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PREFACE

This edition of Saudi Arabia: A Country Study replaces the previous edition published in 1984. Like its predecessor, the present book attempts to treat in a compact and objective manner the dominant historical, social, economic, political, and national security aspects of contemporary Saudi Arabia. Sources of information included scholarly books, journals, and monographs; official reports and documents of governments and international organizations; and foreign and domestic newspapers and periodicals.

Relatively up-to-date economic data were available from several sources, but the sources were not always in agreement. Most demographic data should be viewed as estimates.

Chapter bibliographies appear at the end of the book; brief comments on some of the more valuable sources for further reading appear at the conclusion of each chapter. Measurements are given in the metric system; a conversion table is provided to assist those who are unfamiliar with the metric system (see table 1, Appendix).

The Glossary provides brief definitions of terms that may be unfamiliar to the general reader.

The transliteration of Arabic words and phrases posed a particular problem. For many of the words—such as Muhammad, Muslim, Quran, and shaykh—the authors followed a modified version of the system adopted by the United States Board on Geographic Names and the Permanent Committee on Geographic Names for British Official Use, known as the BGN/PCGN system; the modification entails the omission of all diacritical markings and hyphens. In numerous instances, however, the names of persons or places are so well known by another spelling that to have used the BGN/PCGN system may have created confusion. For example, the reader will find Mecca rather than Makkah and Medina rather than Al Madinah. In addition, although the government of Saudi Arabia officially rejects the use of the term Persian Gulf and refers to that body of water as the Arabian Gulf, the authors followed the practice of the United States Board on Geographic Names by using Persian Gulf or gulf.

Saudi Arabia uses the lunar Islamic calendar, in which the first year was that of the Prophet's migration to Medina in A.D. 622. The year has 354 days in twelve lunar months, a month being the time between two new moons, approximately twenty-nine and one-half days. Months alternately consist of twenty-nine and thirty days; to adjust for a slight overlap, an additional day is added eleven times during normal years. Months thus have no fixed relation to the seasons but make a complete circuit every thirtythree Gregorian years; Gregorian years are used in this book.

GEOGRAPHY

Size: Estimates vary between 2,149,690 and 2,240,000 square kilometers.

Boundaries: Most land boundaries not demarcated, some not defined; twelve nautical miles territorial limit.

Topography: No rivers or permanent bodies of water. Highest peak 3,133 meters.

Climate: Hot desert climate except for Asir Province; coastal cities subject to high humidity.

ECONOMY

Budget: Latest available budget is for FY 1993 (December 31, 1992, to December 30, 1993). Revenues:

SR169 billion (US$45.1 billion); expenditures: SR197 billion (US$52.6 billion); budget deficit: SR28 billion (US$7.5 billion). Persistent budget deficits since early 1980s; estimated government domestic debt at end 1992 was SR213 billion (US$57.0 billion).

Gross Domestic Product (real GDP-1990 prices): US$100.5 billion; US$10,338 per capita in 1992, up from US$9,933 per capita in 1990. Rapid rise in oil production and earnings combined with post-Persian Gulf War private sector financed miniboom caused GDP to rise 12.9 percent in 1991.

Oil Industry: Largest crude oil producer in the world (8.4 million barrels per day in 1992) and largest crude oil exporter (7.0 million barrels per day in 1992). World's largest crude oil reserves (261 billion barrels at end 1990, about 25.8 percent of the world's reserves) and reserves to current production ratio of 83.6 years.

Rapidly increased production and exports following United Nations embargo on Iraq and Kuwait in August 1990. Began major production capacity expansion plan in 1989 with intent to raise sustainable crude oil output capacity to between 10.5 million and 11 million barrels per day by 1995. Also initiated refinery upgrading program in 1991.

Industry: Including manufacturing, utilities, and construction, industrial sector accounted for 21 percent of GDP in 1990. Government-funded industrial capacity grew sharply in 1980s. Major nonoil refining industries concentrated in petrochemical and chemicals sector. In early 1990s, private sector developing domestic light manufacturing. Petrochemical production capacity slated to increase 40 percent by 1995 compared with 1990.

Agriculture: After decade of massive government incentives, agricultural sector accounted for about 10 percent of GDP in 1990, up from under 1 percent of GDP in 1982. Rapid growth in output led to some food self-sufficiency (particularly food grains) but caused depletion of scarce underground water resources.

Inflation: Early 1990s inflation estimates 3.5 percent per annum.

Fiscal Year (FY): December 31 to following December 30, as of 1986.

Exports: Total exports rose from US$27.7 billion in 1989 to US$44.4 billion in 1990 and increased to US$51.7 billion in 1991. Higher crude oil exports main reason for increase, but since mid1980s exports of chemicals and other manufactured goods have grown to just under US$2 billion per annum.

Imports: Total imports rose rapidly in early 1990s spurred by domestic investment boom. Despite increase of imports to US$24.1 billion in 1990 (from US$21.1 billion in 1989) and further increases to US$34.6 billion in 1991, import level sharply down from early 1980s oil-boom period. Major imports consumer goods, industrial inputs, and transport items. Military imports, estimated at US$10 billion in FY 1990 and 1991, not included in these figures.

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

Government: Absolute monarchy that based legitimacy on fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law. King head of state and head of government; no written constitution or elected legislature. Crown prince deputy prime minister; other royal family members headed important ministries and agencies. Political system highly centralized; judiciary and local officials appointed by king through Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Interior.

Politics: Political parties, labor unions, and professional associations banned. Informal political activity centered around estimated 4,000 princes of Al Faisal branch of Al Saud ruling family. On important policy matters, king sought consensus among senior princes of major Al Saud clans. King also consulted senior ulama (religious scholars) of Al ash Shaykh family and leaders of main tribal families. Western-educated professional and technocratic elite had restricted influence through alliances with various Saudi princes.

Foreign Relations: Founding member of United Nations (UN), League of Arab States, Organization of the Islamic Conference, and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Participated in UN specialized agencies, World Bank, Nonaligned Movement, Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, and Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries. Security, Arab nationalism, and Islam main foreign policy concerns.

Objective to prevent radical Arab nationalist or radical Islamic movements from threatening stability of Arabian Peninsula. Most active Arab participant in war against Iraq, 1991. Historically had close ties with United States, despite differences over Israel. Closest regional allies fellow members of GCC and Egypt.

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INTRODUCTION

Figure 1. Administrative Divisions of Saudi Arabia, 1992 S UDI ARABIA OBSERVED in 1992 the sixtieth anniversary of its existence as a state and the tenth anniversary of King Fahd ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud's accession to the throne. Rather than adopting the title of king, Fahd was styled in Arabic Khadim al Haramayn, or “custodian of the two holy mosques,” thereby stressing the Islamic aspect of his governance. In this regard, he echoed the partnership between the religious and political elements of society established in 1744 by Muhammad ibn Saud, the amir (see Glossary) in Ad Diriyah near Riyadh, and Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab, the shaykh who had come to the area to promote the doctrine of the oneness of God in true Islam. As a result of this cooperation and based on the strict Hanbali interpretation of Islamic law, political rule was the province of the House of Saud (Al Saud), whose leader was also given the title of imam, and religious authority was in the hands of the Al ash Shaykh (the family of the shaykh, Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab). This arrangement, however, did not give unchecked political power to the ruler because in accordance with the precepts of Abd al Wahhab, based on the political theory of Taqi ad Din ibn Taimiya, secular authority must conform to divine law and produce civil order in order to be legitimate.

Historically, the collaboration of the Al Saud and the Al ash Shaykh resulted in the Al Saud dominion in Najd, the central region of the Arabian Peninsula, for more than two centuries, except for the brief period from 1891 to 1902 when the Al Rashid exiled the Al Saud to Kuwait. Because it has never been subjected to foreign rule and the consequent dissolution of its homogeneity, Najd has exerted an unusually strong influence on the jurisdiction of the Al Saud. In addition, because the region lacked large cities and the strong leadership they could provide, an interdependent relationship developed among Najdi towns, which paid tribute, and tribes, which provided protection. Traditionally, Najdi political power lay with the tribal shaykhs, who, when they became amirs, or governors of a wider area, endeavored to dissociate themselves from their tribal roles because they were ruling a more diverse population.

The prominence of the Al Saud is reflected in the name Saudi Arabia; the country is the only one to be named for the ruling family. The present kingdom of Saudi Arabia derives its existence from the campaigns of its founder, Abd al Aziz ibn Abd ar Rahman Al Saud, who initially captured Riyadh with his beduin followers in 1902. Thereafter, with the aid of the Ikhwan, or brotherhood, a fervent group of Wahhabi beduin warriors, he retook the rest of Najd, defeating the Al Rashid forces at Hail in the north in 1921, and in 1924 conquering the Hijaz, including Mecca and Medina. Chosen as king of the Hijaz and Najd in 1927, Abd al Aziz was obliged to defeat the Ikhwan militarily in 1929 because in their zeal the Ikhwan had encroached on the borders of neighboring states, thereby arousing the concern of Britain, in particular. In 1932 Abd al Aziz proclaimed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which covered an area approximating to the territory of the present state. The discovery of oil in 1938 ultimately transformed the kingdom and the lives of its inhabitants. During his reign, however, Abd al Aziz sought to obtain “the iron of the West without its ideas,” as the king phrased it; he sought to make use of Western technology but at the same time to maintain the traditional institutions associated with Islamic and Arab life.

Upon Abd al Aziz's death in 1953, his son Saud ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud succeeded to the throne. Saud proved to be an ineffective ruler and a spendthrift, whose luxurious life-style, together with that of the advisers with whom he surrounded himself, rapidly led to the depletion of the kingdom's treasury. As a result, the Al Saud obliged Saud in 1958, and again in 1962, to give his brother, Crown Prince Faisal ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud, executive power to conduct foreign and domestic affairs. In 1964 the royal family, with the consent of the ulama, or religious leaders, deposed Saud and made Faisal king, appointing Khalid ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud, another brother, as crown prince.

Faisal, a devout Muslim, sought to modernize the kingdom, especially in regard to economic development, education, and defense, while simultaneously playing a key role in foreign policy. For instance, during the October 1973 War between Israel and the Arab states of Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, Faisal helped to initiate an oil embargo against those countries that supported Israel; the embargo led to the tripling of oil prices. He supported the education of girls and the opening of government television stations to promote education.

Tragically, Faisal was assassinated in 1975 by a deranged nephew.

Crown Prince Khalid ibn Abd al Aziz became king (and de facto prime minister) immediately; his brother, Fahd ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud, served as deputy prime minister and another brother, Abd Allah ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud, as second deputy prime minister. Khalid dealt primarily with domestic affairs, stressing agricultural development. He also visited all the gulf states, and took a keen interest in settling Saudi Arabia's outstanding boundary disputes, including that of the Al Buraymi Oasis with the United Arab Emirates (UAE)

in 1975. (The area near Al Buraymi disputed with Oman had been resolved in 1971.) Fahd became the principal spokesman on foreign affairs and oil policy. Khalid's reign was an eventful one; it saw the attempt by strict Islamists (also known as fundamentalists) who criticized the corrupting influence of Western culture on the royal family to take over the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979, riots by Eastern Province Shia (see Glossary) also in 1979 and 1980, and the formation of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in 1981.

