ومدجج كره الكماة نزاله لا ممعن هرباً ولا مستسلم
جادت له كفي بعاجل طعنة بمثقف صدق الكعوب مقوم
برحيبة الفرغين يهدي جرسها بالليل معتس الذئاب الضرم

(عنترة بن شداد)

Many’s the bristling knight the warriors have shunned to
take on,
one who was not in hurry to flee or capitulate,
my hands have been right generous too with the hasty thrust
of a well-tempered, strong-jointed, straightened spear
giving him a broad, double-sided gash, the hiss of which
guides in the night-season the prowling, famished wolves.
(Antarah Ibn Shaddad)

The young Prince could hardly have chosen a more formidable opponent than Abdul Aziz Ibn Mutaib Al Rashid, who was brave and resolute man with a fearsome reputation as a fighter. It has justly been said (and Ibn Saud would have been the first to agree) that no braver man ever strode the desert waster. Al Rashid’s pride and courage are well illustrated by a story often told about him. One day, when he was entertaining a number of important chiefs in his majlis, a small desert scorpion crept into his clothing and began to sting him mercilessly. (The desert scorpion is less ferocious than the scorpion found in towns, but its sting is very painful nonetheless.) Any ordinary man would have leapt up and torn off his clothing to dislodge the animal, but there was nothing ordinary about Al Rashid. For a matter of hours. While the scorpion stung him again and again, he remained in his seat talking amiably to his visitors and showed not the slightest sign that anything was amiss. Only when the last of his guests had left did he retire to his private chamber to remove and crush his tormentor.

From their capital in the northern town of Ha’il, the family of Rashid had long been one of the most powerful in Arabia. Since the Rashids had driven the family of Saud into exile, the area around Riyadh had been regarded by them as just another province of their kingdom. One might have expected Abdul Aziz Al Rashid to have responded immediately to Ibn Saud’s impertinent capture of Riyadh by sending a punitive expedition to recover it. Ibn Saud still had only a small following, and the dilapidated defences of Riyadh – which had allowed him to enter the town without detection – could not long have resisted a siege by a large force. Al Rashid had an obvious opportunity to throttle Ibn Saud’s infant kingdom at birth. But instead of taking seriously the threat posed by the Prince. Al Rashid was too proud to accept him as a serious rival and made the fatal error of treating him with contempt, as if he were a fly who could effortlessly be swatted at any convenient time.

It was not until the autumn of 1902 that Al Rashid decided to march south to deal with the usurper, and this gave Ibn Saud nine invaluable months in which to consolidate his position. The Prince’s first action was to set the citizens of Riyadh to work repairing and rebuilding the fortifications of the town, in anticipation of the counter-attack which he expected at any moment. He himself set an example to his new subjects by personally labouring long hours to bring liquid mud to the builders at the walls. Al Rashid’s reaction upon hearing about this was to say, ‘Let them build to their hearts’ content; we shall destroy the walls in no time.’ However, he took no action to carry out his threat.

When the walls of the city were in good repair, and having established his authority over the provinces to the south, the Prince brought his entire family back from Kuwait and installed them in their ancestral capital. His father, Abdul Rahman, immediately abdicated in Abdul Aziz’s favour and handed him the historic family sword which had belonged to Abdul Wahhab himself and had remained in the family of Saud for generations as a symbol of their power. This public ceremony and the return of the whole Saud family to their traditional capital, coupled with the dramatic manner in which Riyadh had been captured, persuaded many wavering local chiefs that the tide of fate had turned against Al Rashid. They came in scores to Riyadh to offer their allegiance to the Prince. By the time Al Rashid had started to move south from Ha’il with his avenging army, Ibn Saud had re-established his family’s control in huge areas of the southern provinces extending from Riyadh down to the boundaries of the Rub’ Al-Khali, and was by now sufficiently powerful to take on his old enemy on equal terms.

