6. Ibn Saud

King of Najd 

Through Rashid Rida, an important pole shift of major consequence for the world of twentieth-century Islam occurred, the alliance of the Salafi movement with the Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia, by supporting the ascension to power of Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud (1875 – 1953), known simply as Ibn Saud, despite the fact that he had previously supported Sharif Hussein’s revolt and bid to lead a new Arab Caliphate based in Mecca, was Rida, who had already tried to recruit him to the Pan-Arab goals of his secret society, the Society of the Arab Association.[1] As it turned out, in an additional act of treachery against Sharif Hussein, with the signing of the secret Sykes-Picot agreement, the British also intended to remove him from Mecca and have the Hijaz ruled instead by their long-standing Wahhabi ally, Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud (1875 – 1953), known simply as Ibn Saud, who ruled parts of the kingdom since 1902, having previously been Emir, Sultan, and King of Najd, and King of Hijaz, but had no interest in the Caliphate. By creating the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—the only country in the world named after a family—in the vacuum of the Ottoman Empire, and in possession of two of the holiest places in the Islamic world, Mecca and Medina, and as an advocate for the puritanical and belligerent sect of Wahhabism, Ibn Saud incepted a truly tragic era for Islam, not only sidelining the noble traditions of traditional Islam, but putting the oil wealth of the kingdom at the disposal of the most devious acts perpetrated in the twentieth century through their collaboration with the CIA and the sponsoring of Islamic terrorism.

It’s hard to believe that Rida could state the following in all seriousness, and it must be concluded that he willingly adopted the role of assisting in manufacturing the political illusions that were necessary for Ibn Saud’s difficult challenge of presenting himself as a legitimate ruler of the Muslims, as nothing could be further from the truth:

 

England feels that one of the greatest dangers to her policy in Arab or Islamic countries is the existence among the Muslims of a strong emir, especially if he believes in his religion, adheres to it, and is backed by a people of true faith, like Ibn Saud and his people.[2]

 

“Considering that Rida had already predicted in the 1910s that Jewish ascendancy in Palestine would endanger al-Aqsa and result in the ethnic cleansing of the Arab inhabitants,”  Shavit asks, “how can one explain his moderate interest in Zionism in the aftermath of the Great War and the Balfour Declaration?[3]” Rather, it would appear that Rida’s anti-Semitic remarks only served to justify the need to oppose the Zionists ambitions when it suited his political schemes. That is, in support of the Arab Revolt of 1916. With that complete, the new focus was pan-Arabism and support for the Saudi usurpers in the Hijaz, towards creating a Salafi neo-Caliphate.

Although he had supported an Arab Caliphate during the first two years of World War I, as shown by Mahmoud Haddad, Rida seems to have realized by the beginning of 1916 that the British were not going to support its establishment to replace the Ottoman one. And, while Rida backed the Arab Revolt, he nevertheless also emphasized his allegiance to the Ottoman Caliphate, differentiating it from the CUP government. Rida further rationalized that the Arab Revolt was not a political and military endeavor intended to liberate the Arabs from Turkish rule, but instead a pre-emptive tactic to protect the Arab Peninsula, and particularly the Hijaz, from falling under European domination:

 

Sharif [Hussein] has rendered the greatest service to Islam. Foreseeing the possible destruction of the [Ottoman] state, he became afraid that the sanctuary (Haram) of God and his prophet and their outer regions of the Arabian Peninsula might be among the areas that would fall outside Islamic sovereignty… In declaring independence he put the Hijaz under a purely Islamic authority which could lead to a large Arab Islamic state.[4]

 