Upon Khalid's death in 1982, Fahd assumed the throne, with Abd Allah becoming crown prince. Fahd soon faced the impact on the kingdom of the fall in oil revenues, which ended in the 1986 oil price crash.

Recognizing the need for a more united Arab front, particularly in view of the deteriorating economic situation, he reestablished diplomatic relations with Egypt in 1987; relations had been broken in 1978 as a result of Anwar as Sadat's signing of the Camp David Accords creating a separate peace between Egypt and Israel. Fahd also played a mediating role in the Lebanese civil war in 1989, bringing most of the members of the Lebanese National Assembly to At Taif to settle their differences.

To understand the forces that have shaped Saudi Arabia in the early 1990s, one must consider the roles of geographic factors, tribal allegiance and beduin life, Islam, the Al Saud, and the discovery of oil. Tribal affiliation has been the focus of identity in the Arabian Peninsula, approximately 80 percent of which is occupied by Saudi Arabia. Well into the present century, several great deserts, including the Rub al Khali, one of the largest in the world, cut tribal groups off from one another and isolated Najd, particularly, from other areas of the country. As a result, a high degree of cultural homogeneity developed among the inhabitants; the majority follow Sunni Wahhabi Islam and a patriarchal family system. Only about 5 percent of the Saudi population adheres to the Shia sect. The Shia, in general, represent the lowest socioeconomic group in the country, and their grievances over their status have led to protest demonstrations in the 1970s and again in 1979-80, that have resulted in government actions designed to better their lot.

Saudi tribal allegiance and the beduin heritage have been weakened, however, since the mid-twentieth century by the increased role of a centralized state, by the growth of urbanization, and by the industrialization that has accompanied the finding of oil. At the same time, the impact of Islam on different elements of the population has varied. Many of the educated younger technocrats have felt a need to adapt Islamic institutions to fit the demands of modern technology. Other young people, more conservatively inclined, as well as a number of their elders and those with a more traditional beduin life-style, have deplored the alienation from Muslim values and the corruption that they believe Western ways and the presence, according to 1992 census figures, of some 4.6 million foreigners (in contrast to an indigenous population of 12.3 million) have brought into the kingdom. Their activist Islamism was reflected in the 1979 attempt by extremists to take over the Grand Mosque in Mecca and by other aspects of the Islamic revival, such as the prominent wearing of the hijab, or long black cloak and veil by women, and the more active role of the Committees for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (mutawwiin) in enforcing standards of public morality. The government found itself caught between these two trends. On the one hand, it feared the extremism of some of the traditionalists, which could well undermine the economic, education, and social development programs that the government had been implementing and which also constituted a threat to internal security. On the other hand, as guardian of the holy places of Islam, the sites of the annual pilgrimage for Muslims the world over, the government needed to legitimate itself as an “Islamic government.”

The government therefore has sought to achieve political and social compromises. Repeated announcements have been made regarding the royal family's intention to create a consultative council, first proposed by King Faisal in 1964, as a means of giving a greater voice to the people. On August 20, 1993, Fahd announced the appointment of sixty men to the Consultative Council. Members of the council were primarily religious and tribal leaders; government officials, businessmen, and retired military and police officers were also included.

An additional small step was King Fahd's decree of March 1992 establishing a main, or basic, code of laws that regularizes succession to the throne (the king chooses the heir apparent from among the sons and grandsons of Abd al Aziz) and sets forth various administrative procedures concerning the state. Fahd also issued a decree concerning the provinces, or regions, of the kingdom. Each region is to have an amir, a deputy, and a consultative council composed of at least ten persons appointed by the amir for a four-year term. The code does not, however, protect individual rights in the Western sense, as many professionals and technocrats had desired. Rather, it says that “the state protects human rights in accordance with the Islamic sharia.”

The Saudi concept of legitimacy is akin to the beduin concept of tribal democracy in which the individual exchanges views with the tribal shaykh. Saudi rulers and most traditionalists reject Western participatory democracy, because the latter establishes the people as the source of decision rather than the will of God as found in the sharia and as interpreted by the ulama. Moreover, in their view, democracy lacks the stability that a Muslim form of government provides. For these reasons, the government has tended to repress dissent and jail dissidents. Such repression applied to students and religious figures who belonged to such organizations as the Organization of Islamic Revolution in the Arabian Peninsula, active in January and February 1992 in criticizing the ruling family and the government.

Socially, the education of girls, although placed under the supervision of the religious authorities, has led over the four decades that girls' schools have existed to a considerable number of women graduates who were seeking employment in various sectors and who increasingly were making their presence felt. This trend occurred at a time of rising unemployment for Saudi males, particularly for graduates in the field of religious studies, and posed a further potential source of dissidence. In addition, growing urbanization was tending to increase the number of nuclear as opposed to extended families, thereby breaking down traditional social structures. There were also indications that drug smuggling and drug use were rising; twenty of the forty executions that occurred between January 1 and May 1, 1993, were drug related.

The Al Saud played the central role in achieving the needed compromises in the political, social, and foreign affairs fields, as well as in directing the economy with the support of the technocrats and the merchants. The control exercised by the Al Saud is demonstrated by the fact that as of 1993 the amirs, or governors, of all fourteen of Saudi Arabia's regions were members of the royal family. Some members of the family, such as King Fahd and his full brothers Sultan, Nayif, and Salman, were considered to be, however, more aligned with the modernizers; King Fahd's half brother Crown Prince Abd Allah, was more of a traditionalist. Specifically, the crown prince enjoyed the support of the tribal elements and headed the Saudi Arabian National Guard, a paramilitary body composed largely of beduin soldiers that served as a counterbalance to the regular armed forces, which were headed by Minister of Defense and Aviation Amir Sultan ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud. The nation's police force reported to Minister of Interior Amir Nayif ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud.

The crown prince was also considered closer than the king to the religious establishment, or the ulama. Thirty to forty of the most influential ulama, mainly members of the Al ash Shaykh, constituted the Council of Senior Ulama, seven of whose members were dismissed by the king in December 1992 on the pretext of “poor health.” The actual reason for their dismissal was their failure to condemn July criticisms (published in September) of the government by a group of religious scholars who called themselves the Committee for the Defense of Rights under the Sharia. The king named ten younger and more progressive ulama to replace them.

In a further move, in July 1993 the king named Shaykh Abd al Aziz ibn Baz general mufti of the kingdom with the rank of minister and president of the Administration of Scientific Research and Fatwa. Abd al Aziz ibn Baz was also appointed to preside over the new eighteen-member Higher Ulama Council. Based on Abd al Aziz ibn Baz's advice, instead of the Ministry of Pilgrimage Affairs and Religious Trusts, the king created two new ministries: the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowments, Call, and Guidance and the Ministry of Pilgrimage; this action gave the religious sector an additional voice in the Council of Ministers.

In addition to holding conservative domestic views, the crown prince was more oriented than Fahd toward the Arab world. After the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, however, he joined the king and other more pro-Western members of the royal family in asking the United States to send forces to the kingdom.

In the foreign policy arena, Saudi Arabia historically has sought to walk a narrow line between East and West.

Because of its strong commitment to Islam, the kingdom abhorred the atheist policy of the former Soviet Union and therefore tended to be somewhat pro-Western concerning defense matters. However, Saudi Arabia also strongly opposed what it considered to be the pro- Zionist policy of the United States with regard to Israel and the rights of the Palestinians. At one time, the kingdom had relatively close relations with Jordan, a fellow monarchy, but Jordan's failure to support Saudi Arabia in the 1991 Persian Gulf War soured those relations and resulted in the expulsion from the kingdom of thousands of Palestinians and Jordanians. In the war, Saudi Arabia also experienced a lack of support by Sudan and Yemen, both of which countries it had aided substantially. In 1993 relations with Yemen were somewhat tense because the kingdom expelled about 1 million Yemenis, as well, during the Persian Gulf War. In addition, as of late 1992, Saudi Arabia had revived a dispute with Yemen over an oil-rich border area.

Initially, Saudi Arabia saw both Iran and Iraq as neighbors posing potential threats. After the Persian Gulf War, however, Saudi Arabia's concern over containing Iraq increased, and the kingdom set aside some of its reservations about Iran's form of Shia Islam and began to normalize relations. Despite some border disagreements with its Persian Gulf neighbors, for example, Qatar in 1992 and early 1993, the kingdom's concern for regional security caused its closest relations to be with other members of the GCC; certain tensions existed in the organization, nevertheless, because of Saudi Arabia's position as the “big brother.”

Saudi Arabia had taken the lead in 1970 in establishing the Organization of the Islamic Conference to bring together all Muslim countries. In addition, the kingdom followed a policy of supporting Islamic countries in Africa and Asia and providing military aid to Muslim groups opposing secular governments in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and, formerly, in the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (now part of Yemen).

Saudi Arabia's concern for regional security and its active role in supporting the GCC were understandable in view of its relatively small population and the resultant constraint on the size of its armed forces. To compensate for these limitations, the kingdom consistently has endeavored to buy the most up-to- date military matériel and especially to concentrate on developing its air force and air defense system. For more than twenty-five years, Saudi Arabia has had the highest ratio of military expenditures in relation to military personnel of any developing country. Following the Persian Gulf War, the kingdom increased its 1993 defense expenditures 14 percent over those of 1992. Defense purchases included at least 315 United States M1A2 main battle tanks to upgrade matériel of the ground forces as well as seventy-two United States F-15C Eagles and forty-eight British Tornadoes for the air force. Furthermore, the Saudi navy was considered of good quality in relation to naval forces of the region, and the navy's facilities were excellent. In spite of these policies, Saudi Arabia recognized its vulnerability because it has the world's largest oil reserves and extensive oil- processing facilities.

The discovery of oil in commercial quantities in 1938 was the major catalyst that transformed various aspects of the kingdom. The huge revenues from the sale of oil and the payments received from foreign companies involved in developing concessions in the country enabled the government to launch large-scale development programs by the early 1970s. Such programs initially focused on creation of infrastructure in the areas of transportation, telecommunications, electric power, and water. The programs also addressed the fields of education, health, and social welfare; the expansion and equipping of the armed forces; and the creation of petroleum-based industries. From this beginning, the government expanded its programs to drill more deep wells to tap underground aquifers and to construct desalination plants. These water sources, in turn, enabled ventures to make the country more nearly self-sufficient agriculturally; in many instances, however, such undertakings seriously depleted groundwater.

In pursuit of industrial diversification, the government created the industrial cities of Al Jubayl in the Eastern Province and Yanbu al Bahr (known as Yanbu) on the Red Sea (see fig. 1). The government also encouraged the establishment of nonoil-related industries, anticipating the day when Saudi Arabia's oil and gas resources would be depleted. Furthermore, the kingdom also has some promising copper, lead, zinc, silver, and gold deposits that have received little exploitation.

The kingdom's economic plans, including the Fifth Development Plan (1990-95), continued to emphasize training the indigenous labor force to handle technologically advanced processes and hence to enable Saudi Arabia to reduce the number of its foreign workers. The fifth plan also encouraged the creation of joint industrial enterprises with GCC member states and other Arab and Islamic countries and the development of industrial relations with foreign countries in order to attract foreign capital and transfer technology.

