Page 29 - Arabian Studies (II)

MEMORIES AND IMPRESSIONS OF THE
ARABIA OF IBN SAUD
by COLONEL GERALD DE GAURY

There is no need, in a publication such as this, to give an outline of
Ibn Saud’s extraordinary career, but it is important to remember that
he was brought up in exile. He used to say that he and his
step-brother Muhammad on their escape to the east coast were
placed in camel bags — one on either side of the animal. As he grew
up, he began to prepare himself to regain his family rights and he was
encouraged and tutored in this by Mubarak, Ruler of Kuwait, himself
an outstanding chief. He began to go out and live with the tribes and
to learn all that he could about Najd. The story of his daring capture
of Riyadh in January 1902 has often been recounted.
Ibn Saud spent the next twelve years in conciliating the tribal
chieftains or in warring against them. Conciliation often took the
form of a diplomatic marriage with the daughter of a Shaikh. He had
already married in Kuwait while a very young man and his third son,
the first to be born to him in Riyadh, was the present King Faisal
whose mother came from the family of the religious reformer, ‘Abd
al-Wahhab. His eldest son, Turki, a fine young man, said to have
much resembled him, died in the influenza epidemic in 1919. Ibn
Saud was later said to have more than a hundred surviving children in
a land where infant mortality was one of the very highest in the
world.
There was often fighting in Central Arabia, but ordinary inter­
tribal raiding rarely leads to many killed or wounded, for the main
object is to acquire camels or sheep or to recapture those stolen. Ibn
Saud’s fighting was, however, of a different sort, designed to bring
tribes to order and obedience and often brought more serious
casualties. Ibn Saud himself was wounded four times, lost a finger of
the left hand and had a bad leg wound. His brother, Sa‘d, was killed
in a fight against the ‘Ajman tribe. To lessen the power of the
Shaikhs he began to encourage an increase in religiosity and to
substitute brotherhood in Islam for tribal clanship. To this end, he
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