Page 98 - The Origins of the United Arab Emirates_Neat

71 The Origins of I he l’ni led Arab Emirates

eventually grew into a relationship between equal powers, and
yet uneasiness and strain persisted between the two. Formal Anglo-
Saudi relations commenced in 1915, when I bn Sa‘ud and Percy
Cox met at Qalif and on 26 December signed a treaty; in it,
I bn Sa‘ud undertook to abstain from aggression against or interference
with the Arab shaykhdoms of the Gulf, in exchange for which
his independence was recognised and guaranteed against foreign
aggression.3
Over the next decade, I bn Sa‘ud’s forward policy began to reap
him great territorial rewards. In 1920 he established his power
and authority over the borderlands of the Hijaz, and later that
year he annexed Abha, the inland portion of ‘Asir. In 1921, his
campaign in Jabal Shammar led to a great victory over his enemy
Ibn Rashid, whose territory lie annexed. The next year the Wahhabi
forces pushed northwards, where the boundaries were undefined,
and captured Jawf. His power consolidated, Ibn Sa‘ud assumed
the title of Sultan of Ncjd and its Dependencies, thus giving his
newly-acquired territory an international, and temporal, status. The
final expansion came in 1924, when his armies entered the Hijaz;
and on 13 October 1924 Mecca surrendered to the Wahhabis.
The abdication of Sharif Husayn in favour of his son *Ali was
followed by the total collapse of the Hashemite dynasty in the
peninsula. This came in December 1925, when Medina and Jeddah
fell to the Wahhabi forces, leaving Ibn Sa‘ud master of an area
that extended from the Gulf to the Red Sea, and from Yemen,
‘Asir and the Rub‘ al-Khali (in the south) to Kuwait, Transjordan
and Iraq (in the north). In January 1926 he was proclaimed
King of the Hijaz, and in 1932 he became King of Saudi Arabia.
Much had changed since the treaty of 1915. Ibn Sa‘ud was
now a monarch with complete sovereignty and independence, and
he ruled over an area larger than that of the British Isles, France,
Benelux, West Germany and Spain combined. Anglo-Saudi relations
were no longer on the same footing as before, and on 20 May
1927 a new treaty, known as the Treaty of Jeddah, was signed,
annulling the earlier treaty. Although the Government of India
wished it to include an undertaking similar to that that the 1915
treaty had contained regarding the Trucial Coast and Qatar,4 Ibn
Sa‘ud refused to concede more than an assurance to ‘maintain
friendly and peaceful relations with . . . the Sheikhs of Katr and
the Oman Coast who are in special treaty relations with His Majesty’s
Government’.5
Throughout the period of his expansion, and following the establish-
ment of his kingdom, Ibn Sa‘ud had little direct contact with
the Trucial Coast—particularly in view of his great territorial ad­
vancement elsewhere in the peninsula. From the beginning of his