Saudi Arabia's economic goals were reflected in the national budget announced for 1993, which set expenditures at US$52.6 billion and revenues at US$45.1 billion, thereby reducing the deficit from US$8.0 billion in 1992 to US$7.5 billion in 1993. The continued existence of a deficit, which has characterized the Saudi economy since 1983, was a source of concern to some observers. Major budgetary expenditure items were US$9.1 billion for education (including funds to establish six new colleges and 800 new schools), US$8.2 billion for public organizations (not further identified), and more than US$3.7 billion for health and social development (including funds for setting up 500 new clinics). Another major expenditure announced in March 1993 was that substantial funds, most of which would be obtained from private borrowing, would be invested in oil facilities in order to raise the kingdom's oil production capacity to between 10.5 and 11 million barrels per day by 1995 and its total refining capacity to 210,000 barrels per day.

The major event affecting Saudi Arabia and other gulf states in the early 1990s was clearly the Persian Gulf War. The effect of that war on the kingdom has yet to be assessed. Financially, the cost of the war for the area as a whole has been estimated by the Arab Monetary Fund at US$676 billion for 1990 and 1991. This figure does not, however, take account of such factors as the ecological impact of the war, the loss of jobs and income for thousands of foreign workers employed in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the gulf, and the slowdown effect on the growth of the economies of Saudi Arabia and the gulf states. In most instances, these economies had been growing at a good rate before the war, which tended to deplete or eliminate any accumulated financial reserves.

More difficult to measure, however, was the social impact of the war. Many foreign observers had speculated that the arrival in the kingdom of more than 600,000 foreign military personnel, including women in uniform, would bring about significant changes in Saudi society. However, military personnel tended to be assigned to remote border areas of the country and were little seen by the population as a whole. The net effect of their presence was therefore minimal in the opinion of a number of knowledgeable Saudis.

As Saudi Arabia entered the final years of the twentieth century, there were signs, however, that the expression of public dissent, once unthinkable, was becoming more commonplace. Such dissent was usually couched within an Islamic framework, but nonetheless it represented a force with which the Al Saud had to reckon. King Fahd, now seventy-two, had succeeded thus far in balancing the demands of modernists and traditionalists domestically and in pursuing a policy of moderation internationally. Some observers wondered, however, how much longer Fahd would be able to rule and how adaptable the more conservative Crown Prince Abd Allah would be as Fahd's successor.

August 23, 1993 Helen Chapin Metz

THE SETTING OF SAUDI ARABIA

The title, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, uses the word kingdom, which is not an Islamic term. However, given the significance of religion in Saudi Arabia, it is clear that Saudis believe that ultimate authority rests with God (Allah). The Saudi ruler is Allah's secular representative and bases political legitimacy on his religious credentials (see The King , ch. 4).

Saudi refers to the Al Saud family, the royal house of Saudi Arabia, whose eponym is Saud ibn Muhammad ibn Mughrin. Saud himself was not a significant figure, but his son, Muhammad ibn Saud (literally, Muhammad, the son of Saud), conquered most of the Arabian Peninsula in the early eighteenth century. In almost two centuries since then, Muhammad ibn Saud's family has grown tremendously and, in 1992, the ruling house of Saudi Arabia had more than 4,000 male members.

Finally, Arabia—or the Arabian Peninsula—refers to a geographic region whose name is related to the language of the majority of its inhabitants. Before the era of the Muslim conquests in the mid-seventh century, some Arabic-speaking peoples also lived in Palestine, Syria, and Iraq, and Christian Arab buffer states were established north of the peninsula between the Sassanid and Byzantine empires. As a result of the Muslim conquests, however, people of the peninsula spread out over the wider region that today is known as the “Arab world” and the Arabic language became the region's dominant language.

The desert is the most prominent feature of the Arabian Peninsula. Although vast, arid tracts dominate Saudi Arabia, the country also includes long stretches of arid coastline along the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea and several major oases in the Eastern Province. Accordingly, the Saudi environment is not uniform, and the differences between coastal and desert life have played their part in Arabian history. Those living on the water have had more contact with other peoples and thus have developed more cosmopolitan outlooks than those living in the interior.

Saudi Arabia is the largest country on the Arabian Peninsula. It shares the Persian Gulf and Red Sea coasts with the Persian Gulf states, Yemen, Jordan, and Iraq, so there are cultural and historical overlaps with its neighbors. Many of these countries rely on the authority of a single family—whether the ruler calls himself a king, as in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, or an amir, as in the gulf states. Tribal loyalties also play an important role in these countries, and large portions of their populations have only recently stopped living as nomads.

Several important factors, however, distinguish Saudi Arabia from its neighbors. Unlike other states in the area, Saudi Arabia has never been under the direct control of a European power. Moreover, the Wahhabi movement that began in Saudi Arabia has had a greater impact on Saudi history than on any other country.

Although the religious fervor of Wahhabism affected populations of such neighboring states as present-day Qatar, only in Saudi Arabia was it an essential element in the formation of the modern state.

THE EARLY ISLAMIC PERIOD, 622-700

Ancient Nabatean tomb, Madain Salih Courtesy Saudi Arabian Information Office T e Saudis, and many other Arabs and Muslims as well, trace much of their heritage to the birth of the Prophet Muhammad in 570 A.D. The time before Islam is generally referred to as “the time of ignorance”; this probably reflects the fact that God had not yet sent the Arabs a prophet.

Muhammad was born in Mecca at a time when the city was establishing itself as a trading center. For the residents of Mecca, tribal connections were still the most important part of the social structure. Muhammad was born into the Quraysh, which had become the leading tribe in the city because of its involvement with water rights for the pilgrimage. By the time of Muhammad, the Quraysh had become active traders as well, having established alliances with tribes all over the peninsula. These alliances permitted the Quraysh to send their caravans to Yemen and Syria. Accordingly, the Quraysh represented in many ways the facilitators and power brokers for the new status quo in Arabian society.

Tribes consisted of clans that had various branches and families, and Muhammad came from a respectable clan, the sons of Hashim, but from a weak family situation. Muhammad's father Abd Allah had died before his son was born, leaving the Prophet without a close protector. The Prophet was fortunate, however, that his uncle Abu Talib was one of the leaders of the Hashimite clan. This gave Muhammad a certain amount of protection when he began to preach in 610 against the Meccan leadership.

Everything we know about Muhammad's life comes from Muslim historiography. The Prophet worked for Abu Talib in the caravan business, giving him the opportunity to travel beyond Arabia. Travel gave the Prophet contact with some of the Christian and Jewish communities that existed in Arabia; in this way he became familiar with the notion of scripture and the belief in one god. Despite this contact, tradition specifies that Muhammad never learned to read or write. As a child, however, he was sent to the desert for five years to learn the beduin ways that were slowly being forgotten in Mecca.

Muhammad married a rich widow when he was twenty-five years old; although he managed her affairs, he would occasionally go off by himself into the mountains that surrounded Mecca. On one of these occasions, Muslim belief holds that the angel Gabriel appeared to Muhammad and told him to recite aloud. When Muhammad asked what he should say, the angel recited for him verses that would later constitute part of the Quran, which means literally “the recitation.” Muslims believe that Muhammad continued to receive revelations from God throughout his life, sometimes through the angel Gabriel and at other times in dreams and visions directly from God.

For a while, Muhammad told only his wife about his experiences, but in 613 he acknowledged them openly and began to promote a new social and spiritual order that would be based on them. Muhammad's message was disturbing to many of the Quraysh for several reasons. The Prophet attacked traditional Arab customs that permitted lax marriage arrangements and the killing of unwanted offspring. More significant, however, was the Prophet's claim that there was only one God, because in condemning the worship of idols he threatened the pilgrimage traffic from which the Quraysh profited.

By 618 Muhammad had gained enough followers to worry the city's leaders. The Quraysh hesitated to harm the Prophet because he was protected by his uncle, but they attacked those of his followers who did not have powerful family connections. To protect these supporters, Muhammad sent them to Ethiopia, where they were taken in by the Christian king who saw a connection between the Prophet's ideas and those of his own religion. Following his uncle's death in 619, however, Muhammad felt obliged to leave Mecca. In 622 he secretly left the city and traveled about 320 kilometers north to the town of Yathrib. In leaving Mecca, Muhammad chose to abandon the city where he had grown up to pursue his mission in another place; thus, the event often has been used to illustrate a genuine commitment to duty and sacrifice. This emigration or hijra marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. Muslims use a lunar calendar, which means that their twelve-month year is shorter than a solar one.

The Quraysh were unwilling to leave Muhammad in Yathrib, and various skirmishes and battles occurred, with each side trying to enlist the tribes of the peninsula in its campaigns. Muhammad eventually prevailed and in 630 he returned to Mecca, where he was accepted without resistance. Subsequently he moved south to strongholds in At Taif and Khaybar, which surrendered to him after lengthy sieges.

By his death in 632, Muhammad enjoyed the loyalty of almost all of Arabia. The peninsula's tribes had tied themselves to the Prophet with various treaties but had not necessarily become Muslim. The Prophet expected others, particularly pagans, to submit but allowed Christians and Jews to keep their faith provided they paid a special tax as penalty for not submitting to Islam.

After the Prophet's death, most Muslims acknowledged the authority of Abu Bakr (died in 634), an early convert and respected elder in the community. Abu Bakr maintained the loyalty of the Arab tribes by force, and in the battles that followed the Prophet's death—which came to be known as the apostasy wars—it became essentially impossible for an Arab tribesman to retain traditional religious practices. Arabs who had previously converted to Judaism or Christianity were allowed to keep their faith, but those who followed the old polytheistic practices were forced to become Muslims. In this way Islam became the religion of most Arabs.

The Prophet had no spiritual successor inasmuch as God's revelation (the Quran) was given only to Muhammad. There were, however, successors to the Prophet's temporal authority, and these were called caliphs (successors or vice regents). Caliphs ruled the Islamic world until 1258 when the last caliph and all his heirs were killed by the Mongols. For the first thirty years, caliphs managed the growing Islamic empire from Yathrib, which had been renamed Madinat an Nabi (“the city of the Prophet") or Al Madinah al Munawwarah (“the illuminated city"). This is usually shortened simply to Medina—“the city.”

Within a short time, the caliphs had conquered a large empire. With the conclusion of the apostasy wars, the Arab tribes united behind Islam and channeled their energies against the Roman and Persian empires.

Arab-led armies pushed quickly through both of these empires and established Arab control from what is now Spain to Pakistan.

The achievements of Islam were great and various, but after 656 these achievements ceased to be controlled from Arabia. After the third caliph, Uthman, was assassinated in 656, the Muslim world was split, and the fourth caliph, Ali (murdered in 660) spent much of his time in Iraq. After Ali, the Umayyads established a hereditary line of caliphs in Damascus. The Umayyads were overthrown in 750 by the Abbasids, who ruled from Baghdad. By the latter part of the seventh century the political importance of Arabia in the Islamic world had declined.

Saudi Arabia

a country study F deral Research Division Library of Congress Edited by Helen Chapin Metz Research Completed December 1992 Unavailable On the cover: The shahada or Muslim confession of faith: “There is no god but God (Allah), and Muhammad is his prophet.”

