Page 33 - Arabian Studies (II)

Memories and Impressions of the Arabia of Ibn Sand 23

large, the lips rather big, one eye, the left, has a lid lower than the
other. The beard is fine and wispy, projecting horizontally. It is the
sympathy in the smile and the temperament revealed by the eyes
themselves, the quality of the voice and his poise that win one’.
The first audience was not long, but the following morning he
received me early before the heat of day began, and spoke of matters
on his mind, particularly of trouble on the Iraq frontier from raid
after raid, one following another until no one knew who was most to
blame or who had gained or lost the most in camels and sheep. No
one, that is, except Ibn Saud, who was very sure that the Iraqi
tribesmen were mostly to blame and Iraqi junior officials near the
frontier inexperienced in desert control — which did seem likely.
‘We are habituated to desert matters’, he said and illustrated this
remark with anecdote after anecdote. Sometimes he spoke of battles
rather than raids, his part in them, his wounds in those twelve first
years after recapturing his family home, Riyadh, at the age of about
twenty-one.
‘It is the morning cold and cold baths that bring out rheumatic
stiffness in them, don’t you agree?’ he asked tactfully, somehow
having come to know that I too had been wounded four times in
war. His similes were bold, his language strong, his phrasing classical
with a mixture of bedouin sayings interlaced. Once he was well
started, his talk became a flood which nothing stayed until the call to
mid-day prayers rang out.
At these twice-daily talks he would speak of the rival dynasties in
Arabia, of Hail and al-Hasa, of the Hashimites in the Hejaz, and of
Jordan and Iraq where the Hashimites still ruled and by which, he
complained, he was surrounded. He used to speak quite often of
being surrounded, though quite what he would have done if
somehow Iraq had come into his hands I do not know, nor do I think
he would have found it an easy matter to take into his rule such a
different people as the Iraqis.
He also spoke of the ‘lost treaty’ made with his ancestor in 1865
by Pelly, then Resident in the Gulf. His copy had been mislaid when
the Saudis were forced into exile. Where was our copy? As a treaty it
did not exist in our records; not even notes for it could be found.
Pelly destroyed most of his papers having had to leave Riyadh in
rather a hurry.

Administration

Ibn Saud’s strength at the time seemed to me partly due to the
Marconi sending and receiving sets recently installed by him in his