The Arabian Peninsula was occupied by the Abyssinians before the sixth century AD. Around AD 576 they were driven out of the southern regions by the Persians, who made it a province of their empire. The year AD 622, which has been adopted as the beginning of the Muslim era, was significant for the flight of the Prophet Muhammad from his home town of Mecca to nearby Medina, where he organized his followers before launching a successful campaign to recapture Mecca. Many Arab tribes joined Muhammad before his death in 632 and afterwards the Muslims continued their expansion across the Arabian peninsula
and into Syria, Mesopotamia (Iraq), Persia and westwards into Egypt and North Africa.
The towns of Mecca and Medina, both of which were thriving cultural and commercial centers before and after Muhammad, are the holiest cities of Islam and the Saudis take the responsibility for protecting their integrity with the utmost seriousness. Arabia was absorbed into the Turkish Ottoman Empire during the 16th century, after the capture of Mecca by the Turks in 1517, but subsequent local rulers were allowed a great deal of autonomy. Under Turkish supervision, successive Sherifs of Mecca governed the territory of Hijaz, which covered the western part of the peninsula including the Red Sea coast as far south as Yemen, until the onset of World War I.
In 1914 the British armed forces chief Lord Kitchener offered the Sherif of Mecca a deal under which Hijaz would acquire independence, guaranteed by the UK, on condition that the Sherif supported the military campaign against the Turks. The Sherif accepted, and after the Turkish defeat, the Kingdom of Hijaz was recognized as independent at the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres. On the other side of the peninsula, the leading potentate was Abdul Aziz Ibn Abdar-Rahman, better known as ‘Ibn Saud’, ruler of the province of Najd. In 1915, the government of India, then under British rule, recognized Najd and some other territories along the Persian Gulf as possessions of Ibn Saud. Throughout the 1920s, military clashes between Ibn Saud’s troops and forces loyal to the Hashemite King of Hijaz, Hussein, grew more frequent as the decisive struggle for control of the peninsula took place.
The British and other Western powers switched their support between the two sides as it suited them. Eventually, Ibn Saud pushed out the Hashemites, and in 1926 was recognized as ruler of the Kingdom of Hijaz and Najd. In 1932 this became the United Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Hashemites were consoled with the thrones of Iraq and Transjordan (later Jordan). In 1933 the first explorations began for oil, vast deposits of which were discovered in the eastern part of the country. This set Saudi Arabia on the road to its current prosperity. Ibn Saud, who ruled as King until his death in 1953, used the accumulating revenues to develop a national infrastructure and basic state services. Political and social development in the kingdom, by Western standards at any rate, lagged somewhat behind economic developments: slavery, for example, was not abolished until 1962.
Ibn Saud’s descendants comprise the dynasty which has since ruled Saudi Arabia. They are, like most Saudis, adherents to the Wahhabi sect, which subscribes to an orthodox variant of Sunni Muslim doctrine expounded by the 18th century religious scholar Mohammed bin Abdul Wahhab. Islamic laws are strictly enforced by the
mutawwa (religious police). The oil search of the 1930s brought the USA into contact with Saudi Arabia for the first time and they quickly became the country’s principal Western ally. Nonetheless, there was one issue on which Saudi and US policies were implacably opposed – Israel. Washington’s consistent support for the Jewish state has been a constant source of friction. This became spectacularly clear in 1973 when Saudi Arabia and Iran, two of the USA’s staunchest allies in the region, led the OPEC cartel in trebling the price of oil overnight in response to the West’s support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War.
The period of cool relations with the USA that followed came to an end with the revolution in Iran in 1979. Iran was perceived to pose a threat to Saudi Arabia for a number of reasons: the Shia branch of Islam followed by the Iranian mullahs is fundamentally opposed to the Sunni Wahhabi interpretation which prevails in Saudi Arabia; moreover, Iran is an important strategic force in the Gulf in its own right. For those reasons, as well as Arab solidarity, Saudi Arabia provided massive financial support – to the tune of over US$100 million – to Saddam Hussein’s regime during the Iran–Iraq war, which lasted most of the 1980s.
