the tribes which did not subscribe to the Wahhabi doctrine. When they moved north-east into Iraq, the tribes would flee before them across the Euphrates; if they struck north-west, the Jordanian tribes fled into Syria; and if they moved south, the tribes of the Yemen took refuge in their impregnable mountain strongholds. It was largely as a result of the Ikhwan that Hejaz and Jabal Shammar fell to Ibn Saud with such ease. There came a time in the late 1920s when they dominated the whole of the Arabian peninsula, and could have annexed any part of it at will, had Ibn Saud directed them to do so. Between 1922 and 1924 the famous British historian Arnold Toynbee wrote several articles about the Ikhwan movement. He predicted that, if its rapid growth continued, it would soon encompass the whole penisula and beyond, and might even repeat the early history of Islam by exploding into the surrounding states of Aisa and North Africa. (He naturally expected this to take place after the unification of various Arab states.) But this was not to be, for instead of exerting their might against foreign infidels, the Ikhwan became so intoxicated with their own power and strength that they turned inwards and rebelled against the authority of their ruler, Ibn Saud.

The Ikhwan had always been something of a double-edged weapon, and from its very beginnings the movement had been a source of trouble of one sort or another.  Indeed, it was only a short time after the capture of Mecca that the Ikhwan caused a serious diplomatic rift with Egypt. By custom, it had always been Egyptian craftsmen who made the Kiswah – the ornate and beautiful cloth which covers the Kaaba in the centre of the Holy Mosque at Mecca and which is woven anew every year. In the summer of 1925 the first hajj took place with Mecca under full Wahhabi control, and the city was full of Ikhwan tribesmen making their first-ever pilgrimage. The Egyptians were anxious to make a good impression on the new ruler of the Holy Land, and arranged that the traditional ceremony which accompanied the bringing of the Kiswah into Mecca would on this occasion be one of particular pomp and splendour. A rich and colourful caravan bore the Kiswah through the gates of the Holy City, preceded by a lively band of musicians and escorted by the Egyptian Guards of the Mahmal. (‘Mahmal’ means ‘the burden borne by a camel’, and symbolize sovereignty.) The Ikhwan were outraged, for under their strict religious code the public performance of music of any kind was considered sacrilegious. They demanded that the music should stop. The offended musicians refused and carried on playing, whereupon the Ikhwan immediately took up weapons and opened fire upon them. This incident not only caused the Egyptians to break off diplomatic relations with the new regime; they also refused ever again to weave the Kiswah. It is for this reason that the Kiswah has ever since been made by Saudi and Indian craftsmen in Mecca itself.

The puritanism of the Ikhwan was so intense that they regarded any form of modern technology as evil. For example, a wrist-watch was considered to be the work of the Devil, as there was no mention of one in the Koran and it was regarded as impossible for such a device to work other than by sorcery. The same applied to cars, telephones, wireless sets and almost every other modern tool which the king needed in order to bring progress to his kingdom. When I joined His Majesty, the government and public services in Mecca were mostly equipped with electricity and modern machines. There was a well-developed post office and telephone service. In Riyadh there was nothing at all. The only official postal service consisted of a servant with a camel who would take important letters from the king to the amirs of the principal towns and return with their replies. If caught in the right mood, he could occasionally be persuaded to take the odd private letter as well. This could scarcely be described as satisfactory, and it was obvious that modern communications were urgently needed. Ibn Saud often expressed the view that not everything about Western culture was evil, and it was always his aim to take what was good from the West and reject what was bad. But the Ikhwan were not easily convinced and Ibn Saud was continually obliged to find different ways and means to persuade his subjects to accept useful innovations. Sometimes a simple ploy would suffice, such as the occasion when he arranged for passages of the Koran to be read over a telephone. The listeners at the other end were forced to agree that a machine which carried the word of God along its wires could hardly be the work of the Devil. A harder line was necessary, however, when wireless telegraphs were introduced into  Riyadh. Howls of protest were raised, and were only stifled when the king curtly invited anyone who did not approve to leave.