Data as of December 1992 December 1992

FOREWORD

This volume is one in a continuing series of books prepared by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress under the Country Studies/Area Handbook Program sponsored by the Department of the Army.

The last two pages of this book list the other published studies.

Most books in the series deal with a particular foreign country, describing and analyzing its political, economic, social, and national security systems and institutions, and examining the interrelationships of those systems and the ways they are shaped by cultural factors. The authors seek to provide a basic understanding of the observed society, striving for a dynamic rather than a static portrayal. Particular attention is devoted to the people who make up the society, their origins, dominant beliefs and values, their common interests and the issues on which they are divided, the nature and extent of their involvement with national institutions, and their attitudes toward each other and toward their social system and political order.

The books represent the analysis of the authors and should not be construed as an expression of an official United States government position, policy, or decision. The authors have sought to adhere to accepted standards of scholarly objectivity. Corrections, additions, and suggestions for changes from readers will be welcomed for use in future editions.

Louis R. Mortimer Chief Federal Research Division Library of Congress Washington, D C. 20540-5220

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions of the writers of the 1984 edition of Saudi Arabia: A Country Study, edited by Richard F. Nyrop. Their work provided general background for the present volume.

The authors are grateful to individuals in various government agencies and private institutions who gave of their time, research materials, and expertise in the production of this book. These individuals included Ralph K. Benesch, who oversees the Country Studies—Area Handbook program for the Department of the Army.

The authors also wish to thank members of the Federal Research Division staff who contributed directly to the preparation of the manuscript. These people included Sandra W. Meditz, who reviewed all drafts and served as liaison with the sponsoring agency; Marilyn Majeska, who supervised editing and managed book production; Andrea Merrill, who reviewed tables and figures; and Barbara Edgerton and Izella Watson, who performed word processing.

Also involved in preparing the text was Peter Tietjen, who edited chapters; Catherine Schwartzstein, who performed the prepublication editorial review; and Joan C. Cook, who compiled the index. Malinda B. Neale of the Library of Congress Composing Unit prepared the camera-ready copy under the supervision of Peggy Pixley.

Graphics were prepared by David P. Cabitto, and Timothy L. Merrill prepared map drafts. David P. Cabitto and the firm of Greenhorne and O'Mara prepared the final maps. Special thanks are owed to Farah Ahannavard, who prepared the illustrations on the title page of each chapter, and David P. Cabitto, who did the cover art.

Finally, the authors acknowledge the generosity of the Saudi Arabian Information Office, the Armed Forces Office of the Royal Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington, and the Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco), who allowed their photographs to be used in this study.

PREFACE

This edition of Saudi Arabia: A Country Study replaces the previous edition published in 1984. Like its predecessor, the present book attempts to treat in a compact and objective manner the dominant historical, social, economic, political, and national security aspects of contemporary Saudi Arabia. Sources of information included scholarly books, journals, and monographs; official reports and documents of governments and international organizations; and foreign and domestic newspapers and periodicals.

Relatively up-to-date economic data were available from several sources, but the sources were not always in agreement. Most demographic data should be viewed as estimates.

Chapter bibliographies appear at the end of the book; brief comments on some of the more valuable sources for further reading appear at the conclusion of each chapter. Measurements are given in the metric system; a conversion table is provided to assist those who are unfamiliar with the metric system (see table 1, Appendix).

The Glossary provides brief definitions of terms that may be unfamiliar to the general reader.

The transliteration of Arabic words and phrases posed a particular problem. For many of the words—such as Muhammad, Muslim, Quran, and shaykh—the authors followed a modified version of the system adopted by the United States Board on Geographic Names and the Permanent Committee on Geographic Names for British Official Use, known as the BGN/PCGN system; the modification entails the omission of all diacritical markings and hyphens. In numerous instances, however, the names of persons or places are so well known by another spelling that to have used the BGN/PCGN system may have created confusion. For example, the reader will find Mecca rather than Makkah and Medina rather than Al Madinah. In addition, although the government of Saudi Arabia officially rejects the use of the term Persian Gulf and refers to that body of water as the Arabian Gulf, the authors followed the practice of the United States Board on Geographic Names by using Persian Gulf or gulf.

Saudi Arabia uses the lunar Islamic calendar, in which the first year was that of the Prophet's migration to Medina in A.D. 622. The year has 354 days in twelve lunar months, a month being the time between two new moons, approximately twenty-nine and one-half days. Months alternately consist of twenty-nine and thirty days; to adjust for a slight overlap, an additional day is added eleven times during normal years. Months thus have no fixed relation to the seasons but make a complete circuit every thirtythree Gregorian years; Gregorian years are used in this book.

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COUNTRY PROFILE

Unavailable Country Profile Map COUNTRY Formal Name: Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Short Form: Saudi Arabia.

Term for Nationals: Saudi(s) or Saudi Arabian(s); adjectival forms—Saudi or Saudi Arabian.

Capital: Riyadh.

GEOGRAPHY

Size: Estimates vary between 2,149,690 and 2,240,000 square kilometers.

Boundaries: Most land boundaries not demarcated, some not defined; twelve nautical miles territorial limit.

Topography: No rivers or permanent bodies of water. Highest peak 3,133 meters.

Climate: Hot desert climate except for Asir Province; coastal cities subject to high humidity.

SOCIETY

Population: Figures vary; 1992 Saudi census, published December 1992, gave total population of 16.9 million, of whom 12.3 million Saudi nationals, 4.6 million resident foreigners. Annual rate of growth in 1992 was 3.3 percent.

Ethnic Groups and Languages: All Saudis are Arab Muslims, as are over half the foreigners. In 1990 foreign work force included large numbers of Egyptians, Yemenis, Jordanians, Bahrainis, Pakistanis, Indians, and Filipinos, in that order. Arabic language of all Saudis.

Religion: Strict Wahhabi interpretation of Sunni Islam, the official faith of about 95 percent of Saudis.

Remainder are Shia, most of whom reside in vicinity of Al Ahsa and Al Qatif in Eastern Province. Public worship by non-Muslims prohibited.

Education and Literacy: Education system experienced massive growth in 1970s and 1980s. Attendance not compulsory. Females accounted for close to 44 percent of public school student total of 2.6 million in 1989.

About 130,000 students in 1989 enrolled in nonvocational institutions of higher learning, 9,000 in vocational institutions; about 4,000 enrolled abroad. Literacy estimated at 62 percent of those over age fifteen in 1990, 73 percent for males and 48 percent for females.

Health: Infant mortality declining, twenty-one per 1,000 births in Ministry of Health hospitals in 1990.

Immunization of infants and young children compulsory. Health care facilities underwent huge expansion in 1970s and 1980s. Official policy to provide comprehensive medical care free or at nominal fee. Introduction of epidemic control system in 1986 eliminated cholera, plague, and yellow fever. Incidence of malaria and bilharzia reduced to 1.6 and 1.9 percent respectively of total 1988 population. Despite trachoma campaigns, disease remained a major cause of blindness.

ECONOMY

Budget: Latest available budget is for FY 1993 (December 31, 1992, to December 30, 1993). Revenues:

SR169 billion (US$45.1 billion); expenditures: SR197 billion (US$52.6 billion); budget deficit: SR28 billion (US$7.5 billion). Persistent budget deficits since early 1980s; estimated government domestic debt at end 1992 was SR213 billion (US$57.0 billion).

Gross Domestic Product (real GDP-1990 prices): US$100.5 billion; US$10,338 per capita in 1992, up from US$9,933 per capita in 1990. Rapid rise in oil production and earnings combined with post-Persian Gulf War private sector financed miniboom caused GDP to rise 12.9 percent in 1991.

Oil Industry: Largest crude oil producer in the world (8.4 million barrels per day in 1992) and largest crude oil exporter (7.0 million barrels per day in 1992). World's largest crude oil reserves (261 billion barrels at end 1990, about 25.8 percent of the world's reserves) and reserves to current production ratio of 83.6 years.

Rapidly increased production and exports following United Nations embargo on Iraq and Kuwait in August 1990. Began major production capacity expansion plan in 1989 with intent to raise sustainable crude oil output capacity to between 10.5 million and 11 million barrels per day by 1995. Also initiated refinery upgrading program in 1991.

Industry: Including manufacturing, utilities, and construction, industrial sector accounted for 21 percent of GDP in 1990. Government-funded industrial capacity grew sharply in 1980s. Major nonoil refining industries concentrated in petrochemical and chemicals sector. In early 1990s, private sector developing domestic light manufacturing. Petrochemical production capacity slated to increase 40 percent by 1995 compared with 1990.

Agriculture: After decade of massive government incentives, agricultural sector accounted for about 10 percent of GDP in 1990, up from under 1 percent of GDP in 1982. Rapid growth in output led to some food self-sufficiency (particularly food grains) but caused depletion of scarce underground water resources.

Inflation: Early 1990s inflation estimates 3.5 percent per annum.

Fiscal Year (FY): December 31 to following December 30, as of 1986.

Exports: Total exports rose from US$27.7 billion in 1989 to US$44.4 billion in 1990 and increased to US$51.7 billion in 1991. Higher crude oil exports main reason for increase, but since mid1980s exports of chemicals and other manufactured goods have grown to just under US$2 billion per annum.

Imports: Total imports rose rapidly in early 1990s spurred by domestic investment boom. Despite increase of imports to US$24.1 billion in 1990 (from US$21.1 billion in 1989) and further increases to US$34.6 billion in 1991, import level sharply down from early 1980s oil-boom period. Major imports consumer goods, industrial inputs, and transport items. Military imports, estimated at US$10 billion in FY 1990 and 1991, not included in these figures.

TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATIONS

Roads: About 100,000 kilometers, of which in 1991 over 35,000 kilometers paved and 65,000 kilometers improved earth. TransArabian Highway, a multilane expressway, crossed peninsula from Ad Dammam to Jiddah via Riyadh and Mecca.

Railroads: 571 kilometers standard gauge (1.435 meters) from Riyadh to port at Ad Dammam; also shorter rail line linking Riyadh and Al Hufuf.

Ports: Jiddah, principal port, handled 60 percent of cargo. Ad Dammam, second largest port, and Ras Tanura handled most of the kingdom's petroleum exports. Al Jubayl, Yanbu al Bahr, and Jizan smaller ports.

Airports: Three international airports in Jiddah, Riyadh, and Dhahran.

Telecommunications: Good modern system with radio-relay, coaxial cable, and satellite facilities; network expanding. 1.6 million telephones in 1991; more than forty AM radio, and more than 100 television stations; five International Telecommunications Satellite Corporation (Intelsat) and two Arab Satellite Communications Organization (Arabsat) ground stations.

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

Government: Absolute monarchy that based legitimacy on fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law. King head of state and head of government; no written constitution or elected legislature. Crown prince deputy prime minister; other royal family members headed important ministries and agencies. Political system highly centralized; judiciary and local officials appointed by king through Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Interior.

Politics: Political parties, labor unions, and professional associations banned. Informal political activity centered around estimated 4,000 princes of Al Faisal branch of Al Saud ruling family. On important policy matters, king sought consensus among senior princes of major Al Saud clans. King also consulted senior ulama (religious scholars) of Al ash Shaykh family and leaders of main tribal families. Western-educated professional and technocratic elite had restricted influence through alliances with various Saudi princes.

