يأيها الذين امنوا إن تنصروا الله ينصركم ويثبت أقدامكم
(سورة محمد، الاية 7)

O ye who truly believe, if you sponsor the cause of Allah, He will strengthen you and consolidate your steps unfalteringly.
(Koran, Muhammed 47)

By the end of the First World War it had become apparent that it was not only with Ha’il that there would have to be a final reckoning. Sherif Hussein of Hejaz, having thrown off his Turkish yoke and overlords with the aid of the British, appeared to suffer increasingly from delusions of grandeur. He began to make empty claims to suzerainty over all the states in the peninsula, including Najd. Nobody knew where he got his authority from, as all these countries were now independent and owed no allegiance to him. The Sherif wrote letters in an imperious tone to a number of rulers in Arabia, including Ibn Saud, to the effect that he had decided to establish an Arab state, of which he would naturally be the head; he requested everybody to acknowledge his sovereignty. In the circumstances Ibn Saud’s response was a masterpiece of restraint. He replied as an equal, politely pointing out that Najd was independent and therefore he could not comply with the Sherif’s request. However, he trusted that Najd and Hejaz would continue to coexist peacefully as neighbour and friends. On receiving this most diplomatic of letters, Sherif Hussein is said to have flown into an uncontrollable rage.

The friction between Najd and Hejaz became focused in 1919 at the oasis of Khurma, some one hundred and ten miles east of Mecca. The Sherif considered Khurma to be part of his domain, but the inhabitants thought otherwise and had declared themselves loyal subjects of Ibn Saud. In 1918 two punitive expeditions had been launched from Hejaz against Khurma, but on each occasion the oasis had been successfully defended. Sherif Hussein was determined that there should be no mistake the third time. In 1919 he gathered a force of thirty thousand men from the remnants of the army of the old Turkish regime and from parts of his own army that had fought the Turks with Lawrence. At their head he put his own son, Amir Abdullah. Not only did he order his son to crush the revolt at Khurma; it is reported that, in an expansive moment, he also ordered Abdullah to sweep through Najd and spent the summer in the gardens of Al-Hasa.

Abdullah had an army which was exceptionally well-equipped by desert standards, for most of the supplies and weapons donated by the British towards the Arab Revolt were still in his father’s possession. Nevertheless, he appeared to be in no hurry to carry out his instructions. He ordered in forces to gather on the outskirts of the town of Turabah and, having fortified the camp, simply remained there while his soldiers kicked their heels and yet more men weapons were gathered. He had obviously decided that the gardens of Al-Hasa could manage without him for a few more weeks.

Abdullah’s delay was to have severe consequences for Hejaz. While he dallied at Turabah, news of the gathering of his army sped to Riyadh and reached the ears of one of Ibn Saud’s guests, Sheikh Khalid Ibn Luway, of a tribe related to the Sherif. Ibn Luway was a bedouin chief of Southern Hejaz who had been a prominent member of the Sherif’s army. One day Amir Abdullah had roundly insulted Ibn Luway, who had immediately left Hejaz to take refuge with Ibn Saud in Najd. Upon hearing about Abdullah’s activities, Ibn Luway lost no time in asking his host for permission either to raise an army to defend Najd or actually to mount an attack on Abdullah with whatever men of the Utaiba tribe he could gather together at short notice. This proposal to use only the Utaiba tribe for an attack was by no means as foolhardy as it might at first have seemed, for the entire region between the centre of Najd and Mecca was inhabited by almost no other tribe. If they could be mobilized against the invaders, Abdullah would have to advance into Najd through territory which was wholly hostile to him; he would be subject to continual harassment and likely at any time to have his lines of supply cut behind him. When Ibn Luway approached Ibn Saud, the Sherifian army had not actually moved into the Prince’s territory but was merely a potential threat. Ibn Saud therefore did not feel that he could afford at that stage to be directly involved in any attack against the Sherif. He told Ibn Luway that he could plan and do what he wanted on his own; if the Utaiba tribe chose to join him, that was their own affair. This was a scheme of a sort commonly used by the Prince to excellent effect, for it enabled him to take advantage of any success scored by Ibn Luway while still being able to disown him if he failed.