The object of all desert warfare at the time was to attempt to outmanoeuvre the enemy so as either to take him by surprise or to cut him off in the desert without water. Since both sides would be liberally supplied with scouts and guides, it was not easy for one army to conceal its presence from the other. Indeed, it was not unusual for the whole of Arabia to know where each army was located, for news of their movements would be passed with astonishing speed by the wandering bedouin as they went from place to place. In every village the old men would sit together, arguing for hours on end about where the armies would go next, and waiting for the next messenger to arrive to see who had been proved right. The unique kind of warfare which resulted was a cat-and-mouse affair, made up of great deal of marching and countermarching coupled with frequent small raids and skirmishes; it only rarely culminated in a full-scale battle. Such was the pattern of the conflict between Al Rashid and Ibn Saud, and it was not until the end of 1902 that the first battle was fought between them at Dilam, about fifty-five miles south-east of Riyadh. Ibn Saud succeeded in ambushing the enemy troops. He followed up his advantage with a cavalry charge which forced Al Rashid’s men to retreat rapidly northwards in disorder, fortunately unaware that the Prince’s men had almost entirely run out of ammunition. Following the battle, the attitude of Al Rashid towards his enemy underwent a rapid change; instead of regarding him with contempt, he now swore never to return to Ha’il until he had liquidated the Prince or died in the attempt.

Desultory fighting continued throughout 1903, when Al Rashid made several successful raids against tribes in the northen areas near Artawiya and Kuwait border, and appeared likely to attack Ibn Saud’s ally Sheikh Mubarak in Kuwait itself. The unfortunate Sheikh Mubarak found himself in terrible dilemma, being anxious to be seen to have supported whichever side in the conflict eventually won, but not knowing whom it was likely to be. His solution was to send regular letters expressing friendship and support to both Ibn Saud and Rashid, and these were usually dictated simultaneously. One day Sheikh Mubarak’s clerk accidentally mixed up the envelopes and each Prince received the letter intended for the other. Al Rashid’s reaction is not recorded, but Ibn Saud, far from being angry, was hugely amused to see his old friend’s duplicity so comically exposed.

In any event, wherever Sheikh Mubarak’s allegiance lay, Ibn Saud was certainly not prepared to see Kuwait taken over by Rashids, so he immediately moved his forces north to counter the threat. Al Rashid promptly doubled back and attempted for the first and last time to make a surprise attack on Riyadh. Unfortunately for him, Abdul Rahman, the Prince’s father, had taken the fullest possible precautions to protect the city and through his scouts had ample warning of the enemy’s advance. By the time Al Rashid arrived, the city was so well defended that he could not even try to assault it and was obliged to retreat northwards again for fear of being caught in the rear by Ibn Saud. So precipitous was Al Rashid’s withdrawal that a force sent from Riyadh by Abdul Rahman to pursue him was able without difficulty to capture the town of Shaqra, about eighty miles to the north-west. Ibn Saud himself followed with reinforcement and had soon assured himself of the benevolent neutrality of the towns of Majma’a and Zilfi, thereby extending his kingdom in the north to the borders of Al-Qasim. Thus, in little more than a year, the young Prince who had been considered by Al Rashid almost too trivial a nuisance to merit his attention had captured half the Rashidi domain and appeared poised to take the rest.