Foreign Relations: Founding member of United Nations (UN), League of Arab States, Organization of the Islamic Conference, and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Participated in UN specialized agencies, World Bank, Nonaligned Movement, Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, and Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries. Security, Arab nationalism, and Islam main foreign policy concerns.

Objective to prevent radical Arab nationalist or radical Islamic movements from threatening stability of Arabian Peninsula. Most active Arab participant in war against Iraq, 1991. Historically had close ties with United States, despite differences over Israel. Closest regional allies fellow members of GCC and Egypt.

NATIONAL SECURITY

Armed Forces: Consisted of army, navy, air force, and air defense force, plus Saudi Arabian National Guard, although latter primarily for internal security. Estimated strengths in 1992: army—73,000; navy—11,000, including 1,500 marines; air force— 18,000; air defense force—4,000; national guard—55,000 active, 20,000 tribal levies. Four regular armed forces recruited volunteers; national guard used system of tribal levies.

Military Units: Army in 1992 included eight brigades—two armored, five mechanized, one airborne. Field artillery battalions and antiaircraft batteries (gun and missile) provided fire support. Navy deployed vessels in Persian Gulf and Red Sea, primarily from major bases at Al Jubayl and Jiddah. Air force had six fighter/ground-attack, five air defense, one reconnaissance, one early warning, three transport, and two helicopter squadrons. Air defense force had surface-to-air missile batteries.

Equipment: Most armor and other weaponry in army and national guard of United States manufacture. Naval vessels primarily from United States, France, and Germany. Navy had four Frenchmanufactured frigates and four United States-manufactured corvettes, and attack craft (missile- and torpedo-armed). Combat aircraft mostly United States F-15s and F-5s, plus British Tornadoes.

Foreign Military Relations: Member of GCC. Special military relationship with United States since late 1940s. Many foreign corporations, particularly British, French, and United States, had contracts for supply of hardware, construction of military facilities, maintenance of equipment, and training of personnel.

Police: Police and security forces controlled by central government through Ministry of Interior. Saudi Arabian National Guard most prominent internal security force, subordinated directly to king. Coast Guard, Investigation, Special Security Force, and Public Security directorates operated under Ministry of Interior.

Public Security Police, nationwide police force, and Frontier Force also under Ministry of Interior.

Paramilitary Forces: Saudi Arabian National Guard, Coast Guard, Frontier Force, and Special Security Force considered paramilitary.

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INTRODUCTION

Figure 1. Administrative Divisions of Saudi Arabia, 1992 S UDI ARABIA OBSERVED in 1992 the sixtieth anniversary of its existence as a state and the tenth anniversary of King Fahd ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud's accession to the throne. Rather than adopting the title of king, Fahd was styled in Arabic Khadim al Haramayn, or “custodian of the two holy mosques,” thereby stressing the Islamic aspect of his governance. In this regard, he echoed the partnership between the religious and political elements of society established in 1744 by Muhammad ibn Saud, the amir (see Glossary) in Ad Diriyah near Riyadh, and Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab, the shaykh who had come to the area to promote the doctrine of the oneness of God in true Islam. As a result of this cooperation and based on the strict Hanbali interpretation of Islamic law, political rule was the province of the House of Saud (Al Saud), whose leader was also given the title of imam, and religious authority was in the hands of the Al ash Shaykh (the family of the shaykh, Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab). This arrangement, however, did not give unchecked political power to the ruler because in accordance with the precepts of Abd al Wahhab, based on the political theory of Taqi ad Din ibn Taimiya, secular authority must conform to divine law and produce civil order in order to be legitimate.

Historically, the collaboration of the Al Saud and the Al ash Shaykh resulted in the Al Saud dominion in Najd, the central region of the Arabian Peninsula, for more than two centuries, except for the brief period from 1891 to 1902 when the Al Rashid exiled the Al Saud to Kuwait. Because it has never been subjected to foreign rule and the consequent dissolution of its homogeneity, Najd has exerted an unusually strong influence on the jurisdiction of the Al Saud. In addition, because the region lacked large cities and the strong leadership they could provide, an interdependent relationship developed among Najdi towns, which paid tribute, and tribes, which provided protection. Traditionally, Najdi political power lay with the tribal shaykhs, who, when they became amirs, or governors of a wider area, endeavored to dissociate themselves from their tribal roles because they were ruling a more diverse population.

The prominence of the Al Saud is reflected in the name Saudi Arabia; the country is the only one to be named for the ruling family. The present kingdom of Saudi Arabia derives its existence from the campaigns of its founder, Abd al Aziz ibn Abd ar Rahman Al Saud, who initially captured Riyadh with his beduin followers in 1902. Thereafter, with the aid of the Ikhwan, or brotherhood, a fervent group of Wahhabi beduin warriors, he retook the rest of Najd, defeating the Al Rashid forces at Hail in the north in 1921, and in 1924 conquering the Hijaz, including Mecca and Medina. Chosen as king of the Hijaz and Najd in 1927, Abd al Aziz was obliged to defeat the Ikhwan militarily in 1929 because in their zeal the Ikhwan had encroached on the borders of neighboring states, thereby arousing the concern of Britain, in particular. In 1932 Abd al Aziz proclaimed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which covered an area approximating to the territory of the present state. The discovery of oil in 1938 ultimately transformed the kingdom and the lives of its inhabitants. During his reign, however, Abd al Aziz sought to obtain “the iron of the West without its ideas,” as the king phrased it; he sought to make use of Western technology but at the same time to maintain the traditional institutions associated with Islamic and Arab life.

Upon Abd al Aziz's death in 1953, his son Saud ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud succeeded to the throne. Saud proved to be an ineffective ruler and a spendthrift, whose luxurious life-style, together with that of the advisers with whom he surrounded himself, rapidly led to the depletion of the kingdom's treasury. As a result, the Al Saud obliged Saud in 1958, and again in 1962, to give his brother, Crown Prince Faisal ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud, executive power to conduct foreign and domestic affairs. In 1964 the royal family, with the consent of the ulama, or religious leaders, deposed Saud and made Faisal king, appointing Khalid ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud, another brother, as crown prince.

Faisal, a devout Muslim, sought to modernize the kingdom, especially in regard to economic development, education, and defense, while simultaneously playing a key role in foreign policy. For instance, during the October 1973 War between Israel and the Arab states of Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, Faisal helped to initiate an oil embargo against those countries that supported Israel; the embargo led to the tripling of oil prices. He supported the education of girls and the opening of government television stations to promote education.

Tragically, Faisal was assassinated in 1975 by a deranged nephew.

Crown Prince Khalid ibn Abd al Aziz became king (and de facto prime minister) immediately; his brother, Fahd ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud, served as deputy prime minister and another brother, Abd Allah ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud, as second deputy prime minister. Khalid dealt primarily with domestic affairs, stressing agricultural development. He also visited all the gulf states, and took a keen interest in settling Saudi Arabia's outstanding boundary disputes, including that of the Al Buraymi Oasis with the United Arab Emirates (UAE)

in 1975. (The area near Al Buraymi disputed with Oman had been resolved in 1971.) Fahd became the principal spokesman on foreign affairs and oil policy. Khalid's reign was an eventful one; it saw the attempt by strict Islamists (also known as fundamentalists) who criticized the corrupting influence of Western culture on the royal family to take over the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979, riots by Eastern Province Shia (see Glossary) also in 1979 and 1980, and the formation of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in 1981.

Upon Khalid's death in 1982, Fahd assumed the throne, with Abd Allah becoming crown prince. Fahd soon faced the impact on the kingdom of the fall in oil revenues, which ended in the 1986 oil price crash.

Recognizing the need for a more united Arab front, particularly in view of the deteriorating economic situation, he reestablished diplomatic relations with Egypt in 1987; relations had been broken in 1978 as a result of Anwar as Sadat's signing of the Camp David Accords creating a separate peace between Egypt and Israel. Fahd also played a mediating role in the Lebanese civil war in 1989, bringing most of the members of the Lebanese National Assembly to At Taif to settle their differences.

To understand the forces that have shaped Saudi Arabia in the early 1990s, one must consider the roles of geographic factors, tribal allegiance and beduin life, Islam, the Al Saud, and the discovery of oil. Tribal affiliation has been the focus of identity in the Arabian Peninsula, approximately 80 percent of which is occupied by Saudi Arabia. Well into the present century, several great deserts, including the Rub al Khali, one of the largest in the world, cut tribal groups off from one another and isolated Najd, particularly, from other areas of the country. As a result, a high degree of cultural homogeneity developed among the inhabitants; the majority follow Sunni Wahhabi Islam and a patriarchal family system. Only about 5 percent of the Saudi population adheres to the Shia sect. The Shia, in general, represent the lowest socioeconomic group in the country, and their grievances over their status have led to protest demonstrations in the 1970s and again in 1979-80, that have resulted in government actions designed to better their lot.

Saudi tribal allegiance and the beduin heritage have been weakened, however, since the mid-twentieth century by the increased role of a centralized state, by the growth of urbanization, and by the industrialization that has accompanied the finding of oil. At the same time, the impact of Islam on different elements of the population has varied. Many of the educated younger technocrats have felt a need to adapt Islamic institutions to fit the demands of modern technology. Other young people, more conservatively inclined, as well as a number of their elders and those with a more traditional beduin life-style, have deplored the alienation from Muslim values and the corruption that they believe Western ways and the presence, according to 1992 census figures, of some 4.6 million foreigners (in contrast to an indigenous population of 12.3 million) have brought into the kingdom. Their activist Islamism was reflected in the 1979 attempt by extremists to take over the Grand Mosque in Mecca and by other aspects of the Islamic revival, such as the prominent wearing of the hijab, or long black cloak and veil by women, and the more active role of the Committees for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (mutawwiin) in enforcing standards of public morality. The government found itself caught between these two trends. On the one hand, it feared the extremism of some of the traditionalists, which could well undermine the economic, education, and social development programs that the government had been implementing and which also constituted a threat to internal security. On the other hand, as guardian of the holy places of Islam, the sites of the annual pilgrimage for Muslims the world over, the government needed to legitimate itself as an “Islamic government.”

The government therefore has sought to achieve political and social compromises. Repeated announcements have been made regarding the royal family's intention to create a consultative council, first proposed by King Faisal in 1964, as a means of giving a greater voice to the people. On August 20, 1993, Fahd announced the appointment of sixty men to the Consultative Council. Members of the council were primarily religious and tribal leaders; government officials, businessmen, and retired military and police officers were also included.

An additional small step was King Fahd's decree of March 1992 establishing a main, or basic, code of laws that regularizes succession to the throne (the king chooses the heir apparent from among the sons and grandsons of Abd al Aziz) and sets forth various administrative procedures concerning the state. Fahd also issued a decree concerning the provinces, or regions, of the kingdom. Each region is to have an amir, a deputy, and a consultative council composed of at least ten persons appointed by the amir for a four-year term. The code does not, however, protect individual rights in the Western sense, as many professionals and technocrats had desired. Rather, it says that “the state protects human rights in accordance with the Islamic sharia.”