Sultan Ibn Bijad, the chief of the Utaiba tribe and a prominent member of the Ikwan, joined force with Ibn Luway. The two set off in secret from Najd, unproclaimed except by the secret communications of the desert, and made their way towards the main force of the Sherif at Turabah, gathering warriors (mostly from the Utaiba tribe) as they went. By the time they reached the boundaries of Hejaz, they had raised a force of three thousand men which included several Ikhwan contingents. Nevertheless, they were still outnumbered ten to one by the Sherif’s army, and clearly could not have engaged the enemy in a conventional battle. Instead Ibn Luway and Ibn Bijad decided to attempt a surprise attack at night.

In the hands of a competent commander the well-equipped Sherifian army, in their fortified camp, should have had little difficulty in beating off such an attack. But it had been apparent from the outset that Abdullah was no soldier. Both he and his father were novices at desert warfare; they had no real knowledge of the tribes of Najd or of their methods of fighting, and neither man appreciated the importance of having scouts constantly on the alert to guard against just such an attack as was now being planned against them. The Sherif and his son were rulers of the city, not the desert, and in dealing with the bedouin chiefs and tribesmen they tended to be disdainful and aloof. Furthermore, they were thoroughly tight-fisted when it came to making gifts to visiting bedouin, in marked contrast to Ibn Saud, whose generosity was renowned throughout Arabia. In consequence most of the desert tribesmen were openly or covertly hostile to the Sherif, and there was little chance that any wandering bedouin would consider it worth informing his son about the approach of the enemy. Even so, Amir Abdullah did receive a warning about the forthcoming assault. A story is told that, on the evening before the attack took place, an old woman stopped Abdullah as he was about to enter his tent. She urged him to take care and be alert as she had had a dream which had warned her that some danger was lurking not far from the Amir’s army. Abdullah’s response was to fly into a rage and order his soldiers to drive her away.

Even as Abdullah’s troops were ejecting the old woman, the Utaiba tribe were silently surrounding his camp. The plan devised by Ibn Luway and Ibn Bijad was similar to that carried out by Ibn Saud himself thirteen years before at the battle of Rowdhat Muhanna. Their force of three thousand men was divided into two groups each of three hundred men and a third large group containing the rest. One of the smaller groups worked its way round to the north of the camp; the other skirted the huge encampment and positioned itself to the west. The main group remained in the east. At midnight, when all was quiet, all three groups opened fire simultaneously upon the slumbering inmates of the camp, who awoke to find bullets flying at them from all sides. Just as at Rowdhat Muhanna, the bemused soldiers were deceived into thinking that they were being assaulted by a huge force, and started firing in all directions. Once again, this haphazard cross-fire from the defenders caused furious battle to break out inside the camp between groups of Abdullah’s men, each of which was convinced that the others were enemy formations. The two smaller attacking contingents then wheeled round and joined the main force in the east, whereupon the whole Najdi army charged in to the camp, turning the confusion inside into the outright panic. They then disengaged abruptly and retreated into Najd as fast as they could, letting the inferno burn itself out. The Sherifian troops were routed and fled in disorder towards Mecca, leaving behind hundreds of dead and all their guns, rifles, ammunition and equipment. Amir Abdullah himself, rudely aroused in the middle of the night, was so bewildered and distracted that he had scarcely any idea what was taking place. All he knew was that somehow he had been defeated and must flee for his life. He was able to sneak out of the camp on a mule and, accompanied by few loyal servants, scampered away to Ta’if, which he reached three or four days later.

The telephone operator at Ta’if post office was a man called Abdul Nassif. He told me the following story. When he heard that the Amir had appeared with a handful of his servants and followers, he telephoned Sherif Hussein in Mecca to tell him of the ignominious arrival of his defeated son on a mule. The Sherif was enraged at the news and, after making a number of comments which could hardly be repeated here, quoted a famous Arab saying:

أَلاَ ذَهَبَ الحمارُ بأمِّ عَمْرٍ  فَلَا رَجَعَتْ ولَا رجعَ الحِمَارُ

To hell with the old witch and her donkey. Pray that neither she nor the donkey returns.