Such matters were trifles compared to the deadlier forms which could be taken by the Ikhwan fanaticism. The case of an Ikhwan tribesman who slaughtered a member of his own family because he did not conform to strict Wahhabi teaching was by no means unusual. Furthermore, the Ikhwan had an unhappy reputation for disregarding the chivalrous conventions of tribal warfare which had existed for centuries. The allegation of the murder of the women and children at Ta’if was a typical example of the type of atrocity of which the Ikhwan were regularly accused. The reputation for brutality in war was in fact quite undeserved; there were never more than a few isolated incidents, which were exaggerated out of all proportion by the King’s enemies. But because the Ikhwan were so zealously intolerant in all religious matters, many people believed the stories put about by their opponents to be true, and Ibn Saud often found it an embarrassment that his best soldiers were generally thought of as callous butchers.

I have already mentioned that the seeds of the Ikhwan revolt were sown when, after the capture of Hejaz, Ibn Saud refused to appoint Ibn Bijad and Ad-Dawish to positions of power in Mecca and Medina. The two men, sullen and disappointed, withdrew with their followers into the heart of Najd, where they lost no time in plotting the overthrow of the king. From bitter experience they knew better than to attempt an armed revolt. Instead they decided on a more subtle method. Without warning, they started raiding the borders of Iraq and Transjordan, descending suddenly and mercilessly from the desert upon isolated camps and border posts, seldom striking twice in the same place and leaving havoc and destruction in their wake. One of the first Ikhwan attacks against the Iraqi border was launches by one of the groups which had withdrawn from the Saudi forces besieging Jeddah. Under the leadership of Faisal Ad-Dawish, the group attacked the border at a place called Ichlawa, where the Bani Hussein bedouin of Iraq had an encampment. Ichlawa is near my village, Zubair. I happened to be in Zubair on a short visit home from India at the time. The British military authorities at the Shaibah base wanted to go and investigate the damage caused by the raid. They begged the Amir of Zubair to let me go with them as interpreter. However, I refused to accompany them, saying that I would take no part in any action against the Ikhwan.

The Ikhwan could point to genuine grievance to justify their raids. The Iraqis had started to restrict the entry of Najdis into their country and had built a line of forts along the Iraq – Najd border. The first two forts were at Sabwa and Sabai’ah; a third was later added at As-Salman. The bedouin regarded these steps as an infringement of their traditional rights of free pasturage and unobstructed passage over the borders. In any event, the Iraqis were regarded as infidels and were therefore ‘fair game’. But the true reason for the raids was that the Ikhwan hoped that the British authorities in Iraq and Transjordan would believe the raids to be directed by Ibn Saud himself and so would take steps to overthrow him. In this strategy the Ikhwan achieved a measure of success. For three years they kept up the raiding. Each season they would sortie across the borders of Iraq, Kuwait and Transjordan, attacking whatever tribes or groups of bedouin they came across, plundering their cattle and killing anybody who resisted them. The Iraqis, and the British on their behalf, protested vehemently about the raids to Ibn Saud. He was held to be responsible for the actions of the raiders because the Treaty of Jeddah in 1927 had recognized him as King of Hejaz and Sultan of Najd. (The treaty had been negotiated by Sir Gilbert Clayton on behalf of the British.) The King in his turn protested quite truthfully that he had not ordered the raids and they were nothing to do with him. Nevertheless, the incidents continued. Ibn Saud publicly disowned the raiders on several occasions but the Iraqis and British regarded this with suspicion, insisting that the King must be tacitly supporting the raids or at the very least failing to make any effort to stop them. I remember that even the members of the King’s Court believed he was preparing to conquer Iraq; as we later discovered, he had no such intention. At about this time the Iraqi press printed a great deal of belligerent propaganda directed against the Najdis, and pointed references were made to a previous battle in which the Najdis had been defeated by the Iraqis. The King admitted this, but replied, ‘Let the British stand aside and we will fight it out.’ The Iraqis balked at this, but angry delegation were sent by Iraq to the Court at Riyadh and there was a general air of sabre-rattling.

It was by now quite clear that something would have to be done to stop the raids. The King tried to influence the tribesmen by making lavish gifts in his usual way but this had little effect. Proclamations were posted in all the towns and village in the country making it clear that the raids were in direct contravention of the King’s orders, but this too proved useless. Eventually in 1928 it became apparent to the King that drastic action was required. He decided to call a meeting at Riyadh of all the influential religious and tribal leaders in his kingdom, with the aim of persuading them to reassert their loyalty to him and thus isolate the rebellious Ikhwan.

