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Biography of Abd al-Aziz ibn SaudName: Abd al-Aziz ibn SaudBirth Date: 1880 Death Date: November 9, 1953 Place of Birth: Riyadh, Najd Province, Arabia Nationality: Saudi Gender: Male Occupations: king Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud (1880-1953) was an Arab political leader who founded the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. During his rule, from 1932 to 1953, much of the Arabian peninsula developed from a group of desert sheikhdoms to a politically unified kingdom with new wealth from oil fields.Ibn Saud was born in Riyadh in the central Arabian principality of Nejd. He escaped with his father, Abd al-Rahman, to exile in Kuwait in 1891, when the rival Rashidi family seized Saudi lands. In 1902 the young Ibn Saud with a small number of warriors recaptured Riyadh in a daring raid.Although the modern history of Arabia dates from the Saudi reoccupation of Riyadh, there was much history and tradition in the young sheikh's policy. Ibn Saud revived the family alliance with the Wahhabis, an 18th-century puritanical reform movement within Islam which had spread over central Arabia. Skillfully combining the Wahhabi religious zeal with his own personal …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…a year later that of the Nejd; in 1932 he joined them in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.In 1933 Ibn Saud granted the first oil concession to an American company later known as ARAMCO, but the worldwide depression and World War II prevented much further development. Following the war, oil production and government revenues from oil royalties grew very quickly. Government income, synonymous with the King's personal funds, jumped from less than million in 1920 to million in 1939 to over 0 million in 1953, when Ibn Saud died. Further Reading There are several good studies of Ibn Saud: H. St. J. B. Philby, Arabian Jubilee (1953); Jacques Benoist-Méchin, Arabian Destiny (trans. 1957); and two studies by David Howarth, The Desert King: Ibn Saud and His Arabia (1964) and The Desert King: The Life of Ibn Saud (1968). K. S. Twitchell, Saudi Arabia (1947; 3d ed. 1958), and H. St. J. B. Philby, Sa'udi Arabia (1955), are good general histories. |