After the resounding defeat at Turabah in 1919, Hejaz was obviously vulnerable to further attack. Khalid Ibn Luway came to Ibn Saud urging him to attempt an immediate invasion. The Prince refused outright as the Sherif still received British support and move against him would be a most dangerous and hazardous venture. In any event, Ibn Saud was about to move once more against Ha’il and could not have spared the time or resources for any other military operations. Even after Ha’il had fallen, Ibn Saud, now Sultan of Najd, was too busy elsewhere in his kingdom to concern himself with Hejaz. As always, his prudence paid dividends. Events in the west of Arabia now seemed to move inexorably in his favour, and it was not long before the Western Province of Asir was to be added almost effortlessly to his dominions.

Asir lies on the Red Sea, to the south of Hejaz. At the beginning of the 1920s it enjoyed a kind of semi-independence under the control of an amir named Hassan Al-Aidh who reuled from the capital town of Abha. Al-Aidh had recenty strengthened his positon by the military defeat of a rival group in Asir, led by the family of Al-Adrisy. The victory had been achieved with assistance from Sherif Hussein. Subsequently, Al-Aidh became both arrogant and over-confident; he began to ally himself increasingly with the Sherif and attempted to suppress and persecute all those who opposed him.

In linking himself so strongly with the Hashemites, Al-Aidh gravely misjudged the mood of his people. The tribes of Asir were predominantly from the Shahri, Shahran, Qahtan and Asir groups, although there were also some members of the Subai and the Utaiba. These tribes were all puritanical in their religious beliefs. They viewed with suspicion and distrust the worldly town-dwellers of Hejaz, and were sym-pathetic to the Wahhabi movement. With the rise of the Ikhwan and the expansion of the realm of Ibn Saud, it was inevitable  that they would look for leadership and guidance towards Riyadh rather than Mecca. In 1921 a group of tribal chiefs from Asir arrived in Riyadh and complained to Ibn Saud of the ill-treatment that they were suffering at the hands of Al-Aidh. The Prince agreed to mediate of their behalf. However, Al-Aidh refused to have anything to do with any Saudi deputation, claiming that the whole idea amounted to unjustified political interference in his internal affairs. He then redoubled his persecution of the dissenting tribal chiefs, many of whom had to flee Asir in fear of their lives.

Al-Aidh’s actions were intended to be the clearest possible rebuff to Ibn Saud, and represented an insult which he was not prepared to overlook. At the end of 1921 a strong Saudi force, under the command of Abdul Aziz Ibn Mussaud, was dispatched to Asir. Ibn Mussaud reached the area of Bishah, where he encamped. From there he sent a letter to Al-Aidh requiring him to confirm his allegiance to Ibn Saud. Al-Aidh’s reply was simple and direct. He sent a messenger back to Ibn Mussaud with a small package; it contained  a clip of bullets. No clearer invitation to battle could be given, and Ibn Mus-saud was not the man to turn it down. With his army he immediately advanced into Asir. At Wadi Hajlah he found Al-Aidh’s army entrenched in defensive positions under the command of Mohammed Ibn Abdul Rahman Al-Aidh. The battle which followed resulted in the complete defeat of the Asiri forces. They withdrew in disorder to Abha, where Hassan Al-Aidh was hastily improving the fortifications. The loss of morale amongst the Asiri troops was so great that as the Saudi forces approached the town much of the army fled, taking all their arms and equipment with them and leaving only  a frightened skeleton force to defend the town. By this time the tribal chiefs in the area scented a Saudi victory. Preferring, as always, to be on the winning rather than the losing side, and anxious to share in any booty that was going, they threw in their lot with Iban Mussaud. Abha was taken with little difficulty, and shortly afterwards a very deflated Hassan Al-Aidh was compelled to surrender. Ibn Mussaud treated his captive with courtesy and sent him and others of his family to Riyadh.There he was received by Ibn Saud with the magnanimity and generosity which the Prince always displayed towards the vanquished. Ibn Saud even offered to appoint Al-Aidh as his Amir of Asir. Al-Aidh was too proud to accept the offer but was nevertheless allowed to return to Asir, where he retired with his family to his old mountain stronghold of Hamalah.