The Saudi concept of legitimacy is akin to the beduin concept of tribal democracy in which the individual exchanges views with the tribal shaykh. Saudi rulers and most traditionalists reject Western participatory democracy, because the latter establishes the people as the source of decision rather than the will of God as found in the sharia and as interpreted by the ulama. Moreover, in their view, democracy lacks the stability that a Muslim form of government provides. For these reasons, the government has tended to repress dissent and jail dissidents. Such repression applied to students and religious figures who belonged to such organizations as the Organization of Islamic Revolution in the Arabian Peninsula, active in January and February 1992 in criticizing the ruling family and the government.

Socially, the education of girls, although placed under the supervision of the religious authorities, has led over the four decades that girls' schools have existed to a considerable number of women graduates who were seeking employment in various sectors and who increasingly were making their presence felt. This trend occurred at a time of rising unemployment for Saudi males, particularly for graduates in the field of religious studies, and posed a further potential source of dissidence. In addition, growing urbanization was tending to increase the number of nuclear as opposed to extended families, thereby breaking down traditional social structures. There were also indications that drug smuggling and drug use were rising; twenty of the forty executions that occurred between January 1 and May 1, 1993, were drug related.

The Al Saud played the central role in achieving the needed compromises in the political, social, and foreign affairs fields, as well as in directing the economy with the support of the technocrats and the merchants. The control exercised by the Al Saud is demonstrated by the fact that as of 1993 the amirs, or governors, of all fourteen of Saudi Arabia's regions were members of the royal family. Some members of the family, such as King Fahd and his full brothers Sultan, Nayif, and Salman, were considered to be, however, more aligned with the modernizers; King Fahd's half brother Crown Prince Abd Allah, was more of a traditionalist. Specifically, the crown prince enjoyed the support of the tribal elements and headed the Saudi Arabian National Guard, a paramilitary body composed largely of beduin soldiers that served as a counterbalance to the regular armed forces, which were headed by Minister of Defense and Aviation Amir Sultan ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud. The nation's police force reported to Minister of Interior Amir Nayif ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud.

The crown prince was also considered closer than the king to the religious establishment, or the ulama. Thirty to forty of the most influential ulama, mainly members of the Al ash Shaykh, constituted the Council of Senior Ulama, seven of whose members were dismissed by the king in December 1992 on the pretext of “poor health.” The actual reason for their dismissal was their failure to condemn July criticisms (published in September) of the government by a group of religious scholars who called themselves the Committee for the Defense of Rights under the Sharia. The king named ten younger and more progressive ulama to replace them.

In a further move, in July 1993 the king named Shaykh Abd al Aziz ibn Baz general mufti of the kingdom with the rank of minister and president of the Administration of Scientific Research and Fatwa. Abd al Aziz ibn Baz was also appointed to preside over the new eighteen-member Higher Ulama Council. Based on Abd al Aziz ibn Baz's advice, instead of the Ministry of Pilgrimage Affairs and Religious Trusts, the king created two new ministries: the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowments, Call, and Guidance and the Ministry of Pilgrimage; this action gave the religious sector an additional voice in the Council of Ministers.

In addition to holding conservative domestic views, the crown prince was more oriented than Fahd toward the Arab world. After the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, however, he joined the king and other more pro-Western members of the royal family in asking the United States to send forces to the kingdom.

In the foreign policy arena, Saudi Arabia historically has sought to walk a narrow line between East and West.

Because of its strong commitment to Islam, the kingdom abhorred the atheist policy of the former Soviet Union and therefore tended to be somewhat pro-Western concerning defense matters. However, Saudi Arabia also strongly opposed what it considered to be the pro- Zionist policy of the United States with regard to Israel and the rights of the Palestinians. At one time, the kingdom had relatively close relations with Jordan, a fellow monarchy, but Jordan's failure to support Saudi Arabia in the 1991 Persian Gulf War soured those relations and resulted in the expulsion from the kingdom of thousands of Palestinians and Jordanians. In the war, Saudi Arabia also experienced a lack of support by Sudan and Yemen, both of which countries it had aided substantially. In 1993 relations with Yemen were somewhat tense because the kingdom expelled about 1 million Yemenis, as well, during the Persian Gulf War. In addition, as of late 1992, Saudi Arabia had revived a dispute with Yemen over an oil-rich border area.

Initially, Saudi Arabia saw both Iran and Iraq as neighbors posing potential threats. After the Persian Gulf War, however, Saudi Arabia's concern over containing Iraq increased, and the kingdom set aside some of its reservations about Iran's form of Shia Islam and began to normalize relations. Despite some border disagreements with its Persian Gulf neighbors, for example, Qatar in 1992 and early 1993, the kingdom's concern for regional security caused its closest relations to be with other members of the GCC; certain tensions existed in the organization, nevertheless, because of Saudi Arabia's position as the “big brother.”

Saudi Arabia had taken the lead in 1970 in establishing the Organization of the Islamic Conference to bring together all Muslim countries. In addition, the kingdom followed a policy of supporting Islamic countries in Africa and Asia and providing military aid to Muslim groups opposing secular governments in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and, formerly, in the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (now part of Yemen).

Saudi Arabia's concern for regional security and its active role in supporting the GCC were understandable in view of its relatively small population and the resultant constraint on the size of its armed forces. To compensate for these limitations, the kingdom consistently has endeavored to buy the most up-to- date military matériel and especially to concentrate on developing its air force and air defense system. For more than twenty-five years, Saudi Arabia has had the highest ratio of military expenditures in relation to military personnel of any developing country. Following the Persian Gulf War, the kingdom increased its 1993 defense expenditures 14 percent over those of 1992. Defense purchases included at least 315 United States M1A2 main battle tanks to upgrade matériel of the ground forces as well as seventy-two United States F-15C Eagles and forty-eight British Tornadoes for the air force. Furthermore, the Saudi navy was considered of good quality in relation to naval forces of the region, and the navy's facilities were excellent. In spite of these policies, Saudi Arabia recognized its vulnerability because it has the world's largest oil reserves and extensive oil- processing facilities.

The discovery of oil in commercial quantities in 1938 was the major catalyst that transformed various aspects of the kingdom. The huge revenues from the sale of oil and the payments received from foreign companies involved in developing concessions in the country enabled the government to launch large-scale development programs by the early 1970s. Such programs initially focused on creation of infrastructure in the areas of transportation, telecommunications, electric power, and water. The programs also addressed the fields of education, health, and social welfare; the expansion and equipping of the armed forces; and the creation of petroleum-based industries. From this beginning, the government expanded its programs to drill more deep wells to tap underground aquifers and to construct desalination plants. These water sources, in turn, enabled ventures to make the country more nearly self-sufficient agriculturally; in many instances, however, such undertakings seriously depleted groundwater.

In pursuit of industrial diversification, the government created the industrial cities of Al Jubayl in the Eastern Province and Yanbu al Bahr (known as Yanbu) on the Red Sea (see fig. 1). The government also encouraged the establishment of nonoil-related industries, anticipating the day when Saudi Arabia's oil and gas resources would be depleted. Furthermore, the kingdom also has some promising copper, lead, zinc, silver, and gold deposits that have received little exploitation.

The kingdom's economic plans, including the Fifth Development Plan (1990-95), continued to emphasize training the indigenous labor force to handle technologically advanced processes and hence to enable Saudi Arabia to reduce the number of its foreign workers. The fifth plan also encouraged the creation of joint industrial enterprises with GCC member states and other Arab and Islamic countries and the development of industrial relations with foreign countries in order to attract foreign capital and transfer technology.

Saudi Arabia's economic goals were reflected in the national budget announced for 1993, which set expenditures at US$52.6 billion and revenues at US$45.1 billion, thereby reducing the deficit from US$8.0 billion in 1992 to US$7.5 billion in 1993. The continued existence of a deficit, which has characterized the Saudi economy since 1983, was a source of concern to some observers. Major budgetary expenditure items were US$9.1 billion for education (including funds to establish six new colleges and 800 new schools), US$8.2 billion for public organizations (not further identified), and more than US$3.7 billion for health and social development (including funds for setting up 500 new clinics). Another major expenditure announced in March 1993 was that substantial funds, most of which would be obtained from private borrowing, would be invested in oil facilities in order to raise the kingdom's oil production capacity to between 10.5 and 11 million barrels per day by 1995 and its total refining capacity to 210,000 barrels per day.

The major event affecting Saudi Arabia and other gulf states in the early 1990s was clearly the Persian Gulf War. The effect of that war on the kingdom has yet to be assessed. Financially, the cost of the war for the area as a whole has been estimated by the Arab Monetary Fund at US$676 billion for 1990 and 1991. This figure does not, however, take account of such factors as the ecological impact of the war, the loss of jobs and income for thousands of foreign workers employed in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the gulf, and the slowdown effect on the growth of the economies of Saudi Arabia and the gulf states. In most instances, these economies had been growing at a good rate before the war, which tended to deplete or eliminate any accumulated financial reserves.

More difficult to measure, however, was the social impact of the war. Many foreign observers had speculated that the arrival in the kingdom of more than 600,000 foreign military personnel, including women in uniform, would bring about significant changes in Saudi society. However, military personnel tended to be assigned to remote border areas of the country and were little seen by the population as a whole. The net effect of their presence was therefore minimal in the opinion of a number of knowledgeable Saudis.

As Saudi Arabia entered the final years of the twentieth century, there were signs, however, that the expression of public dissent, once unthinkable, was becoming more commonplace. Such dissent was usually couched within an Islamic framework, but nonetheless it represented a force with which the Al Saud had to reckon. King Fahd, now seventy-two, had succeeded thus far in balancing the demands of modernists and traditionalists domestically and in pursuing a policy of moderation internationally. Some observers wondered, however, how much longer Fahd would be able to rule and how adaptable the more conservative Crown Prince Abd Allah would be as Fahd's successor.

August 23, 1993 Helen Chapin Metz

Chapter 1. Historical Setting

Unavailable Abd al Aziz ibn Abd ar Rahman Al Saud, founder of Saudi Arabia A D AL AZIZ ibn Abd ar Rahman Al Saud rose to prominence in the Arabian Peninsula in the early twentieth century. He belonged to the Saud family (the Al Saud), who had controlled most of Arabia during the nineteenth century. By the time of Abd al Aziz, however, the rival Al Rashid family forced the Al Saud into exile in Kuwait. Thus, it was from Kuwait that Abd al Aziz began the campaign to restore his family to political power. First, he recaptured Najd, a mostly desert region in the approximate center of the peninsula and the traditional homeland of the Al Saud. During the mid-1920s, Abd al Aziz's armies had captured the Islamic shrine cities of Mecca and Medina. In 1932, he declared that the area under his control would be known as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

At first Abd al Aziz's realm was a very poor one. It was a desert kingdom with few known natural resources and a largely uneducated population. There were few cities and virtually no industry. Although the shrines at Mecca and Medina earned income from the Muslim pilgrims who visited them every year, this revenue was insufficient to lift the rest of the kingdom out of its near subsistence level.

All this changed, however, when United States geologists discovered oil in the kingdom during the 1930s.

Saudi Arabia's exploitation of its oil resources transformed the country into a nation synonymous with great wealth. Wealth brought with it enormous material and social change—so much change that Saudi Arabia became an exaggerated paradigm of possibilities for development in the Third World. The transformation was staggering: in a few years the Saudis had gone from herding camels to moving billions of dollars around the world with electronic transfers.

