Page 246 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

‘Araby the Blest* 243

institutions. There was no reason why they should have done so. The Saudi
people knew no other system of government than the one they had, which in
their eyes was ordained by God and sustained by time and tradition. It would
never have occurred to them, or to their rulers, that it should be altered. So,
too, with the religious establishment, the ulania and qadis, who regarded it as
their solemn duty to support the authority both of the king in his capacity as
imam of the Wahhabiya and of his house; while in return the house of Saud
upheld the primacy of Islam in the state and gave heed to the pronouncements
of the ulania where these did not intrude upon matters of high policy or

personal indulgence. Obedience to the commands of God and compliance with
the edicts of the king-imam were held by the ulania to be inseparable; and so
the particular body of religious functionaries, to whom the duty of keeping the
populace to the proper observance of its spiritual and moral obligations was
delegated (the felicitously named ‘Committee for the Commendation of Virtue
and the Condemnation of Vice’) was as much an arm of the state as it was the
rod of the Almighty. Throughout the land the private as well as the public lives
of the citizenry came under the scrutiny of the Committee’s agents, the
mutawiyah, who were quick to discipline any backsliders and to demand that
the Koranic penalties be exacted for any transgressions of the severe Hanbali
rite. Together with the myriad informers and spies who infested the country,
the mutawiyah constituted a network of surveillance which was of inestimable
value to the regime in delecting and suppressing discontent.
Riyad was and still is - for everything that has just been said of Saudi Arabia
in the years up to the late 1960s remains \.r\iQ,niutatis mutandis, today — the sole
source of authority. Centralization is the keynote of government, and the
governors of the towns and provinces are all drawn from the ranks of the Al
Saud or closely associated noble families like the Jiluwis and the Sudairis.
Thus, for example, one son of Ibn Saud, Salman, is governor of Riyad, another
son, Abdul Muhsin, is governor of Madina, a son of the late King Faisal,
Khalid, is governor of the Asir, while the governorship of Hasa is virtually a
hereditary office in the Jiluwi family. As with the urban and provincial
governorships, so also with the ministries which have grown up over the years.
At the time of writing, Fahad ibn Abdul Aziz, the heir apparent, was deputy
prime minister (King Khalid held the premiership); his half-brother, Abdul­
lah ibn Abdul Aziz, the commander of the National Guard, was second deputy
prime minister (and, presumably, second in line for the throne). A brother of
Fahad, Sultan, was minister of defence, and another brother, Turk!, deputy
minister. Nayif ibn Abdul Aziz was minister of the interior and Saud ibn
Faisal, a son of the late king, minister of foreign affairs. Only two of the
important ministerial portfolios were held by non-members of the ruling
amily - the ministry of petroleum and mineral resources by Shaikh Ahmad
Samani, and the ministry of finance by Shaikh Muhammad Aba
al-Khail, whose family seat is at Buraida in the Qasim. The Aba al-Khail