The saga of Asir did not quite end there. Ibn Mussaud appointed an amir named Fahd Al-Ughaily to govern Abha. Al-Ughaily proved unpopular and it was not long before the fickle bedouin were urging Hassan Al-Aidh to rebel against him. Al-Aidh eventually agreed and, with a powerful force to tribesmen, laid siege to Abha. The town was stoutly defended by the Saudi garrison but it eventually fell; it was then the turn of Al-Ughaily to be taken captive. Ibn Saud reacted swiftly to these events by sending his son Faisal to Asir with a powerful force. The rebellion collapsed of his arrival and Abha was reoccupied with little resistance. Faisal wisely appointed a new amir named Abdul Aziz Ibn Ibrahim, who proved much more popular than his predecessor with the local population. The unfortunate Hassan Al-Aidh and his family found themselves once more on the journey to Riyadh as prisoners. With his boundless patience and generosity, Ibn Saud again received Al-Aidh warmly and pardoned him for his part in the rebellion. This time, however, the family were not permitted to return to Asir. Like the Rashids, they were allowed to live in Riyadh under a very mild form of house arrest so that the Prince could keep a firm but kindly eye on them. When I came to Riyadh I often saw Al-Aidh and his son in the market-place, where they were accepted on equal terms with all the other subjects of Ibn Saud.

Asir was to prosper under Saudi rule and the province be became a favourite with Prince Fasial, who found that he could always rely upon the friendship and loyalty of its people. The tribesmen of Asir were given full freedom to travel and set up business in any part of the Saudi domain; being an energetic and enterprising people, they took full advantage of their new privileges. As the Arab proverb says, ‘A new farmer is good news for the field.’

Coming so soon soon after the battle of Turabah, the annexation of Asir was a bitter blow to Sherif Hussein. He now found the Saudis encroaching upon him from both east and south. One might have expected the Sherif to be extremely careful to do nothing further which might offend Ibn Saud. But Hussein continued to harbor inflated ideas of his own power and importance and still saw himself as the natural leader of Arabia. In 1924 he made the calamitous error of judgment which was to result in his overthrow. For centuries the Ottoman Sultans had been recognized as Caliphs, the successors of the Prophet Mohammed and the spiritual leader of Islam. The new Turkish government which had taken over at the end of the First World War saw no purpose in continuing the Caliphate and abolished it. Sherif Hussein immediately filled the vacancy by having himself proclaimed Caliph with great pomp and ceremony. This preposterous action was resented by Moslems everywhere, and particularly by the IKhwan, who already regarded Hejaz as a sink of iniquity and heresy.

On his own initiative Sultan Ibn Bijad raised an Ikhwan army, mostly from the Utaiba tribe, and led them across the desert to attack the Sherif. This perilous expeditin did not have the open support of Ibn Saud but it probably had his blessing. Once again the Sherifian army was taken by surprise. One morning in September 1924 an advance scouting contingent of tribal warriors was to be found looking into the heart of Ta’if, the pleasant hill town about forty miles from Mecca which was the summer capital of Hejaz. The Unsuspecting populace did not even notice the warriors, assuming that they were members of a local tribe grazing their animals in the hills. In fact they were only waiting for an opportunity to seize  the town and occupy it. Ta’if had a military garrison led by one of Hussein’s sons Sherif Ali, but most of the soldiers were encamped at the nearby village of Al-Hadda. The old Turkish fortress in Ta’if probably only contained a token force to keep law and order among the local citizens. The Ikhwan swept down upon the unsuspecting town with terrifying speed, occupied it without any opposition to speak of and passed on to Al-Hadda. There they mounted a ferocious assault on the garrison, which was routed with heavy losses.

The account of the loss of Ta’if given by the Sherifian government to the outside world included allegations that the Ikhwan had behaved with the utmost barbarity and had brutally murdered women and children. Foreigners writing on the subject have repeated these allegations as if they were undisputed fact. For my party, I believe them to be exaggerated. The Amir of Ta’if himself told me that nobody was killed in the town except members of the garrison, and some of the townsmen who tried to resist. The atrocity stories were probably spread by Sherifian officials anxious to discredit Ibn Saud and the Ikhwan and divert attention from the calamitous defeat of the Hejazi forces. The very success of this ruse was disastrously counter-productive, for the lies were believed by the citizens of Hejaz and utter panic spread throughout the Sherif’s domain. (Such is the power of rumor that some religious leaders in India even forbade the pilgrimage to Mecca for a time.)

