Death of Fayṣal

Ibn Saud and the third Saudi state

ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (known commonly as Ibn Saud), the son of the exiled ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, took advantage of his new location to acquire useful knowledge of world affairs, while the new Rashīdī prince, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd Mitʿab, alienated the population of Najd. In 1901 the young Ibn Saud (he was about 22 to 26 years old) sallied out of Kuwait with a force of 40 followers on what must have seemed a forlorn adventure. On January 15, 1902, with a select body of only 15 warriors, he scaled the walls of Riyadh, surprised and defeated the Rashīdī governor and his escort before the gate of the fort of Mismāk (Musmāk), and was hailed by the populace as their ruler.

The following years witnessed the development of the struggle by the third Saudi state to expand its control once again over most of the Arabian Peninsula and thereby reestablish the glories of the first Saudi state in the 18th century. The first challenge was from the Rashīdīs, whose power was by no means spent and who received substantial help from the Ottomans in men and material. In 1904 Ibn Saud defeated a combined Rashīdī and Ottoman force but afterward allowed the Ottomans to place garrisons in central Arabia for one year. Ibn Rashīd continued the struggle, but he was killed in battle in 1906, and thenceforth Ibn Saud, who secured the withdrawal of Ottoman troops from Al-Qaṣīm in 1906, became the undisputed master of central Arabia. Ibn Saud bent himself to the task of regaining the whole realm of his ancestors. He was cautious enough to continue acknowledging Ottoman overlordship (even if only in name), and, by cultivating contacts with Britain, he hoped to balance each power against the other.

Meanwhile, he busied himself with the reorganization of the country’s administration, including the inception of a plan designed to ensure the stability and permanence of his military force. In 1912 he established the first Ikhwān (“Brethren”) colony on the desert wells of Al-Arṭāwiyyah, peopled entirely by Bedouin. The colony formed a militant cantonment dedicated to the service of God and prince. During the next decade, nearly 100 similar colonies organized around tribal group identity were founded throughout the country, providing Ibn Saud with a formidable military force. At the same time, however, the Saudi military also included soldiers recruited from the towns and settled areas.

Ibn Saud’s first major conquest in Najd was the taking of Al-Hasa province from the Ottomans in 1913, although he was again compelled to reaffirm Ottoman sovereignty over all of his territory in 1914. During World War I (1914–18) he was aided by British subsidies, but he managed by adroit diplomacy to be relatively quiescent, though surrounded by enemies. In 1919, however, he struck his first blow, against Hussein ibn Ali of the Hejaz, whose army was annihilated by the Ikhwān. In 1920 Ibn Saud’s son Faisal captured the province of Asir between the Hejaz and Yemen. In 1921 Ibn Saud defeated the forces of Muḥammad ibn Ṭalāl, the last Rashīdī emir, and annexed the whole of northern Arabia, occupying Al-Jawf and Wadi Al-Sirḥān in the following year. Kuwait experienced border raids and a Saudi blockade over payment of customs duties. Meanwhile, Faisal I and Abdullah I, the sons of Hussein ibn Ali, had been placed on the thrones of Iraq and Transjordan, respectively, by the British government. These territories and the Hejaz served as a formidable British-protected cordon around the northern and western borders of the Wahhābī state, though incidents along the border were frequent.

In 1923 the British government invited all the rulers concerned in these sporadic hostilities to attend a conference in Kuwait and, if possible, to settle their differences. The British also made it clear that the subsidies theretofore paid to Ibn Saud and Hussein ibn Ali would be terminated.

The conference ended in complete disagreement, and in September 1924 the Wahhābīs attacked the Hejaz. They captured Al-Ṭāʾif after a brief struggle, but this was followed by a massacre of the city’s male civilians. The Saudis occupied Mecca without opposition. Ibn Saud then laid siege to Jeddah and Medina, while Hussein ibn Ali abdicated his throne in favour of his son ʿAlī. By the end of 1925, both Medina and Jeddah had surrendered to the Saudis. The Al-ʿAqabah–Maʿān district adjacent to the northern Hejaz was occupied by Transjordan to prevent its falling into Wahhābī hands. On January 8, 1926, Ibn Saud, who had adopted the title sultan of Najd in 1921, was proclaimed king of the Hejaz in the Great Mosque of Mecca. In 1927 he also changed his title of sultan to king of Najd and its dependencies, the two parts of his dual kingdom being administered for the time being as separate units. In the same year, the Treaty of Jeddah, negotiated between Ibn Saud and a British special envoy, Sir Gilbert Clayton, placed Saudi relations with Great Britain on a permanent footing as the British fully acknowledged Saudi independence. A series of Muslim conferences sponsored by the Saudis in the Hejaz legitimized their presence as rulers.

Associating with Christian powers put Ibn Saud in an awkward position with the more religious elements in Najd. Moreover, his alleged complaisance over British involvement in and protection of Iraq and Transjordan, both of which the Ikhwān thought ripe for conquest, created tension with his military supporters. Incidents on their frontiers created a state of virtual though undeclared war, in which British aircraft played a part in discouraging Wahhābī incursions. Ibn Saud also on several occasions violently suppressed political and military opposition by the Ikhwān.

In 1928 and 1929 Fayṣal al-Dawīsh, Sulṭān ibn Bijād, and other leaders of the Ikhwān, accusing Ibn Saud of betraying the cause for which they had fought and opposing the taxes levied upon their followers, resumed their defiance of the king’s authority. The rebels sought to stop the centralization of power in the hands of the king and keep the purity of Wahhābī practices against what they saw as innovations advocated by Ibn Saud. The majority of the population rallied to the king’s side, and this, with the support of the Najdi ʿulamāʾ, enabled him to defeat the rebels. The civil war, however, dragged on into 1930, when the rebels were rounded up by the British in Kuwaiti territory and their leaders handed over to the king. With their defeat, power passed definitively into the hands of townspeople rather than the tribes.

Ibn Saud was at last free to give his undivided attention to the development of his country and to the problems of foreign policy that beset him on all sides. Above all, he was concerned to assert and maintain the complete independence of his country and in it the exclusive supremacy of Islam. As long as these fundamental objectives remained in place, he was not only ready to cooperate with all nations but prepared to regard with sympathy some of the practices that had taken root in the Hejaz and other areas as the result of foreign contacts. The ban on music, for example, was progressively circumvented by the radio, which was also used as a tool to unite the kingdom and increase military efficiency. And so the latitudinarian spirit, slowly at first but with ever-increasing momentum, lessened a few of the inhibitions of the puritan regime.

On the other hand, Ibn Saud rigorously opposed the intervention of any foreign government whatever in the internal politics of the regime. Yet, aside from members of the royal family, and Najdi and Hejazi merchants, many of the king’s chief advisers were foreign Muslims. Some of the foreign advisers were political refugees from their homelands and served Ibn Saud for many years.