Perhaps because of the great upheaval of the last half century, history and origins were very important to Saudi Arabia. Although the country owed its prominence to modern economic realities, Saudis tended to view life in more traditional terms. The state in 1992 remained organized largely along tribal lines. The Muslim religion continued to be a vital element in Saudi statecraft. Moreover, many Muslims considered the form of Islam practiced most widely in Saudi Arabia, Wahhabi (see Glossary) Islam, to be reactionary because it sought its inspiration from the past.

The tendency to draw inspiration from the past was an essential part of the Saudi state. The historical parallels between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its Arab and Islamic past were striking. In conquering Arabia, for instance, Abd al Aziz brought together the region's nomadic tribes in much the same way that his great-grandfather, Muhammad ibn Saud, had done a century earlier.

THE SETTING OF SAUDI ARABIA

The title, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, uses the word kingdom, which is not an Islamic term. However, given the significance of religion in Saudi Arabia, it is clear that Saudis believe that ultimate authority rests with God (Allah). The Saudi ruler is Allah's secular representative and bases political legitimacy on his religious credentials (see The King , ch. 4).

Saudi refers to the Al Saud family, the royal house of Saudi Arabia, whose eponym is Saud ibn Muhammad ibn Mughrin. Saud himself was not a significant figure, but his son, Muhammad ibn Saud (literally, Muhammad, the son of Saud), conquered most of the Arabian Peninsula in the early eighteenth century. In almost two centuries since then, Muhammad ibn Saud's family has grown tremendously and, in 1992, the ruling house of Saudi Arabia had more than 4,000 male members.

Finally, Arabia—or the Arabian Peninsula—refers to a geographic region whose name is related to the language of the majority of its inhabitants. Before the era of the Muslim conquests in the mid-seventh century, some Arabic-speaking peoples also lived in Palestine, Syria, and Iraq, and Christian Arab buffer states were established north of the peninsula between the Sassanid and Byzantine empires. As a result of the Muslim conquests, however, people of the peninsula spread out over the wider region that today is known as the “Arab world” and the Arabic language became the region's dominant language.

The desert is the most prominent feature of the Arabian Peninsula. Although vast, arid tracts dominate Saudi Arabia, the country also includes long stretches of arid coastline along the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea and several major oases in the Eastern Province. Accordingly, the Saudi environment is not uniform, and the differences between coastal and desert life have played their part in Arabian history. Those living on the water have had more contact with other peoples and thus have developed more cosmopolitan outlooks than those living in the interior.

Saudi Arabia is the largest country on the Arabian Peninsula. It shares the Persian Gulf and Red Sea coasts with the Persian Gulf states, Yemen, Jordan, and Iraq, so there are cultural and historical overlaps with its neighbors. Many of these countries rely on the authority of a single family—whether the ruler calls himself a king, as in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, or an amir, as in the gulf states. Tribal loyalties also play an important role in these countries, and large portions of their populations have only recently stopped living as nomads.

Several important factors, however, distinguish Saudi Arabia from its neighbors. Unlike other states in the area, Saudi Arabia has never been under the direct control of a European power. Moreover, the Wahhabi movement that began in Saudi Arabia has had a greater impact on Saudi history than on any other country.

Although the religious fervor of Wahhabism affected populations of such neighboring states as present-day Qatar, only in Saudi Arabia was it an essential element in the formation of the modern state.

PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD

The bodies of water on either side of the Arabian Peninsula provided relatively easy access to the neighboring river-valley civilizations of the Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates. Once contact was made, trading could begin, and because these civilizations were quite rich, many goods passed between them.

The coastal people of Arabia were well-positioned to profit from this trade. Much of the trade centered around present-day Bahrain and Oman, but those living in the southwestern part of the peninsula, in present-day Yemen and southern Saudi Arabia, also profited from such trade. The climate and topography of this area also permitted greater agricultural development than that on the coast of the Persian Gulf.

Generous rainfall in Yemen enabled the people to feed themselves, while the exports of frankincense and myrrh brought wealth to the area. As a result, civilization developed to a relatively high level in southern Arabia by about 1000 B.C. The peoples of the area lived in small kingdoms or city states of which the best known is probably Saba, which was called Sheba in the Old Testament. The prosperity of Yemen encouraged the Romans to refer to it as Arabia Felix (literally, “happy Arabia"). Outside of the coastal areas, however, and a few centers in the Hijaz associated with the caravan trade, the harsh climate of the peninsula, combined with a desert and mountain terrain, limited agriculture and rendered the interior regions difficult to access. The population most likely subsisted on a combination of oasis gardening and herding, with some portion of the population being nomadic or seminomadic.

The material conditions under which the Arabs lived began to improve around 1000 B.C. A method for saddling camels had been developed to transport large loads. The camel was the only animal that could cross large tracts of barren land with any reliability. The Arabs could now benefit from some of the trade that had previously circumvented Arabia.

The increased trans-Arabian trade produced two important results. One was the rise of cities that could service the trains of camels moving across the desert. The most prosperous of these-—Petra in Jordan and Palmyra in Syria, for example—were relatively close to markets in the Mediterranean region, but small caravan cities developed within the Arabian Peninsula as well. The most important of these was Mecca, which also owed its prosperity to certain shrines in the area visited by Arabs from all over the peninsula.

Some Arabs, particularly in the Hijaz, held some religious beliefs that recognized a number of gods as well as a number of rituals for worshiping them. The most important beliefs involved the sense that certain places and times of year were sacred and must be respected. At those times and in those places, warfare, in particular, was forbidden, and various rituals were required. Foremost of these was the pilgrimage, and the best known pilgrimage site was Mecca.

The second result of the Arabs' increased involvement in trade was the contact it gave them with the outside world. In the Near East, the Persians and the Romans were the great powers in centuries before the advent of Islam, and the Arab tribes that bordered these territories were drawn into their political affairs. After 400 A.D., both empires paid Arab tribes not only to protect their southern borders but also to harass the borders of their adversary.

In the long term, however, it was the ideas and people that traveled with the camel caravans that were the most important. By 500 A.D., the traditional ritual of Arab worship was but one of a number of religious options. The Sabaeans of southern Arabia followed their own system of beliefs, and these had some adherents in the interior. Followers of pagan beliefs, as well as Hanifs, mentioned in the Quran and believed to be followers of an indigenous monetheistic religion, were widespread in the peninsula. In addition, there were well-established communities of Christians and Jews. Along the gulf coast were Nestorians, while in Yemen Syrian Orthodox and smaller groups of Christians were to be found among beduin and in monasteries that dotted the northern Hijaz. In the sixth century, shortly before the birth of Muhammad, the city of Najran in what is now southwestern Saudi Arabia had a Christian church with a bishop, monks, priests, nuns, and lay clergy, and was ruled by a Jewish king. Jews were an important part not only of the Yemeni population, but also of the oases communities in the region of Medina.

THE EARLY ISLAMIC PERIOD, 622-700

Ancient Nabatean tomb, Madain Salih Courtesy Saudi Arabian Information Office T e Saudis, and many other Arabs and Muslims as well, trace much of their heritage to the birth of the Prophet Muhammad in 570 A.D. The time before Islam is generally referred to as “the time of ignorance”; this probably reflects the fact that God had not yet sent the Arabs a prophet.

Muhammad was born in Mecca at a time when the city was establishing itself as a trading center. For the residents of Mecca, tribal connections were still the most important part of the social structure. Muhammad was born into the Quraysh, which had become the leading tribe in the city because of its involvement with water rights for the pilgrimage. By the time of Muhammad, the Quraysh had become active traders as well, having established alliances with tribes all over the peninsula. These alliances permitted the Quraysh to send their caravans to Yemen and Syria. Accordingly, the Quraysh represented in many ways the facilitators and power brokers for the new status quo in Arabian society.

Tribes consisted of clans that had various branches and families, and Muhammad came from a respectable clan, the sons of Hashim, but from a weak family situation. Muhammad's father Abd Allah had died before his son was born, leaving the Prophet without a close protector. The Prophet was fortunate, however, that his uncle Abu Talib was one of the leaders of the Hashimite clan. This gave Muhammad a certain amount of protection when he began to preach in 610 against the Meccan leadership.

Everything we know about Muhammad's life comes from Muslim historiography. The Prophet worked for Abu Talib in the caravan business, giving him the opportunity to travel beyond Arabia. Travel gave the Prophet contact with some of the Christian and Jewish communities that existed in Arabia; in this way he became familiar with the notion of scripture and the belief in one god. Despite this contact, tradition specifies that Muhammad never learned to read or write. As a child, however, he was sent to the desert for five years to learn the beduin ways that were slowly being forgotten in Mecca.

Muhammad married a rich widow when he was twenty-five years old; although he managed her affairs, he would occasionally go off by himself into the mountains that surrounded Mecca. On one of these occasions, Muslim belief holds that the angel Gabriel appeared to Muhammad and told him to recite aloud. When Muhammad asked what he should say, the angel recited for him verses that would later constitute part of the Quran, which means literally “the recitation.” Muslims believe that Muhammad continued to receive revelations from God throughout his life, sometimes through the angel Gabriel and at other times in dreams and visions directly from God.

For a while, Muhammad told only his wife about his experiences, but in 613 he acknowledged them openly and began to promote a new social and spiritual order that would be based on them. Muhammad's message was disturbing to many of the Quraysh for several reasons. The Prophet attacked traditional Arab customs that permitted lax marriage arrangements and the killing of unwanted offspring. More significant, however, was the Prophet's claim that there was only one God, because in condemning the worship of idols he threatened the pilgrimage traffic from which the Quraysh profited.

By 618 Muhammad had gained enough followers to worry the city's leaders. The Quraysh hesitated to harm the Prophet because he was protected by his uncle, but they attacked those of his followers who did not have powerful family connections. To protect these supporters, Muhammad sent them to Ethiopia, where they were taken in by the Christian king who saw a connection between the Prophet's ideas and those of his own religion. Following his uncle's death in 619, however, Muhammad felt obliged to leave Mecca. In 622 he secretly left the city and traveled about 320 kilometers north to the town of Yathrib. In leaving Mecca, Muhammad chose to abandon the city where he had grown up to pursue his mission in another place; thus, the event often has been used to illustrate a genuine commitment to duty and sacrifice. This emigration or hijra marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. Muslims use a lunar calendar, which means that their twelve-month year is shorter than a solar one.

The Quraysh were unwilling to leave Muhammad in Yathrib, and various skirmishes and battles occurred, with each side trying to enlist the tribes of the peninsula in its campaigns. Muhammad eventually prevailed and in 630 he returned to Mecca, where he was accepted without resistance. Subsequently he moved south to strongholds in At Taif and Khaybar, which surrendered to him after lengthy sieges.

By his death in 632, Muhammad enjoyed the loyalty of almost all of Arabia. The peninsula's tribes had tied themselves to the Prophet with various treaties but had not necessarily become Muslim. The Prophet expected others, particularly pagans, to submit but allowed Christians and Jews to keep their faith provided they paid a special tax as penalty for not submitting to Islam.

