55

The Āl Su‘ūd (Sa‘ūd)

1148-/1735-

Originally in south-eastern Najd; in the twentieth century kings of Hijāz and Najd and then of Su‘ūdī (Saudi) Arabia

Su‘ūd b. Muḥammad b. Muqrin (d. 1148/1735), from the ‘Anaza tribe, was amīr of Dir‘iyya in the Wādī Hanīfa district of Najd, and Dir‘iyya remained the seat of the Su‘ūd family until its destruction by Ibrāhīm Pasha in the early nineteenth century and the end of the first Su‘ūdī state. The rise of the family was connected with the movement of Muḥammad b. ‘Abd al-Wahhāb, a puritanical reformer in the conservative legal tradition of Ḥanbalism and the thirteenth-fourteenth-century religious leader in Damascus, Ibn Taymiyya. He stressed the unity and transcendence of God and the duty of avoiding all forms of shirk, associating other persons or things with God, one practical effect of this being hostility to such aspects of popular religion in Arabia as the cult of saints and their shrines; when the Su‘ūdī-led Wahhābīs extended their power through much of the peninsula, they systematically destroyed such manifestations of (to them) bid‘a, heretical innovation. It seems that the Su‘ūdī amīrs saw the material advantages of harnessing Wahhābī enthusiasm for their plans of political expansion in Najd. By the end of the eighteenth century, all Najd was controlled by them, and raids were made against Ottoman Syria and Iraq, culminating in the sack of the Shī‘ī holy city of Karbalā‘ in 1218/1803, regarded as an object of superstitious veneration; and the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina were seized and purged of idolatrous features.

The collapse of this power and of the first Su‘ūdī state came as a result of these Su‘ūdī provocations of the Ottomans. The sultan deputed the governor of Egypt, Muḥammad ‘Alī Pasha (see above, no. 34), to deal with the Arabian situation. Hence in 1233/1818 the latter‘s son Ibrāhīm took Dir‘iyya and destroyed it utterly, carrying off the Su‘ūdī amīr for execution in Istanbul. The second Su‘ūdī amirate revived cautiously in eastern Arabia during the middle years of the century. From his capital Riyāḍ, Fayṣal I extended his power over al-Ahsā in the eastern Arabian coastland, but a second Turco-Egyptian occupation took place in 1254–9/1838–43, with Fayṣal carried off to Egypt and Su‘ūdī vassals of the Ottomans placed on the throne. Fayṣal escaped from captivity, and in 1259/1843 successfully regained power in his homeland, with this second reign marking a high point in Su‘ūdī fortunes. But after his death, the family was rent by internal disputes; al-Ahsā was occupied by the Ottoman governor of Iraq, Midḥat Pasha; and the second Su‘ūdī state came to an end in 1305/1887 when the Su‘ūdīs‘ rival Muḥammad Ibn Rashīd of Hā‘il (see below, no. 57) occupied Riyāḍ, so that the Su‘ūdis had to take refuge in Kuwait.

The establishment of the third, and present, Su‘ūdī state in the twentieth century is connected with the long-lived and remarkable figure of ‘Abd al-‘Azīz Ibn Su‘ūd, who, with tacit British support, eventually subdued the pro-Ottoman Ā1 Rashīd, annexed ‘Asīr, prevented the Sharif Ḥusayn from setting himself up as caliph in 1924 (see below, no. 56), took over Hijāz shortly afterwards, and became King of Hijāz and Najd and then of Su‘ūdī Arabia, controlling by then nearly three-quarters of the peninsula. The large-scale exploitation of oil in eastern Arabia, begun in Ibn Su‘ūd‘s time, has transformed what was originally a desert state into a power of international economic significance, especially after the 1970s’ oil-price boom, but has also brought to the country internal religious and social tensions.

Zambaur, 124 and Table L.

EI¹ ‘Ibn Sa‘ud‘ (J. H. Mordtmann); EI² ‘Su‘ūd, Āl‘ (Elizabeth M. Sirriyyeh).

Naval Intelligence Division, Geographical Handbook series, Western Arabia and the Red Sea, London 1946, 265–70, 283–6, with a genealogical table at p. 286.

H. St J. Philby, Arabian Jubilee, London 1952, with detailed genealogical tables at pp. 250–71.

idem, Saudi Arabia, London 1955.

R. Bayley Winder, Saudi Arabia in the Nineteenth Century, London 1965.