In 1919, Rida advised Sharif Hussein in the Hijaz and Ibn Saud in Najd—then rivals for the control of Arabia—not to fight one another. However, following the establishment of the Mandates in the early 1920s, Rida began condemning Hussein for relying on foreign colonial powers to remain in authority.[5] Despite Sharif Hussein’s futile protests, the Zionists, by way of the British, officially obtained a Mandate for Palestine from the League of Nations in 1922. Still refusing to abide by their original obligation, the further attempt made by the British to reach an agreement with Hussein failed in 1923–24, with negotiations finally suspended in March 1924. Within six months, the British withdrew their support in favor of their central Arabian ally, Ibn Saud, who proceeded to conquer Hussein’s kingdom.[6] By 1923, Rida began calling on other Arab leaders to rescue the Hijaz from Hashemite rule. When Hussein declared himself “Caliph,” only two days after Atatürk abolished the institution in March 1924, Rida chose to lend his full support to the Saudis.[7]

 

Third Saudi State

Ibn Saud became the founder of the Third Saudi state, heir to the two earlier Saudi states, after he managed to capture the city of Riyadh on January 13, 1902, which was followed by long series of conflicts and conquests ultimately led to the establishment of the modern and contemporary Saudi state, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A traitorous thug-for-hire to the British, self-professed “Guardian of the Sacred Precincts” (Mecca and Medina), in truth, Ibn Saud was a self-serving scoundrel of the highest magnitude. As Säid K. Aburish, in The Rise, Corruption and the Coming Fall of the House of Saud, described him:

 

While more than a few among the historians, journalists, businessmen and even CIA agents who have written books and articles about Ibn Saud allude to some of his unattractive traits such as public beheadings, amputations and floggings, his childish dependence on a full-time interpreter of dreams and his financial maintenance of hundreds of wives, they insist on seeing them either as necessary to govern the Arabs or as a source of outright amusement. There is a disturbing absence of judgement, moral or practical, which ignores the abuse of his wives, slaves and concubines. Overlooked are the fact that he roared with laughter when he told stories about hacking his enemies to death…

Progressive, wise, benevolent and fun-loving were not words that applied to the man, and even the accounts of his more ardent supporters reveal a lecher and a bloodthirsty autocrat and Bedouin chief for hire who did not see far, did not represent his culture and set the smallest of his personal pleasures above the welfare of his people.[8]

 

By 1891, the Rashidi clan, consistently patriotic to the Ottoman Empire, under the leader Mohammad Ibn Rasheed, had succeeded in defeating the Saudi/Wahhabi clan and in capturing Riyadh from them. Abdullah’s youngest brother, Abdulrahman, fled to the region of Kuwait with his own fifteen-year old son, Ibn Saud. From inside the diwan or stateroom of the fort-like structure that was his palace, Ibn Saud would begin the court proceedings sharing his most unconscionable interpretation of Islam, an utterly shameless excuse for his thuggery:

 

The Arab understands two things only: the Word of Allah and the sword. Compared with His word the accepted Arab notions of loyalty, brotherhood, hospitality, honour and beauty amount to very little. And the imported ideas of freedom, equality and representative government do even less. The word of the Koran is supreme; all is derived from it and everything is subordinated to it. The sword is how the Word is carried out.[9]

 

In 1901, Ibn Saud offered himself to the Ottomans as willing “to accept any terms you impose on me.”[10] When he was rejected, he sent a plea to the British Resident in the Gulf, C.A. Kemball, with the following shameless offering: “May the eyes of the British Government be fixed upon us and may we be considered as your protégés.”[11] Then, on the night of January 15, 1902, Ibn Saud and his forces captured Riyadh from the Rashidis, marking the beginning of the Third Saudi State, loaded with weapons that could have only been supplied by the British. One of Ibn Saud’s first acts of savagery was to terrorize its inhabitants by displaying the severed heads of his enemies on spikes at the gate of the town, and burning over 1,200 peoples to death.[12]

In 1903, a Wahabi emissary met the Political Agent at Bahrain, and tried to obtain British backing. Simultaneously, the Ibn Saud is reported to have received an offer of aid from the Russian Consul-General at Bushehr. Failing to gain British assistance, he was forced to tum to the Sublime Porte in Istanbul. Ibn Saud met a senior Turkish official at Safwan in southern Iraq, and was appointed Qaimaqam, or district governor of Najd under Ottoman suzerainty.[13] By 1906, Ibn Saud, having killed ibn Rashid, established himself in Najd. In the same year, Ibn Saud made three further overtures to Great Britain for recognition. Ibn Saud wanted to subscribe to the Trucial System and accept a British political agent.[14] The Trucial System was a group of tribal confederations to the south of the Persian Gulf whose leaders had signed protective treaties, or truces, with the United Kingdom between 1820 and 1892. As described by Gary Troeller in The Birth of Saudi Arabia: Britain and the Rise of the House of Sa’ud:

