سورة الأنبياء – (92)

Lo! This, your religion, is one religion, and I am your

Lord, so worship Me.

                                      (Koran, The Prophets 92)

The greatest phenomenon in recent history has been the rise in influence and power of the Arab countries, chief among which is the vast kingdom of Saudi Arabia. All over the world, people are taking a new interest in Saudi state and have a renewed respect for its wealth, its economic power and the wisdom of its rulers. Yet few foreigners realize that until this century the territory which now comprises Saudi Arabia was a disunited land of small kingdoms, imperial spheres of influence and warring tribes, where boundaries and allegiances shifted as swiftly and erratically as the desert sands. The modern state of Saudi Arabia was created from nothing during the early part of this century as a result of the extraordinary military prowess and statesmanship of just one remarkable man, His Majesty King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud.

To appreciate the full measure of Ibn Saud’s towering achievement, one must have some knowledge of the politics of the Arabian peninsula at the beginning of this century. In 1900 most of Arabia was dominated, if not actually governed, by the waning but still powerful Ottoman Empire. To the east of the country, the Turks physically occupied the area of Al-Hasa on the shores of the Arabian Gulf. They effectively governed Hejaz in the west through Sherif Hussein of the Hashemite family, who, through nominally independent, was in reality little more than a Turkish Puppet. To the north, they held the Fertile Crescent – the lands which now comprise Palestine, Syria and Iraq. They also attempted to control the central desert areas by giving support to those tribes and rules who appeared to them to be strongest. However, this was never more than temporarily successful, for the wandering bedouin were not easy to influence by any method and probably regarded the Turks simply as a convenient source of supply.

For most of the nineteenth century the Turkish rule could not have been described as oppressive. The Turks were Moslems, and Arabia was the birthplace of the Prophet. The Turks tended to treat the Arabian people with the reverence due to the occupants of a Holy Land and they were allowed a good deal of independence. Indeed, it was not uncommon for the Turks to pay regular pensions to local chiefs without expecting anything in return. However, towards the beginning of the First World War, the rule of the Turks became less benevolent as a new wave of young administrators – members of the Young Turks – attempted most unwisely to interfere with the Arab way of life and to introduce Turkish customs. They made the teaching of the Turkish language compulsory in local schools and also tried to force the Arabs to wear the fez rather than their traditional head-dress. This was particularly resented and there were riots all over Arabia in which the demonstrators chanted, ‘Rather death than the fez.’ Many did indeed lose their lives, for the riots were broken up with considerable violence, in particular by Jamal Pasha, Governor of Greater Syria. By the beginning of the First World War the Turks had succeeded in making themselves quite unnecessarily unpopular and had themselves sowed the seed for Arab Revolt organized by T.E. Lawrence in Hejaz.

At the turn of the century there was another important imperial influence in Arabia in the form of Great Britain. Although Britain did not occupy any of the territory in what is now Saudi Arabia, it dominated Muscat, Oman and Aden in the south, and Egypt and Sudan to the west of the Red Sea. It had also promised by treaty to protect a number of sheikhs in the territories on the Arabian Gulf, in particular Sheikh Mubarak of Kuwait. Not surprisingly, the British maintained a keen interest in the activities of the Turks in Arabia and were always on the look-out for opportunities to undermine their authority.

The land of Hejaz deserves special mention because of its importance as religious and commercial center. Its power was concentrated in the towns of Medina and Jeddah, and of course in the Holy City of Mecca. All faithful Moslems were – and still are – required to make the hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, at least once in their lifetime and more frequently if possible. The consequent flow of pilgrims of Hejaz brought in a substantial flow of money to its tax-collectors and merchants, and also a continual flow of new ideas from the outside world. As a result, Hejaz was richer and more sophisticated than the rest of Arabia, and notorious amongst the spartan desert Arabs for the moral laxity of its citizens.

To the people of Central Arabia, empires, nations and fixed boundaries were concepts of little meaning. Their vast land was mostly parched desert or scrub; while some of the population lived in small towns clustered around the few oases, the majority were nomadic bedouin wandering with their families and herds from pasture to pasture. The desert bred proud, fierce, intolerant men, whose loyalty was not to any distant monarch or emperor but first and foremost to their own tribe. The Arabian tribal system was, and indeed still is, one of infinite complexity and subtlety. Broadly speaking, each tribe occupied a roughly defined territory within which it controlled the pastures and water-holes and through which other tribes could pass only with its permission or by force of arms. The names of the tribes are legion but some are so important that they deserve an immediate mention.

Between Riyadh and Mecca and down into the province of Asir, the dominant tribe was the Utaiba. In the area between Medina and Kuwait the principal tribe was the Mutair; a section of this tribe which lived between Mediana and Unayzah was known as the Bani Abdillah. In the center of the country was the Harb tribe, which had sections in Najd and also in Hejaz. Around Riyadh there was the Subai tribe, another section of which lived in Southern Hejaz and Asir. To the south of Riyadh lived the Qahtan tribe, which occupied an area extending down to the Rub‘ Al-Khali, or Empty Quarter. Members of this tribe were also to be found in the large numbers in Southern Hejaz. The Qahtan tribe was traditionally considered to be the oldest tribe in Arabia and the mother of all the other tribes. In the area of Jabal Shamar lived the Shammar tribe, people renowned for their hospitality, strength and courage and also noted for the beauty of their women.