The meeting took place in Riyadh and became known as the ‘Big Gathering’. Indeed, the year of 1928 is still remembered in Arabia as ‘the year of the Big Gathering’. All the principal tribal leader were invited , including many who were sympathetic to the Ikhwan or who were themselves Ikhwan members. The principal ulemas of the kingdom were also present, as were the amirs of all the bigger town. In all, about two hundred and fifty of the most important men in the kingdom attended the gathering. For about two weeks before the final meeting, the Ikhwan chiefs arrived with their followers in small parties. They were the cream of the fighting men of the desert – fierce, robust warriors with an air of determined independence about them. The king was kept busy in preliminary negotiations with each delegation and the tribesmen were in no mood to compromise. Ibn Bijad’s first name was Sultan and his followers walked through the streets and markets of Riyadh boasting, ‘A new Sultan has arisen for the faith.’ The townspeople were shocked and replied, ‘You claim to be devout Moslems but no Moslem should be as arrogant as you.’ The Ikhwan were not at all ashamed but retorted in typical fashion, ‘A faithful man who is strong is better than one who is weak!’

When the time came for the gathering itself there was not enough room at the palace in Riyadh for so many dignitaries. The meeting, which I had the privilege of witnessing, was therefore held in the palace courtyard. The ulemas sat on the King’s right, the amirs of the towns provinces on his left, and in the middle of the courtyard sat the tribal chiefs and representatives. His Majesty opened the assembly by delivering a vehement speech castigating the dissident tribes and taking them to task for trying to disrupt the kingdom by their unwarranted acts of violence. He criticized them by observing scornfully, ‘They accuse me of bringing infidels into my homeland, Najd.’ He made it clear that he deplored the border violations and wanton attacks of which the Ikhwan had been guilty, not to mention the raids on the caravans and property of those tribes which did not  belong to the Ikhwan. The Ikhwan sympathizers who were present at the gathering did not take this criticism lying down. They argued that they were doing no more than carrying out their religious duty by attacking infidels and bringing them back to the true faith. They also raised the usual protests about the Iraqi border forts. After a lengthy debate, the King asked them outright what it was they wanted. The Ikhwan replied that they required the frontier posts on the borders of Iraq to be eliminated, that the use of the telephone and other satanic gadgets in the kingdom should be abandoned, that tribes such as the Juhaina and Bali – who were considered to be unbelievers – should be punished and brought into line, and that the injunctions of the Koran should be enforced on all with the utmost strictness and without exception.

At this point, in a masterly piece of bluff, His Majesty declared that although there was not a single province, tribe, township or acre of land in the whole kingdom which he had not won with his sword on the battlefield, nevertheless he proposed forthwith to abdicate his crown and relinquish all his powers in favour of anyone they might choose to replace him. At this whole gathering was taken completely by surprise and overcome with bewilderment. After a stunned silence, the assembled chiefs all joined in a chorus of loyal protest at the very idea of the King’s resignation. Taking advantage of the confusion he had created, Ibn Saud turned to the ulemas on his right and asked each one to his face what opinion the ulema held of the King, good or bad, and whether he was for or against him. Not surprisingly, he received a unanimous vote of confidence from the ulemas, all of whom agreed that they were for him and would not countenance any other in his place. The King then repeated this process with the amirs of the towns and finally with the tribal chiefs, each time achieving identical results. Having established that all in the gathering were loyal to him, the King demanded that each man should swear a new oath of allegiance. The King’s family swore the oath first, followed by the ulemas, then the amirs and finally the tribal chiefs. Some of the prominent amirs of Al-Qasim protested that they had given their allegiance from the beginning and one of them, Abdul Aziz Ibn Slaim, the Amir of Unayzah, said, ‘I gave it to you in Kuwait.’ The King persuaded them that this was a new allegiance and everybody eventually swore the oath. In this outburst of loyalty, the demands of the Ikhwan were forgotten and received no further discussion.

After the assembly had dispersed, the amirs and tribal chiefs returned to their homes, having been lavishly entertained. They were laden with generous gifts of swords, incense, money, food, and even in some cases jewellery for their wives. The King followed up his success at the gathering by travelling to Al-Qasim where he again met representatives of the dissident tribes, made further gifts of arms and supplies, and persuaded the tribes to agree not to indulge in further raiding or create any more disturbances. Then, having done all he could to subdue the Ikhwan by peaceful means, His Majesty set off on his annual journey to Mecca to perform the hajj.