 

Consequent to the invasions, increased outbreaks of piracy in the Gulf prompted Britain to take stern measures to establish order on the Arabian coast of the Persian Gulf. After several punitive expeditions and the conclusion of many agreements, by mid-century the “Pirate Coast” came to be known as the Trucial Coast. The latter owed its name to the truces arranged by the British between the various petty shaikhs of the littoral.[15]

 

In September 1906, Major Percy Cox (1864 – 1937) wrote to the Government of India stating that he thought it advisable to enter into some sort of relationship with Ibn Saud. Cox became Political Resident in the Persian Gulf in 1904, having been handpicked by Lord Curzon. Among those who worked under him were Arnold Wilson, Gertrude Bell, and Harry St. John “Jack” Philby (1885 – 1960), a British intelligence officer converted to Islam and a protégé of E.G. Browne.[16] While visiting his friend Sheikh Mubarak al-Sabah in Kuwait in February 1910, Ibn Saud made the first official British contact with the British Political Agent in Kuwait, Captain William H.I. Shakespear (1878 – 1915). Shakespear, who was soon to become Ibn Saud’s principal British supporter and advisor, promptly filed a report to Cox, recommending Ibn Saud “as a broad-minded ‘straight’ man, who could probably be trusted further than most Arabs.”[17] Ibn Saud completed his conquest of the Najd and the eastern coast of Arabia in 1912. He then founded his notorious henchmen, the Ikhwan, a military-religious brotherhood, which was to assist in his later conquests. In May 1914, as a result of his unsuccessful attempts to gain protection from the British, Ibn Saud concluded a secret agreement with the Ottomans, making him the Wali or governor of Najd. However, due to the outbreak of World War I, the agreement did not materialize, and seeing the Ottomans’ attempt to develop a connection with Ibn Saud, the British government soon established diplomatic relations with him.[18]

In January 1915, Shakespear offered Ibn Saud a formal alliance with Britain.[19] Officially at war with Turkey, the British promptly sent Shakespear to meet again with Ibn Saud in Riyadh where he signed with him an official draft treaty. Intent on exploiting him in their World War I efforts against the Ottoman-supported Rashidis in central Arabia, the British officially recognized Ibn Saud as the “legitimate” ruler of Najd under their protection.[20] Then during that same January, Shakespear encouraged Ibn Saud to attack the Rashidis. As an official British officer and a political advisor to Ibn Saud, Shakespear himself joined the Saudi/Wahhabi forces in active combat in the battle of Jarrab. However, not only did the Rashidis manage a victory, but also they killed Shakespear and then cut off his head, which was then handed over to the Ottoman authorities who had it hung on one of the main gates of Medina as proof of Ibn Saud’s collaboration with the British.[21]

 

Treaty of Darin 

In December 1915, the British entered into the Treaty of Darin with Ibn Saud—an upgraded version of the Shakespear’s draft treaty from the previous January—which officially made the lands of the House of Saud a British protectorate and attempted to define the boundaries of the developing Saudi state. In exchange, Ibn Saud pledged to again make war against Ibn Rashid, who was an ally of the Ottomans. The British aim was to guarantee the sovereignty of Kuwait, Qatar and the Trucial States. Ibn Saud agreed not to attack British protectorates, but he also did not promise to not attack the Sharif of Mecca.[22] Ibn Saud also agreed to enter World War I in the Middle East against the Ottoman Empire as an ally of Britain.[23] In 1918, he asked permission from his British sponsors to finally attack the Hijaz, with the strange pledge:

 