After the Prophet's death, most Muslims acknowledged the authority of Abu Bakr (died in 634), an early convert and respected elder in the community. Abu Bakr maintained the loyalty of the Arab tribes by force, and in the battles that followed the Prophet's death—which came to be known as the apostasy wars—it became essentially impossible for an Arab tribesman to retain traditional religious practices. Arabs who had previously converted to Judaism or Christianity were allowed to keep their faith, but those who followed the old polytheistic practices were forced to become Muslims. In this way Islam became the religion of most Arabs.

The Prophet had no spiritual successor inasmuch as God's revelation (the Quran) was given only to Muhammad. There were, however, successors to the Prophet's temporal authority, and these were called caliphs (successors or vice regents). Caliphs ruled the Islamic world until 1258 when the last caliph and all his heirs were killed by the Mongols. For the first thirty years, caliphs managed the growing Islamic empire from Yathrib, which had been renamed Madinat an Nabi (“the city of the Prophet") or Al Madinah al Munawwarah (“the illuminated city"). This is usually shortened simply to Medina—“the city.”

Within a short time, the caliphs had conquered a large empire. With the conclusion of the apostasy wars, the Arab tribes united behind Islam and channeled their energies against the Roman and Persian empires.

Arab-led armies pushed quickly through both of these empires and established Arab control from what is now Spain to Pakistan.

The achievements of Islam were great and various, but after 656 these achievements ceased to be controlled from Arabia. After the third caliph, Uthman, was assassinated in 656, the Muslim world was split, and the fourth caliph, Ali (murdered in 660) spent much of his time in Iraq. After Ali, the Umayyads established a hereditary line of caliphs in Damascus. The Umayyads were overthrown in 750 by the Abbasids, who ruled from Baghdad. By the latter part of the seventh century the political importance of Arabia in the Islamic world had declined.

THE MIDDLE AGES, 700-1500

Al Munis village, near Az Zahran al Janub, showing the hills of southwestern Saudi Arabia in the background Courtesy Aramco World.

U til about 900, the centers of Islamic power remained in the Fertile Crescent, a semicircle of fertile land stretching from the southeastern Mediterranean coast around the Syrian Desert north of the Arabian Peninsula to the Persian Gulf and linked with the Arabian heartland. After the ninth century, however, the most significant political centers moved farther and farther away—to Egypt and India, as well as to what is now Turkey and the Central Asian republics. Intellectual vitality eventually followed political power, and as a result, Islamic civilization was no longer centered in Mecca and Medina in the Hijaz.

Mecca remained the spiritual focus of Islam because it was the destination for the pilgrimage that all Muslims were required, if feasible, to make once in their lives. The city, however, lacked political or administrative importance even in the early Islamic period. This devolved on Medina instead, which had been the main base for the Prophet's efforts to gain control of the shrines in Mecca and to bring together the tribes of the peninsula. After the Prophet's death, Medina continued to be an administrative center and developed into something of an intellectual and literary one as well. In the seventh and eighth centuries, for instance, Medina became an important center for the legal discussions that would lead to the codification of Islamic law.

Orthodox (Sunni—see Glossary) Islam recognizes four systems—or schools—of law, and one of these, the school of Malik ibn Anas (died in 796), which is observed today in much of Africa and Indonesia, originated with the scholars of Medina. The three other Sunni law schools (Hanafi, Shafii, and Hanbali) developed at about the same time, but largely in Iraq.

Arabia was also the site for some of the conflicts on which the sectarian divisions of Islam are based. The major Islamic sect, the Shia (from Shiat Ali or “party of Ali”—see Glossary), is still represented in Saudi Arabia but forms a larger percentage of the populations in Iraq and Iran.

One Shia denomination, known as the Kharijite movement, began in events surrounding the assassination of Uthman, the third caliph, and the transfer of authority to Ali, the fourth caliph. Those who believed Ali should have been the legitimate successor to the Prophet refused to accept the authority of Uthman. Muawiyah in Syria challenged Ali's election as caliph, leading to a war between the two and their supporters. Muawiyah and Ali eventually agreed to an arbitrator, and the fighting stopped. Part of Ali's army, however, objected to the compromise, claiming Muawiyah's family were insincere Muslims. So strong was their protest against compromise that they left Ali's camp (the term khariji literally means “the ones who leave") and fought a battle with their former colleagues the next year.

The most prominent quality of the Kharijite movement was opposition to the caliph's representatives and particularly to Muawiyah, who became caliph after Ali. Although the Kharijites were known to some Muslims as bandits and assassins, they developed certain ideal notions of justice and piety. The Prophet Muhammad had been sent to bring righteousness to the world and to teach the Arabs to pray and to distribute their wealth and power fairly. According to the Kharijites, whoever was lax in following the Prophet's directives should be opposed, ostracized, or killed.

The Kharijite movement continued to be significant on the Persian Gulf coast in the ninth through the eleventh century and survived in the twentieth century in the more moderate form of Ibadi Islam. The uncompromising fanaticism of the original Kharijites was, however, indicative of the fervor with which the tribal Arabs had accepted the missionary ideology of Islam. It was this fervor that made it possible for Arab armies to conquer so much territory in the seventh century. This same spirit helped the Al Saud succeed at the end of the eighteenth century and again at the beginning of the twentieth.

The more orthodox Shia sect originated in circumstances similar to those of the Kharijite movement. Shia believed that Ali should have led the Muslim community immediately after the Prophet. They were frustrated three times, however, when the larger Muslim community selected first Abu Bakr, next Umar (died in 644), and then Uthman as caliph. When Ali finally became caliph in 656, the Shia refused to accept claims to the caliphate from other Muslim leaders such as Muawiyah.

The dispute between Ali and Muawiyah was never resolved. Muawiyah returned to Syria while Ali remained in Iraq, where he was assassinated by a Kharijite follower in 660. Muawiyah assumed the caliphate, and Ali's supporters transferred their loyalty to his two sons, Hasan and Husayn. Whereas Hasan more or less declined to challenge Muawiyah, Husayn was less definitive. When Muawiyah's son, Yazid, succeeded his father, Husayn refused to recognize his authority and set out for Iraq to raise support. He was intercepted by a force loyal to Yazid. When Husayn refused to surrender, his entire party, including women and children, was killed at Karbala in southeastern Iraq.

The killing of Husayn provided the central ethos for the emergence of the Shia as a distinct sect. Eventually, the Shia would split into several separate denominations based on disputes over who of Ali's direct male descendants should be the true spiritual leader. The majority came to recognize a line of twelve leaders, or Imams (see Glossary), beginning with Ali and ending with Muhammad al Muntazar (Muhammad, the awaited one). These Shia, who are often referred to as “Twelvers,” claimed that the Twelfth Imam did not die but disappeared in 874. They believe that he will return as the “rightly guided leader,” or Mahdi, and usher in a new, more perfect order.

Twelver Shia reverence for the Imams has encouraged distinctive rituals. The most important is Ashura, the commemoration of the death of Husayn. Other practices include pilgrimages to shrines of Ali and his relatives. According to strict Wahhabi Sunni interpretations of Islam, these practices resemble the pagan rituals that the Prophet attacked. Therefore, observance of Ashura and pilgrimages to shrines have constituted flash points for sectarian problems between the Saudi Wahhabis and the Shia minority in the Eastern Province.

The Shia minority in Saudi Arabia, like the Shia in southern Iraq, traces its origin to the days of Ali. A second Shia group, the Ismailis, or the Seveners, follow a line of Imams that originally challenged the Seventh Iman and supported a younger brother, Ismail. The Ismaili line of leaders has been continuous down to the present day. The current Imam, Sadr ad Din Agha Khan, who is active in international humanitarian efforts, is a direct descendant of Ali.

Although present-day Saudi Arabia has no indigenous Ismaili communities, an important Ismaili center existed between the ninth and eleventh centuries in Al Hufuf, in eastern Arabia. The Ismailis of Al Hufuf were strong enough in 930 to sack the major cities of Iraq, and they were fanatical enough to attack Mecca and remove the sacred stone of the Kaaba, the central shrine of the Islamic pilgrimage. The pilgrimage was suspended for several years and resumed only after the stone was replaced, following the caliph's agreement to pay the Ismailis a ransom.

Under normal circumstances, Muslims visited Mecca every year to perform the pilgrimage, and they expected the caliph to keep the pilgrimage routes safe and to maintain control over Mecca and Medina as well as the Red Sea ports providing access to them. When the caliph was strong, he controlled the Hijaz, but after the ninth century the caliph's power weakened and the Hijaz became a target for any ruler who sought to establish his authority in the Islamic world. In 1000, for instance, an Ismaili dynasty controlled the Hijaz from Cairo.

External control of the Hijaz gave the region extensive contact with other parts of the Muslim world. In this regard, the Hijaz differed greatly from the region immediately to the east, Najd.

Najd was relatively isolated. It was more arid and barren than the Hijaz and was surrounded on three sides by deserts and separated from the Hijaz by mountains. All overland routes to the Hijaz passed through Najd, but it was easier to go around Najd. As the caliphs in Baghdad became less powerful, the road between Baghdad and Mecca that led across Najd, declined in importance. After the thirteenth century, pilgrimage traffic was more likely to move up the Red Sea toward Egypt and so bypass Najd.

So there were two faces of Arabia. To the west was the Hijaz, which derived a cosmopolitan quality from the foreign traffic that moved continually through it. In the east was Najd, which remained relatively isolated.

During the eighteenth century, Wahhabi ideas, vital to the rise of the Al Saud, would originate in Najd.

THE SAUD FAMILY AND WAHHABI ISLAM, 1500-1850

The Al Saud originated in Ad Diriyah, in the center of Najd, close to the modern capital of Riyadh. Around 1500 ancestors of Saud ibn Muhammad took over some date groves, one of the few forms of agriculture the region could support, and settled there. Over time the area developed into a small town, and the clan that would become the Al Saud came to be recognized as its leaders.

The rise of Al Saud is closely linked with Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab (died 1792), a Muslim scholar whose ideas form the basis of the Wahhabi movement. He grew up in Uyaynah, an oasis in southern Najd, where he studied with his grandfather Hanbali Islamic law, one of the strictest Muslim legal schools. While still a young man, he left Uyaynah to study with other teachers, the usual way to pursue higher education in the Islamic world. He studied in Medina and then went to Iraq and to Iran.

To understand the significance of Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab's ideas, they must be considered in the context of Islamic practice. There was a difference between the established rituals clearly defined in religious texts that all Muslims perform and popular Islam. The latter refers to local practice that is not universal.

The Shia practice of visiting shrines is an example of a popular practice. The Shia continued to revere the Imams even after their death and so visited their graves to ask favors of the Imams buried there. Over time, Shia scholars rationalized the practice and it became established.

Some of the Arabian tribes came to attribute the same sort of power that the Shia recognized in the tomb of an Imam to natural objects such as trees and rocks. Such beliefs were particularly disturbing to Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab. In the late 1730s he returned to the Najdi town of Huraymila and began to write and preach against both Shia and local popular practices. He focused on the Muslim principle that there is only one God, and that God does not share his power with anyone—not Imams, and certainly not trees or rocks. From this unitarian principle, his students began to refer to themselves as muwahhidun (unitarians). Their detractors referred to them as “Wahhabis”—or “followers of Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab,” which had a pejorative connotation.

The idea of a unitary god was not new. Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab, however, attached political importance to it. He directed his attack against t