Page 245 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

242 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

was almost total, arts and skills were rudimentary and medical facilities
unknown. Communications were mediaeval, so that communities lived largely
in isolation from one another and in ignorance of all but their immediate
surroundings. Inevitably, as time passed and the oil revenues grew in volume,
a measure of benefit began to reach the bulk of the population, usually in the
form of larger government subventions for the tribes and the greater
availability of imported commodities in the suqs. But the Saudi people as a
whole remained unaware of the extent of the riches from oil being enjoyed
by the ruling house, and of the ways in which those riches were being
squandered.
Foreign influences, the inescapable accompaniment of the new oil wealth,
touched the mass of the Saudi people hardly at all. These influences were only
present to any appreciable degree in the coastal towns adjacent to the Hasa
oilfields and, on the other side of the peninsula, at Jiddah, the chief port of the
Hijaz. Jiddah was a more cosmopolitan town than any in Saudi Arabia: it had
long been the port of entry for pilgrims to the holy cities as well as the site of
foreign trading houses and diplomatic missions. Consequently the surge of
mercantile activity and government expenditure which accompanied the
expansion of oil production disturbed its inhabitants less than it would have
disturbed those of the inland towns. The American and European com­
munities were kept apart from the general population and away from the
interior, being confined in the main to Jiddah and the Hasa hinterland. There

were, however, a goodly number of Egyptians in the country, and smaller
groups of Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese, who had been engaged to staff
the embryo educational system and ministries, as well as to provide the
technical and professional services that the Saudis could not provide for
themselves. Some of these newcomers had brought with them the gospel of
Nasserism - of Arab nationalism, republicanism and socialism - although they
had to be discreet almost to the point of muteness in propagating it. Those who
were not, who through zealotry or on the orders of Cairo exercised a preroga­
tive which they did not enjoy in their own country, viz. that of voicing alien
political thoughts, were promptly deported. The lesson was quickly learned,
and most of the Egyptians confined themselves to their work, pocketed their
salaries and saw their contracts out. But in case they should chance to forget
that they were in the country on sufferance, the Saudi authorities would
occasionally expel numbers of them at a moment’s notice and without explana­

tion.
The presence of these emigres, then, did little to disturb the prevailing
political order. Power remained firmly in the hands of the Al Saud and their
intimates. The country had no constitution; or, rather, its constitution was said
to be the Koran. Unlike the rulers of Kuwait and Bahrain, the Al Saud made no
gesture in the direction of the devolution of power or the broadening of the
basis of government through the establishment of representative pohucal