All that what [sic] belonged to my father and forefathers in the past has been inherited to me. I do not want anything more than that and by the Will of God and that of yourself the British Government I am quite ready for discussion if you want.[24]

 

Philby, Bell, and Cox, who all wanted to depose Sharif Hussein, encouraged Ibn Saud in late 1918 and 1919 to attack the Kingdom of the Hijaz. After a series of minor clashes with Sharif Hussein’s forces, the British-backed Ikhwan attacked Turabah, only sixty miles from the Sharifian capital city of Mecca. Prince Abdullah, Sharif Hussein’s son, who was in charge of the Hijazi army in Turabah, was caught completely off guard when, on the night of May 25, 1919, while the Hijazis were in their sleep, the rabid Wahhabis attacked slaughtered every man they could lay their hands on, decimating the Hejazi army. As probably the worst massacre in the entire history of the Arabian Peninsula, over 6,000 Hijazi corpses covered the battlefield.[25] Abdullah managed to escape in the dark in his nightshirt.[26] One youth who was fortunate enough to escape the massacre remarked:

 

I saw blood at Turabah running like a river between the palms. I saw the dead piled up in the citadel before I jumped out the window. But the strangest thing I saw… was the sight of the Ikhwan during the battle stopping long enough to enter the mosque and pray, then returning to the fray.[27]

 

To solidify their friendship, the British in July 1919 extended an official invitation to Ibn Saud to visit London and to meet King George V personally. But with the situation with the Ikhwan, Ibn Saud could not afford to leave Najd, and opted instead to send a delegation headed by his second-oldest son, 15-year old Faisal. Accompanied by Philby, Faisal went to London where he met King George V at Buckingham Palace at the end of October 1919. Faisal presented the British monarch with a letter of greeting from his father along with two presents: ornamental Arabian swords inlaid with pearls with hilt and sheath of solid gold. In return, King George V presented Faisal with an autographed photograph of himself and the queen.[28]

Philby, who became Ibn Saud’s official British advisor, wrote a book about his experiences titled Arabia of the Wahhabis, where he shares some startling revelations about Ibn Saud’s Wahhabism and how it helped him justify his treason. After Ibn Saud had finished reading from a chapter of the Quran referring to Christians, Philby reports that:

 

Ibn Sa’ud, by way of commentary and turning to me, remarked that he unlike Faisal was of the stock of Isma’il—“cousins to you, for you are of the stock of Ishaq.” The Turks, he said, were Aulad Iblis [children of Satan], being Tatars by origin. And so we fell into a discussion of his administrative methods, that mixture of uncompromising severity and unreasoning generosity which experience has shown to be the ideal system in a Badawin country.”… Thus in every way within his power Ibn Sa’ud, in preparation for his coming campaign, was laying the foundations of a general acceptance of his basic policy of an alliance with Britain.[29]

 

According to Philby, Ibn Saud explained that he preferred Christians to non-Wahhabi Muslims because they were Mushrikeen, or idol-worshippers. According to Philby:

 

 “Why!” he said, “if you English were to offer me of your daughters to wife I would accept her, making only the condition that any children resulting from the marriage should be Muslims. But I would not take of the daughters of the Sharif or of the people of Mecca or other Muslims, whom we reckon as Mushrikin. I would eat of meat slain by the Christians without question. Ay, but it is the Mushrik, he who associates others in worship with God, that is our abomination. As for Christians and Jews,” here he quoted a text from the Quran, “they are ‘people of a book,’ though,” and here somewhat naively he permitted himself a delightful dash of inconsistency, “I like not the Jews—they are contemptible by reason of their too great love of money.” Sincere as he was in his own religion, Ibn Sa’ud was fully convinced of the practical advantages of a British alliance, and it seemed to me in these days that anything like a cordial reaction on our part would result surely and steadily in the establishment of the toleration of Christians as a basic factor of the Wahhabi creed.[30]

 