Everybody now hoped that the Ikhwan would be appeased for a time. But they had become too powerful to be quelled for long by gifts and speeches. As soon as Ibn Saud’s back was turned, the border raids started again, this time assuming greater and more dangerous proportions. The Iraqis were provoked into taking strong punitive measure. With the help of the RAF they started using aeroplanes to strafe and bomb the raiding tribesmen, sometimes following them into Najd itself and bombing their camps and wells. One such air attack on the Mutair tribe at Al-Lisafah caused numerous casualties among the women and children, and His Majesty felt obliged to make a strong protest to the British government. The King persevered in his attempts to negotiate with the tribesmen, but they became increasingly intransigent and frequently refused even to answer summonses to attend his Court. It was not unusual to see large bodies of armed Ikhwan tribesmen stomping in and out of Riyadh, openly proclaiming their might and their disregard for the King’s authority.

As the Ikhwan became more and more powerful, their influence came to be felt increasingly in the everyday lives of the ordinary people of the kingdom, to an extent that those who did not actually experience it would find hard to imagine. As early as 1926, just before I arrived in Riyadh for the first time, no less a person than the Chief of the Court had been publicly whipped by the Ikhwan on the mere suspicion of having failed to appear at prayers. Vigilante groups of Ikhwan roamed the streets, acting as self-appointed religious police and meeting out harsh punishments to anyone who did not comply with their strict teachings. The Ikhwan, like many Najdis, went to extremes of self-denial, sternly avoiding any pleasure or luxury, however slight. They deplored music (as was graphically illustrated in the episode with the Egyptians at Mecca) and distrusted poetry. They would insist upon wearing coarse cloth as they considered silk to be a sinful indulgence. No king of jewellery was permitted, and many went so far as to unstitch the traditional gold braid woven into their cloaks. Anyone who appeared in public with an untrimmed beard, or a robe worn a little longer than usual for the sake of fashion, was likely to be pounced upon by zealous tribesmen and held down while the offending hair or cloth was cut off. Ibn Saud himself was not immune from attentions of this kind. A story is told that he once visited the camp of Faisal Ad-Dawish at Artawiya. His hosts greeted him by declaring that his robe was too long. A pair of scissors was fetched and garment cut to the regulation size while the king was still wearing it!

For a newcomer like myself, unused to this kind of strict puritanism, it could be very difficult to stay out of trouble. Unfortunately, before I came to Arabia I was a heavy smoker, and to be caught with a cigarette by the Ikhwan meant a sound thrashing at the very least. In Jeddah cigarettes were available on the black market and, with a little discretion, I was able to indulge in my vice easily enough. But things were very different in Riyadh, where the eyes of the Ikhwan were everywhere and tobacco was absolutely unobtainable. I still had a few precious cigarettes which I had managed to scrounge from an Indian driver. I hid them down a hole in one of the rafters of the palace and furtively smoked one when I thought nobody was about. Despite all my efforts to expel the smoke, the sensitive nostrils of an ulema who worked in the palace detected the odour, and I narrowly escaped discovery. After that I became a confirmed nonsmoker, which was no doubt very good for my health but very hard on my nerves.

By the beginning of 1929 the Ikhwan had become ungovernable. At about this time they committed a blatant outrage when an Ikhwan force raided a large camel caravan owned by a prominent merchant, Ibn Sharida, who was on his way from Buraida to Damascus. Ibn Sharida and a number of his men who tried to resist were killed and the caravan was pillaged. Worse was to come: on the twentieth day of Ramadan, when the King was on the point of leaving for his pilgrimage to Hejaz, news came that two of the most powerful Ikhwan tribes, the Utaiba and the Mutair, were assembled north of Al-Qasim, poised to make their most massive incursion yet over the borders of Iraq. Ibn Saud realized the futility of further attempts at peaceful persuasion. The movement which had founded to bring peace and stability to his kingdom had come to be an instrument of violence and anarchy. It was clear beyond doubt that Ikhwan would have to be crushed and that force must be met with force. With a heavy heart, His Majesty began his preparations for war.