Page 238 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

‘Araby the Blest* 235

their reputation for deceit and rapacity. His confidence was not misplaced, as
the testimony of the British consul at Jiddah at the time, R. W. (later Sir
Reader) Bullard, bears out. Writing on the eve of Husain’s abdication, Bullard

described the Hijazi townsman as
a mean-spirited and cowardly creature whose doughty deed is the swindling of a live
pilgrim or the robbing of a dead one. His hatred of King Husain had hitherto been
concealed under an effusive servility, but at the sight of the Wahhabis, about, as he
thought, to set him free from King Husain, he began to talk treason boldly.
*
Ibn Saud resumed his campaign in the Hijaz in the closing weeks of 1925.
Only three towns of any importance remained in Hashimite hands - Madina,
Jiddah and Yanbu. Madina fell in the first week of December, Yanbu a
fortnight later. Meanwhile King Ali ibn Husain had signified his intention of
giving up the struggle and leaving the Hijaz. He did so in the middle of the
month, and on 19 December the Wahhabi forces entered Jiddah peacefully.
Three weeks later Ibn Saud assumed the title of ‘King of the Hijaz’ proffered
him by the notables of Mecca on 8 January 1926. Although he had publicly
announced several times during 1925 that the Hijazis would be left to govern
themselves and that it would be left to an Islamic congress to elect a ruler for the
Hijaz, there was never any doubt that Ibn Saud intended to be master of the
country and to add it to his dominions. An Islamic congress was held later in
1926, but it confined its discussions primarily to matters relating to the
pilgrimage, the care of the holy places and sectarian ritual observances. As for
the Hijazis, although they were initially granted permission to elect consulta­
tive councils for the country’s principal towns, so many ordinances were
enacted and enforced by their conquerors without consulting them that the
concession soon amounted to nothing. The power and influence of the Hijazi
nobility, theashraf (sharif in the singular), were systematically undermined by
expropriation, persecution and personal degradation, which gave great offence
to many Muslims within Arabia and outside. Despite undertakings which had
been given to the Muslim world at large that the other schools of Islamic law -
the Maliki, Hanafi and Shafi - would be respected, it rapidly became plain that
the Hanbali school (to which the Wahhabis alone adhered in any numbers) was
not only to be accorded precedence but would in fact regulate every aspect of
Hijazi life. For years to come there was to be tension and ill-feeling between the
Hijaz and Najd, the Hijazis looking upon the Najdis as little better than
barbarous Bedouin, while the Najdis viewed the Hijazis with contempt as
munafiqun — hypocrites and libertines.
While the Wahhabi occupation of Jiddah and Madina and the obliteration of

Hashimite rule in the Hijaz were still some weeks away, the British govern­
ment had sent an envoy to Ibn Saud to settle the issue of the Najd-Transjordan
rontier before the Wahhabi ruler’s impending victory in the Hijaz tempted
’ Bullard to Foreign Office, 28 September 1924, quoted in Gary Troeller, The Birth of Saudi Arabia, London,
1976, p. 232.