H.R.P. Dickson, newly appointed Political Agent at Bahrain, reported that he had been struck by “the affection of Bin Saud for everything British, and his almost pathetic trust in H.M.’s Government.”[31] So, in 1920, when the British made their compromise, as compensation for the betrayal of the Sykes-Picot agreement, with Sharif Hussein by proposing two kingships for his sons Abdullah and Faisal respectively over Jordan and Iraq, the jilted Ibn Saud quickly grew increasingly agitated and envious. Ibn Saud believed he was being outflanked by three Hashemite kingdoms in the Hejaz, Jordan, and Iraq. In April 1920, he wrote to the British Political Agent in Bahrain, warning “the British Government has no sincere friend among the Arabs, except myself… Consider the matter before anything happens and bridge the gulf before it widens.”[32]

Ibn Saud began widespread enforcement of the new kingdom’s ideology, based on the teachings of Abdul Wahhab. With his rivals eliminated, the rigid Wahhabi ideology was in full force, ending nearly 1,400 years of accepted religious practices surrounding the Hajj, the majority of which were sanctioned by a millennium of scholarship.[33] By the time they had subdued the country, the Saudi had carried out 40,000 public executions and 350,000 amputations, respectively 1 and 7 per cent of the estimated population of four million.[34] In addition, one million inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula were forced to flee for their lives to other parts of the Arab world, never to return.[35] Nevertheless, on 23 November 1916, Percy Cox arranged the Three Leaders Conference in Kuwait where Ibn Saud was awarded the Star of India and the Order of the British Empire.[36] He was appointed an honorary Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire (GCIE) on 1 January 1920.[37] He was awarded the British Order of the Bath (GCB) in 1935,[38] the American Legion of Merit in 1947,[39] and the Spanish Order of Military Merit (Grand Cross with White Decoration) in 1952.[40]

 

Savior of the Holy sites

After a visit to the newly conquered Arabian Peninsula, Rida did his part to legitimize Ibn Saud’s criminal usurpation of power in the eyes of the world’s Muslims, by publishing a work praising Ibn Saud as the “savior” of the Holy sites, a practitioner of “authentic” Islamic rule and two years later produced an anthology of Wahhabi treatises. An alliance between Salafism and Wahhabism had already begin after ibn Saud began his conquest of the Arabian Peninsula in 1901, when Wahhabi scholars began alliances with the major figures of the early Salafi movement, such as Jamal al-Din Qasimi (1866 – 1914), Tahir al Jazairi (1852 – 1920), Khayr al-Din Alusi, and Rashid Rida, with whom they shared a common interest in Ibn Taymiyyah, the permissibility of Ijtihad, and the need to “purify” Islam from the practices of Bid’ah. Al-Qasimi wrote of Abdul Wahhab, praising his efforts in eradicating superstitions and heresies. As early as the 1900s, ibn Saud’s victories were applauded by Rida, who launched his project of re-habilitating Wahhabism, which he would popularize across the Muslim World through his Al-Manar, which was first published in 1898 and continued until his death in 1935.

Rida’s endorsement of Wahhabism was the decisive factor in the spread of the movement’s influence beyond outside of the Arabian Peninsula, calling the Wahhabis “the best Muslims,” as they observed the doctrines of Imam ibn Hanbal and ibn Taymiyyah,[41] condemning rumors of Wahhabis desecrating graves and slaughtering women and children in their conquests as “British propaganda.”[42] Rida also became seriously involved in the editing and publication of the works of Ibn Taymiyyah, and with Ibn Saud’s financial support, achieved far-reaching influence in the Muslim world through Al-Manar. In 1919, Rida published Abdul Wahhab’s Kashf al-Shubuhat (“Removal of Doubts”) and promoted Abdul Wahhab as a Mujaddid (renewer of the faith) of Islam the following year. During the 1920s, more than twenty Wahhabi works were published through the al-Manar Publishing House. Rida also published a defense of Ibn Saud, The Wahhabis and Hijaz, which detailed how Sharif Hussein and his son Faisal forfeited their right to rule Hijaz by selling the Arabs to the West for the sake of dynastic aims. In a patent abuse of the facts, Rida claimed that Britain’s goal was to undermine Islam and prevent the rise of a Muslim ruler like Ibn Saud, whom Rida praised as the savior of the Haramayn, the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and a practitioner of true Islamic rule.[43] Rida also advocated the political restoration of an Islamic Caliphate and his campaigns for pan-Islamist revival through the doctrines Ibn Taymiyyah’s helped Wahhabism gain widespread acceptance amongst the cosmopolitan elite of the Arab world, once dominated by Ottoman Empire.[44]