It was not long before Mecca itself had fallen to the same stalwarts who had taken Ta’if. Mecca offered no resistance to the invaders, for Sherif Hussein had himself abandoned it and gone to Jeddah. Shortly after Mecca had been occupied in October 1924, Ibn Saud himself arrived there for the first time in his life.

لَبْيّكَ اَللهُمَ لَبْيّكَ. لَبْيّكَ لَا شَريكَ لَكَ لَبْيّكَ.

إنَ الحَمَدَ والنِعّمَة لَكَ والمُلكْ. لَا شَريكَ لَكَ لَبْيّكَ.

Here am I, O God, at Thy command,

Here am I.

Thou art the only God,

Thine art praise and grace and dominion.

Thou art the only God. Here am I.

He entered the Holy City, not as a conquering monarch, but with bared head and dressed in the simple robes of a pilgrim. He brought with him substantial reinforcement, including a large contingent of the Mutair tribe under the redoubtable Faisal Ad-Dawish, who was now a member of the Ikhwan and was for a change fighting on the side of his Prince.

In the meantime the vanguard of the battling tribesmen pressed on in pursuit of the remnants of the Sherif’s fleeing army. They took Raghama and laid siege to the city of Jeddah, in which the remaining forces of Hejaz had taken refuge. There were several confrontations between the defending garrison and the invading army; most were stalemates fought between the fringes of Raghama and the outskirta of the city. There were even a few primitive tanks in Jaddah, for which the defenders had high hopes; but when the tanks ventured outside the walls they were soon either disabled or captured.

Eventually Ibn Saud himself arrived at the battlefield and assumed command. He could undoubtedly have crushed Jeddah quickly and easily had he chosen to do so; instead, he wisely refrained from causing the unnecessary bloodshed which would have resulted from an assault on the city, realizing that it would inevitably fall to him in the end. Right at the start of the siege, Sherif Hussain was approached by a group of notables from Jeddah and asked to abdicate in favour of his son, Ali. In reply, Hussein quoted an Arab poet:

مَشيْنَاهَا خُطاً كُتِبَتْ عَلَيْنا            وَمَنْ كُتِبَتْ عَلَيْهِ خُطَاً مَشَاهَا

We have walked along the path of life that was laid down for us, as needs must men whose steps have been ordained.

He then fled the country from the port of Aqaba, never to return. Ali was immediately proclaimed king of Hejaz in October 1924. Sherif Hussein went to Cyprus, where he died. His body now lies in the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

The siege of Jeddah was a peculiar affair. The Najdi forces were stationed in the low foothills to the east of Jeddah; this enabled a close watch to be kept on the port while affording an excellent defensive position in the event of a counterattack. The hills were just out of range of the artillery in Jeddah. The garrison tried to overcome this problem by mounting their cannons on the highest roof-tops of the city, and from these positions they pounded away at the Saudi forces day and night. Unfortunately for them, their efforts merely weakened the fabric of the buildings and kept the citizens of Jeddah awake at night, for all the rounds still fell short. The siege was by no means complete; ships of all nations continued to come and go at the port. Ibn Saud wisely made no attempt to stop them, as to do so might have led to international complications. In the circumstances it is not surprising that the siege lasted for eleven months. During this time there were several approaches from mediators for a cease-fire or a surrender on terms. One of the mediators was none other than St John Philby, who was again sent to negotiate with Ibn Saud on behalf of the British authorities in Egypt.

