The story
On September 23, 1932, Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, known in the West as Ibn Saud, proclaims the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, joining the regions of Najd and Hejaz and other lands he had conquered over three decades. It is the third Saudi state; the first, from 1744, was destroyed by Ottoman-Egyptian armies in 1818, and the second collapsed in the 1890s.
Ibn Saud, a descendant of the first rulers, retook Riyadh in 1902 with a small raid. He built his strength on an alliance with the Wahhabi religious establishment, which gave him legitimacy, and on the Ikhwan, tribal warriors settled in agricultural colonies. He took the Hasa coast in 1913, and, with the Ottoman Empire gone after World War I, he conquered the Hashemite kingdom of the Hejaz, with the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, in 1924 and 1925. He then turned against the Ikhwan when they raided beyond his borders, and crushed them at Sibilla in 1929.
The new state was poor, depending on pilgrim fees. In 1933 he gave an oil concession to Standard Oil of California, and in March 1938 the company's geologists found commercial oil at Dammam Well No. 7. Oil revenue, and the American alliance sealed in 1945 when Ibn Saud met Franklin Roosevelt aboard a warship, made the kingdom rich and strategically central. Saudi Arabia became the world's largest oil exporter, the custodian of Islam's holiest sites, and a major power in the region.
Why it mattered
- Oil revenue from 1938 turned a poor desert kingdom into the world's top oil exporter.
- The alliance with the United States, sealed in 1945, became a pillar of American policy in the Middle East.
- The Saudi state spread Wahhabi-Salafi teaching worldwide, through funding of mosques and schools.
- Its role in OPEC and the 1973 embargo made Saudi policy central to the global economy.
Sources
- Chronology of Saudi Arabia (Frontline) PBS Frontline
- Ibn Saud Britannica
Community notes
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