Not only were there many different tribes, but each one was itself divided into at least two main section. Most tribes were probably formed centuries ago when several powerful families succeeded in establishing their own group of followers. There might be two sons in a family who on the death of their father would each lead their own half of the tribe; this process of subdivision would then tend to continue from generation to generation. Taking the Utaiba tribe as an example, this had two principal sections, known as the Burga and the Rawaga. Each section had further divisions. For instance, the Burga contained other groups called the Mugata, Nafah, Dahna and Ossuma. There were yet further subsections of each of these groups. All the tribes were structured in this way. Usually, of the two main section in each tribe, one was notably more powerful and successful than the other and was thought of as the principal or dominant section. Any man with ambitions to become a great king in Central Arabia needed an encyclopedic knowledge of the structure of every tribe and of the jealousies and rivalries simmering inside it, for the principle of ‘divide and rule’ could be applied to good effect within a single tribe as well as between the various different tribes. Ibn Saud was not only extremely well-versed in the intricacies of the Arabian tribal system; he also knew to use the intertribal rivalries to his advantage. He frequently managed to ally the less powerful sections of the main tribes with his force against the more successful branches of these same tribes.

Among the tribes – and sometimes between the different sections of individual tribes – there had for centuries been a state of continual warfare. This was not war of the European kind, with massive pitched battles and hideous casualties. Instead, it mostly took the form of raids on one’s neighbours to capture animals and booty, and the inevitable counter-raids and subsequent blood feuds. The raids were indulged in more as a kind of sport than through any genuine hatred of the enemy, and provided a welcome relief to the grinding poverty and boredom of desert life. Battles were usually on a small scale, where honour could be satisfied but few people actually got hurt. One could almost liken desert warfare to a game of chess, in which the most skilled, alert general eventually ‘checkmated’ his opponent.

The bedouin were impossible material from which to build an empire. Throughout the history of Arabia, many great men had attempted to unite them under one rule. None had succeeded for long. The problem was that the tribesmen were fiercely independent and owed no allegiance to any outsider. They had immense respect for strength, courage, leadership and luck; a man who had all these qualities in abundance might for a time unite several tribes or tribal sections behind him and start to carve out a kingdom for himself. But victory was usually self-defeating because once the great man’s followers had won sufficient booty they tended to disappear into the desert with their loot. If a leader was to retain his supporters he had to keep fighting and keep winning; if he lost battles or stopped to draw breath, his followers would vanish through disappointment or boredom. Many notable warriors had won a realm in Arabia: none had found the formula for keeping it.

Since the eighteenth century, two prominent families in Central Arabia had consistently thrown up great leaders. One was the family of Rashid, centred in the northern city of Ha’il in Jabal Shammar. The other was the family of Saud, which for many years had had its headquarters in Riyadh in Najd and could claim a most distinguished history. In 1745 Mohammed Ibn Saud, Amir of the insignificant town of Dara’iyah near Riyadh, had allied himself with the great religious reformer Abdul Wahhab and started a jihad, or Holy War, which swept him to power throughout Arabia.The dynasty he founded lasted until its defeat in 1817 but sprang up once more in 1819 in the person of Turki Ibn Abdullah Ibn Mohammed Ibn Saud, from whom Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud was directly descended. For forty-five years the families of Rashid and Saud had struggled for supremacy in Central Arabia. Their family histories were intertwined; in 1834 a Rashid was appointed Amir of Jabal Shammar by Faisal Al Saud, the grandfather of Ibn Saud. At the time my story begins, the star of the Rashids was very much in the ascendant. In 1890 Mohammed Ibn Rashid, after a series of successful battles, had besieged and captured Riyadh from Abdul Rahman Ibn Saud. In fact, Abdul Rahman Ibn Saud would have been allowed to stay on as Amir under the Rashids, but he decided instead to go into voluntary exile. He took with him a few of his followers and his son Abdul Aziz, who was then only ten years old. So utter was the defeat of the house of Saud that nobody then thought the Sauds likely ever to rise again.

Until his death in 1897 Mohammed Ibn Rashid ruled Najd almost as an absolute monarch. He appointed governors to rule in towns taken over from the Sauds and also received money and arms from the Turks, although he probably never gave much in return. When Mohammed Ibn Rashid died, his nephew Abdul Aziz Al Rashid succeeded him. Abdul Aziz Al Rashid could hardly have expected any further trouble from the family of Saud. It was unfortunate for him that the young Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud was to grow to manhood gifted by God not only with all the talents and bravery of his ancestors, but also with a uniquely inspired brand of leadership capable of forging a permanent kingdom in the desert where all others had failed. Within a mere nine years this young prince was to take from Al Rashid both his heritage and his life, and was to go on to become the greatest monarch Arabia has ever known. This book tells a small part of that remarkable story.