In the summer of 1903 Ibn Saud advanced in Al-Qasim with the assistance of Sheikh Mubarak of Kuwait. By the beginning of 1904 he had captured Unayzah and Faidhat As-Sirr. In June 1904 Buraida also fell to him, after a siege of several weeks. The Prince now controlled large parts of all Al-Qasim and was getting too close to Ha’il for the comfort of Al Rashid who, realizing that his situation was now becoming desperate, appealed to the Turks for assistance. The Turks had always supported Al Rashid and so far in the conflict had aided him with arms and supplies: now they sent him men. No less than eight battalions of disciplined, well-trained and fully equipped Turkish soldiers were sent into the desert to aid the Rashidi cause. Unlike Ibn Saud’s lightly armed and undisciplined irregulars, they were armed with modern rifles, had plenty of ammunition, and were also equipped with artillery. No doubt they expected to crush Ibn Saud’s forces, and they would very likely have done so had the Prince tried to engage them in a full-scale conventional battle. But the Turks were not used to desert warfare and conditions and they lacked mobility. They died in their hundreds from disease without the necessity for Ibn Saud to fire a shot. By skilful manoeuvre and by repeatedly cutting their lines of supply, the Prince could and did outfight them. In the months of September and October 1904 a series of engagements were fought in the area of Bukairiya between Ibn Saud on the one side and Al Rashid and his Turkish allies on the other. The result was a total victory for the Prince: the Turkish force was annihilated, their equipment and artillery were captured, and Al Rashid was forced to retreat back to Ha’il, having himself lost to his enemy large numbers of camels and a substantial quantity of supplies. However, he did not lose his pride, and obstinately encamped outside his capital so as to honour his vow never to return to it until Ibn Saud had been crushed.

After this overwhelming success, Ibn Saud was obliged to leave Al-Qasim abruptly in order to deal with a rebellion in the area of Qatar. For about a year there was no further conflict between the two rulers. Then in 1906 Al Rashid decided to strike once more and began to rise an army of more than twenty thousand men. The whole tribe of Shammar was gathered from the northernmost part of the Jabal Shammar region, together with members of many smaller tribes. The force included no less than two and half thousand of the best Shammar horsemen. When Ibn Saud heard of his enemy’s preparations, he immediately gathered his own forces in readiness for war.

At about this time Al Rashid wrote a letter to the Prince, saying that it was a shame for two faithful Moslems to cause unnecessary bloodshed by perpetual warfare, and suggesting that the issue between them should be settled by a personal duel, with the winner talking all. To a man of Ibn Saud’s skill as a warrior this offered a tempting solution, but the Prince could not trust Al Rashid, so with his usual tact he declined the offer. In his reply the prince praised Al Rashid’s courage but commented that Al Rashid was a man who had, by his reckless bravery, often shown a desire for death. Ibn Saud on the contrary wanted to live; and a man who wanted to live had left the path of wisdom if he fought a man who wanted to die. In any event, the whole issue was in the hands of God and it was for God alone to decide the result of the conflict.

The Prince’s next move was to march into the north of Al-Qasim, where he soon became involved in the usual preliminary skirmishes with small parties of Rashidi troops. Al Rashid had deployed his forces to the west and north-west of Al-Qasim and, on one of the rare occasions that he was able to outmanoeuvre the Prince, made a rapid march east and crossed the Al-Qasim escarpment just to the south-east of Unayzah, thereby placing his army between Ibn Saud and Riyadh and effectively cutting off Ibn Saud from reinforcement and supplies. When the Prince’s followers realized their predicament, most of them prudently melted away into the desert, leaving Ibn Saud with only a handful of loyal soldiers. It is reported that he had left not more than two hundred men with only a hundred camels and ten horses. His plight could hardly have been more desperate.

Many stories have been written about the battle of Rowdhat Muhanna which ensued. The following account was told me personally by Ibn Saud’s standard-bearer, Abdul Rahman Ibn Muttrif, who was present at the battle, and I have every reason to believe it to be accurate. The Prince held council with the ten or so tribal chiefs who had remained with him although their men had disappeared. It was decided that they should attempt to slip through the enemy lines by travelling at night and hiding by day. The following night the small group set off their journey, trusting in their desert skills and the mercy of God to escape detection. Although Ibn Saud had hoped to steer clear of any large body of enemy troops, he suddenly found himself on the edge of Al Rashid’s encampment with only a sand-dune separating him from the Rashidi army. The Prince climbed the dune and stopped at the top to survey his enemy. His friends bade him hurry away but it was as if his feet were stuck in the sand and he refused to move. Increasingly desperate, his friends begged him to leave at once, whispering urgently, ‘O Prince, if you are lost everything will be lost.’ They even tried to pull him away from the dune but he pushed them off and, with a gleam in his eye, said to them, ‘Look! The enemy are completely off their guard and unaware of us. I shall not move from here until I have had a go at them.’ ‘But it is suicidal,’ pleaded his followers. The Prince replied, ‘It is too great an opportunity to miss,’ and he told them of a plan he had been able to devise on the spot. The chiefs agreed to try out the plan on condition that they and the Prince withdrew immediately to a safe distance. Ibn Saud at first refused to do this, as he was determined to be involved personally in the coming battle. However, the chiefs were adamant and the Prince eventually agreed with reluctance to withdraw. After giving instructions as to how the attack was to be conducted, he and his companion chiefs galloped off to a safe distance.

