The man they called Ibn Saud.
Author | Mackey, Sandra |
Position | 'Ibn Saud: The Desert Warrior Who Created the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia' - Book review |
Michael Darlow and Barbara Bray, Ibn Saud: The Desert Warrior Who Created the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2012), 608 pp., $29.95.
He was a giant, physically and politically. He was an extraordinary leader who took the bedouin ethos and wrapped it in the puritanical sect of Wahhabi Islam. He was the legendary Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, who in the first quarter of the twentieth century linked together the disparate tribes of the Arabian Peninsula to create the country of Saudi Arabia.
Michael Darlow and Barbara Bray have collected the facts, assembled the myths and illuminated the mysteries of this man, pulling it all into a compelling biography titled Ibn Saud: The Desert Warrior Who Created the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The book presents a vivid portrait of a leader who rose out of the wilderness of central Arabia to reign over a frail state to which Westerners today, whether they know it or not, owe a measure of their lifestyle and security.
The prime example of how little Westerners know about this man is reflected in the title, Ibn Saud, which means "son of Saud." In Saudi Arabia, he is known as Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud. Yet to reach a Western audience, the authors evidently succumbed to the name assigned to him by British imperialists--Ibn Saud. But to the Saudis, this is the equivalent of referring to each of the founding father's successors--Saud, Faisal, Khalid, Fahd and Abdullah--as Ibn Abdul Aziz. Still, bowing to Western ignorance does not detract from the value of the book or its explanation of why Abdul Aziz now ranks as an important figure of the twentieth century.
Darlow and Bray approach the life of Abdul Aziz from two perspectives--first, the internal challenge of molding a country out of the competing families and tribes of the vast Arabian Peninsula; and, second, the external challenge of balancing the outside forces exercising their power in a weak, poverty-stricken and isolated region. Surmounting both, Abdul Aziz secured his kingdom, but his heirs still face the challenges of unity and governance as well as of the world beyond their wealthy desert kingdom.
The Najd, the heart of the Arabian Peninsula, is an ancient land. For centuries, it was starved for resources, which threatened the survival of even the fittest. Individuals found their security not in government but within their families and tribes. After the seventh century CE, religion, while failing to provide security, established a moral and legal system embraced by most.
Sandra Mackey is the author of The Saudis: Inside the Desert Kingdom (W. W. Norton, 2002) as well as other works on Middle East politics and culture. Her most recent book is Mirror of the Arab World: Lebanon in Conflict (W. W. Norton, 2008).
Islam came out of Mecca, a town that sat at the juncture of two important trade routes. One ran south to north from Yemen into Syria, while the other extended east to west across the Arabian Peninsula, from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf. There, the Prophet Muhammad called those outside the elite to social justice, compassion and community in the name of Allah, the one true god. Thirteen centuries later, Abdul Aziz would issue the same call.
Yet Abdul Aziz's story is more the story of his family than of religion. At some point in the late fifteenth century, his ancestors moved from the western coast of the Persian Gulf to Diriyah, an oasis within a wadi not far from today's Riyadh. Acquiring wells and date gardens as well as engaging in small trade and finance, they prospered. Gaining in stature, they acquired a distinguished family name--Al Saud. In 1745, the emir, Muhammad Ibn Saud, the reigning head of the family, joined his interests with Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, a wandering theologian crying out against the degeneration of the social order due to deviation from the fundamental doctrines laid down by the Prophet. By the 1790s, Muhammad Ibn Saud, campaigning under the absolute dictates of Wahhabism, controlled most of the Arabian Peninsula. In 1803, he and his religious warriors took Mecca, the holiest site in Islam. But soon they were ejected by the Ottomans.
The empire of the Al Sauds reached its apogee in 1810, when their Wahhabi warriors once again held Mecca, took control of much of the western coast of the Persian Gulf, advanced deep into Yemen, and marched toward the gates of Baghdad and Damascus. By 1815, the Ottomans had once again torn their empire apart. They took the leader of the Al Sauds to Istanbul, where he was publicly beheaded and his body thrown into the Bosphorus. In 1846, his son, Faisal Ibn Turki al-Saud, resurrected the empire. It collapsed in phases between 1871 and 1876...
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