Page 239 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

236 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

him subsequently to direct his forces northwards against the adjacent Hashi-
mite principality. The envoy, Sir Gilbert Clayton, arrived in Ibn Saud’s camp,
located between Bahrah and the oasis of Hadda on the Mecca-Jiddah road, in
the second week of October 1925. Three weeks later he and Ibn Saud put their
signatures to two instruments. One, the Bahrah agreement, covered tribal
movements across the Najd-Iraq frontier and the apprehension of raiding
parties and their punishment. The other, the Hadda agreement, laid down a
similar tribal regime for the Najd-Transjordan frontier and defined that
frontier. Although Clayton had been instructed to draw the frontier across the
Wadi Sirhan so as to include the Qaf oases at its northern end in Transjordan,
he let himself be bamboozled by Ibn Saud into surrendering the whole wadi,
including Qaf, to Najd. In return, Ibn Saud gave his consent, which he was in
no position to withhold, to the creation of a territorial corridor linking Trans­
jordan with Iraq and cutting off his dominions from southern Syria. As the
conquest of the Hijaz was not yet complete the Hadda agreement did not take
in the Hijaz-Transjordan frontier; but Clayton told Ibn Saud that the British
government would insist upon the assignation of Aqaba and Maan to Transjor­
dan, so as to give the amirate access to the sea. Ibn Saud refused to accept the
stipulation - he had other things in mind for Transjordan - and the frontier
remained undemarcated for forty years afterwards, until his son, Faisal,
formally acknowledged the de facto frontier in 1965.
The great accession of power which Ibn Saud had won since the end of the
First World War obviously invalidated on practical grounds his status as a
British dependant under the terms of the Anglo-Saudi treaty of 1915. He was

now the dual monarch of Najd and the Hijaz, and his title of ‘Sultan of Najd
and its Dependencies’ (which had been conferred upon him by a congress of
tribal notables and religious dignitaries at Riyad in the summer of 1921) had
been changed by acclamation to that of ‘King’ at a similar gathering at Riyad in
January 1927. So Clayton was sent out again in the spring of that year to
conclude a new Anglo-Saudi treaty which would give proper recognition to Ibn
Saud’s new dignity and importance. The treaty was signed at Jiddah on 20 May
1927. It acknowledged Ibn Saud as ‘King of the Hijaz and of Najd and its
*
Dependencies’ and recognized ‘the complete and absolute independence’ of
his dominions. The body of the treaty was concerned with the security of the
persons and property of British subjects and pilgrims in Ibn Saud’s territories,
reciprocal protection being accorded to Saudi subjects in British territories.
Ibn Saud also undertook to co-operate fully with the British government in the
suppression of the slave trade, and to maintain peaceful and friendly relations

with Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the Trucial Shaikhdoms.
The pilgrimage aside, Ibn Saud’s observance of his treaty obligations in the
years ahead was frequently subordinated to his own aims or objects. From 1922
onwards he kept up a blockade of Kuwait in an endeavour to divert the trade o

Najd and Jabal Shammar to his own ports of Qatif, Jubail and Uqair on the