The force of two hundred men was divided into two sections. Each section made its way carefully to sand-dunes on opposite sides of the great encampment, avoiding the few guards posted by Al Rashid. There they waited for the enemy to fall asleep. By midnight most of the camp-fires had died down and all was quiet. The first party crept silently and stealthily towards the camp. There was only one small flicker of light, and they headed towards it like a moth in the dark flying towards a flame. As they approached the light it became clear that it was a candle inside a tent. Suddenly a figure came out of the tent, followed by servant carrying a kettle. The raiding party immediately froze in their tracks, but in the excitement the soldier who was carrying the Prince’s standard let it slip in his hands and there was a jangling noise from the metal balls and ornaments attached to the flag. The man who had come from the tent called out in their direction, ‘That is not the way, Al-Fraikh.’ Al-Fraikh was known to be Al Rashid’s standard-bearer, and the imperious tone of voice used by the man who had called out was obviously that of a master addressing a servant. The figure by the tent could only be Al Rashid himself, who had obviously mistaken the Prince’s standard-bearer for his own man. It took the Saudis a moment to realize their amazing luck. Then one of the soldiers cried out to his companions, ‘O you who seek Al Rashid, here is your man!’ The raiders fell upon Al Rashid who, despite his brave attempt to defend himself with his drawn sword, was instantly overpowered, cut down and killed. The uproar immediately roused the entire camp and the raiding party seemed doomed to annihilation. Just at that moment the second section of the Prince’s men, who had stationed themselves on the dunes around about, began an intense rapid fire into the camp, blazing away all their ammunition as quickly as they could. The raiding party inside the camp did the same. It was a brilliantly successful ruse; to Al Rashid’s bemused soldiers, roused precipitously from their slumbers, it seemed as if their camp was being attacked from all sides by an overwhelming force. Deprived of a leader to rally them, the Rashidi troops degenerated into a disorganized rabble. Thinking that their enemy was already amongst them in force, they started shooting indiscriminately inside the camp, thus inviting return fire from their own men. Soon the encampment echoed with furious gunfire from end to end as groups of terrified soldiers fought desperately with each other in the darkness, unaware that the enemy existed only in their imagination.

In the resulting confusion, the Saudis managed to escape from the camp almost without loss. They withdrew with the utmost speed, taking with them Al Rashid’s signet ring as proof of his death. The Prince was waiting for them at a prearrange hiding place. Since he had travelled on horseback, and the rest of the Saudi force had perhaps a hundred camels among two hundred men, it probably took them two days to catch up with him. When the Prince heard of their success he was delighted, but the killing of Al Rashid seemed to him so unlikely that he refused to believe his men even when they produced the ring. He ordered them to return for the body, saying, ‘I cannot believe this until you bring back his head.’ His men duly returned with extreme caution to the battlefield, where they found nothing but dead men and animals. The slaughter in the camp had been tremendous and the survivors had fled back to Ha’il. They had made no attempt to bury their chief, and Al Rashid’s head was severed and brought in triumph to the Prince. Thus died the greatest of the Prince’s enemies. After his death at Rowdhat Muhanna, the survival of Ibn Saud’s kingdom was never again seriously in doubt.