While Ibn Saud was besieging Jeddah his force also had Medina under siege. A small contingent of the Saudi army at Medina was led by Prince Mohammed Al Saud, but it was Ad-Dawish and his Mutair tribesmen who made up the main body of the force. Medina fell easily, in December 1925, while Jeddah still showed no signs of surrendering. It seemed to Ad-Dawish that Ibn Saud was in dire need of reinforcements, and the wily Ikhwan chief sought to turn this situation to his advantage. He went to see Ibn Bijad, who was encamped outside Mecca in an area known as Alma’bida, where part of the Utaiba tribe dwelled. There he suggested to Ibn Bijad that they should approach Ibn Saud and demand to be made Amirs of Mecca and Medina respectively, in return for their continued support in the war against the Hejazis. Ibn Bijad readily agreed to this scheme and the two chiefs lost no time in seeking an audience with Ibn Saud in his tents at a Raghama, where they placed their proposal before him. Ibn Saud flatly refused them. Even if the support of the Mutair and the Utaiba was to be lost, he knew better than to give two such impulsive and ambitious men positions of power in Hejaz. To do so would be merely to invite a rebellion in the future. Bitterly affronted, the two chiefs immediately withdrew with their forces into Najd and took no further part in the conflict.

This brief contretemps at Raghama was to have considerable significance for the future. Ibn Bijad did not take the whole of the Utaiba tribe with him when he departed. His support was mainly among the Burga section of the Utaiba, whereas the smaller Rawaga section owed their allegiance of Chief Omar Ibn Rubaian, who remained stoutly loyal to Ibn Saud. Within a few years this tribal rift was to become very important. The Rawaga remained staunch supporters of Ibn Saud, while the smouldering resentment of the Burga under Ibn Bijad was destined before long to blaze up into the Ikhwan revolt.

At the end of December 1925 the desultory campaign at Jeddah eventually came to an end and the city capitulated. Other parts of Hejaz, such as Yanbu and the northern towns, fell like dominoes and it was not long before the whole of the country was in the undisputed possession of the Sultan of Najd. After the city of Jeddah had fallen and Ibn Saud had entered in triumph, he implemented a wise policy of tolerance and mercy. The inhabitants were told that their affairs could revert to normal, with everybody carrying on business as usual, and the employees of the old government were ordered to remain at their posts. This saved Ibn Saud the trouble of destroying the Sherif’s administrative machinery and replacing it with his own; at the same time it earned him the gratitude and loyalty of the government employees, who retained their jobs and livelihood.

After settling matters in Jeddah, Ibn Saud returned to Mecca, where he had the joy of being able to preform the hajj for the first time in his life. By 1925 Ibn Saud was known by his formal title of Sultan of Najd and also by various names such as the Imam, the Sheikh and the Asheukh (meaning Sheikh of Sheikhs). On 10 January 1926, at a moving ceremony in Mecca, he was also proclaimed King of Hejaz.

Sheikh Isa Ibn Ali of Bahrain, who first gave refuge to the Saud family when they fled from Riyadh in 1890 after the Rashidis had captured the city.
Royal Geographical society

Sheikh Mubarak Al Subah of Kuwait (seated, centre) with Ibn Saud (seated, left), Ibn Saud’s brother Sa’ad (standing, centre) and other members of the Saud family. The family found refuge with Sheikh Mubarak until Ibn Saud recaptured Riyadh in 1902.
Royal Geographical society

Ibn Saud with some of his brothers and sons near Thaj, in Eastern Arabia, where the Prince camped with Captain Shakespear. Royal Geographical Society

Opposite: Prince Sa’ad Ibn Saud, in a photograph taken by Captain Shakespear in 1911.
Royal Geographical Society

Outside the Old Palace, Riyadh. Popperfoto

The outer mud walls of Riyadh, showing the Al-Hasa gate, 1912. Royal Geographical Society

Postern door in Riyadh fortress, where the Rashidi Governor Ajlan was trapped by Ibn Saud and a handful of his follower when they recaptured the city in 1902.
MEPhA

Members of Ibn Saud’s puritanical Ikhwan brethren

The Governor of Abha, the capital of Asir, on his way to the mosque. Abha fell to the Saudis in 1921. Popperfoto

Sana’a 1920

Sherif Hussein Ibn Ali of Mecca. This photograph was taken in Amman in 1924, after he abdicated in favour of his son Ali. The Times

Amir Abdullah Ibn Hussein, who was defeated by the Utaiba chiefs, Ibn Bijad and Ibn Luway, at the battle of Turabah in 1919. Magnum photos