The Saudis were thus astonished in 1991 when, following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Saddam’s forces seemed to be poised to strike south and occupy parts of Saudi Arabia. After initial doubts and furious debates within the royal family, the US-led UN coalition was cleared to base its huge forces in the country prior to the ‘Desert Storm’ military operation which drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait. In the aftermath, the Saudis backed the US policy of ‘dual containment’ designed to keep both Iran and Iraq in check.
Nonetheless, the presence of American forces in the country remained an exceptionally sensitive political issue resented by much of the population. In 2002, as the American government geared up to launch operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Saudis made it clear that they would prefer the Americans to move elsewhere. They did, and Qatar became the main command and control center for the recent US military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The change in the Saudi position followed from a major shift in the country’s domestic politics. Several factors were at work but the most important is the effective replacement of King Fahd, who after prolonged illness is effectively an invalid, by Crown Prince Abdullah. The Crown Prince is generally less pro-American than Fahd and takes a harder line on oil pricing. There has also been considerable friction between the two governments in the wake of the 9-11 terrorist attacks, not least because the bulk of the hijackers were Saudi nationals.
Abdullah belongs to the generation of leaders who have governed Saudi Arabia since the death of Abdul Aziz, all of whom are now in their 70s: there is no clear line of succession and there may be a debilitating power struggle among the 6000 male descendants who now make up the House of Saud. The most likely victors are the branch of the family descended from one of Ibn Saud’s wives, bint Sudairi, who form a powerful clan within the group (commonly known as the ‘Sudairi Seven’). Abdullah is not among them but all – and a number of their immediate relatives – occupy key ministerial, administrative and diplomatic posts.
Abdullah has also taken some tentative steps towards relaxing the royal family’s political stranglehold, mainly to appease international opinion and increasingly vocal domestic reformers. Plans for municipal council elections were announced in October 2003. These elections were the first elections to a Government body in Saudi Arabia. Polling took place between February and April 2005.
King Fahd died on 1 August 2005. Crown Prince Abdullah was confirmed as King and Prince Sultan as Crown Prince.
GovernmentSaudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy with no political parties. The King appoints a Council of Ministers to run day-to-day affairs. A consultative council (
Majlis as-Shura), numbering about 60, has been established to advise the monarch; it has no formal powers.
EconomySaudi Arabia has the world’s largest oil reserves (about 20% of proven deposits) and is also currently the world’s largest producer. Oil and natural gas products now account for 35% of Saudi GDP, 75% of government revenue and 85% of export income.
The non-oil economy is devoted to agriculture and newly developed industries (considerable effort has been put into ensuring adequate irrigation and industrial water supplies in a country with extremely low rainfall). Agriculture, which supports a little over 10% of the workforce, produces wheat, fruit, vegetables, barley, eggs and poultry, in most of which the kingdom is now self-sufficient. In addition to oil and gas, there are other confirmed and exploitable mineral deposits including limestone, gypsum and marble plus phosphates, bauxite and gold.
The industrial sector produces petrochemicals, steel, engineering and construction materials and a wide range of consumer goods. The service sector is the fastest growing part of the economy at present, with finance and business services, consultancies and property services prominent.
The rapid expansion of the Saudi economy from the 1960s onwards stalled during the late 1980s as overstretched finances and persistently low world oil prices forced the Saudi exchequer to rein in its spending plans (government debt is now nearly 100% of GDP – much of which, such as US$40 billion of loans to Iraq, may not be recovered).
This has had unfortunate consequences for the large body of foreign labor (an estimated 35% of the workforce) upon which the Saudis rely for much of their technical, managerial and menial labor. Foreigners are now barred from a range of occupations as the government seeks to tackle Saudi unemployment, which is estimated to be around 25%.
Meanwhile, the average Saudi income has fallen by around 40% in the last 20 years. At present, the economy is picking up, growing by 6.6% in 2005.
Since the late 1990s, the Saudis have gradually introduced economic reforms. A thriving private sector is viewed as essential to the government’s objective of diversifying the economy and reducing reliance on the oil and gas sector. Some state-owned businesses have been sold and a number of measures taken to deregulate the economy and open up domestic markets to foreign competition.
To that end, a trade agreement has been signed with the European Union, and Saudi Arabia is expected to join the World Trade Organization in due course. Saudi Arabia is the most influential member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and of the Islamic Development Bank.
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