Ibn Saud asked Rida to send him qualified scholars to serve in the holy cities.[45] Between 1926 and 1928, Rida facilitated the transfer of at least eight of his closest disciples to support the new Wahhabi regime in the Hijaz, though five stood out as the most prominent.[46] Perhaps the most famous member of this group was Muhammad Bahjat al-Bitar (1894 – 1976), who had studied with Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi and other major Ulama in Damascus. Bitar became professor and supervisor of the education system at the holy mosque of Mecca, and was later chosen as director of the new Islamic Institute. Muhammad Hamid al-Fiqi (1892 – 1959), the son of one of Abduh’s classmates at al-Azhar, became president of the newly created Meccan Department of Printing and Publication. He also established al-Islah, the first modern Islamic periodical in the Saudi state, which was modeled after al-Manar. Abd al-Zahir Abu al-Samh (1882 – 1951), who had been a fellow student of Abduh, was hired by Ibn Saud as chief imam and Khatib (one who delivers the sermon) at the holy mosque in Mecca. Muhammad Abd al-Razzaq Hamza (1890 – 1972) was given the position of Imam and Khatib for the morning prayers at the Prophet’s mosque in Medina.[47]

Particularly influential was Taqi-ud-Din al-Hilali (1893 – 1987), since referred to as the father of “Wahhabi-inspired Salafism” in Morocco, a Moroccan Salafi and former Sufi and friend of Abu al-Samh, who studied at Al-Azhar under Rida.[48] In 1923, he left for India, where he studied with major scholars of the Ahl-i Hadith movement in Lucknow and Mubarakpur.  He then moved to Zubayr in southern Iraq, where taught Arabic and religious sciences in a local school. Rida wrote to Ibn Saud to recommend Hilali to him, who was appointed teacher and supervisor of the faculty at the Prophet’s mosque in Medina, joining his friend Hamza.[49] In Medina, the notorious Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV), the state’s religious police, reported its findings to al-Hilali and Hamza, who then advised the local Amir on how to deal with the situation. Hamza eventually presided over the organization.[50] Abu al-Samh headed a similar committee in Mecca, where al-Bitar played a leading. Al-Hilali and Hamza were also instrumental in the establishment of a new program for training the guides for pilgrims in 1928. The head of the Directorate of General Education in Mecca placed al-Hilali and Hamza in charge of designing the curriculum, selecting the books, appointing the instructors, and supervising the classes. Al-Hilali and Hamza also helped in the founding of the the Saudi Scientific Institute in Mecca. The Directorate for General Education had already hired several other disciples of Rida to teach there, including al-Fiqi, al-Bitar and Abu Hajar, who succeeded in gaining the trust of locals, as the Wahhabis were often unwelcome in Mecca and Medina.[51]

In 1930, Sulaiman Nadvi (1884 –1953), then head of the Nadwat al Ulama in Lucknow, invited al-Hilali to teach Arabic at Dar al-Ulum. The Nadwat al-Ulama began its activities in 1892 as an association of some thirty Ulama who wished to reform Islamic education in British-ruled India, including Mahmud Hasan Deobandi and Ashraf Ali Thanwi. Its famous seminary, Dar al-Ulum, was founded six years later in Lucknow. Nadvi was a disciple of Shibli Nomani (1857 – 1914) a supporter of the Deobandi school and was associated with the Aligarh Movement.[52] Nomani, who preceded Nadvi as head of the Nadwat al-Ulama, had already invited Rida to Dar Al-Ulum in 1912.[53] It was at Dar al-Ulum, where he stayed until 1933, where that al-Hilali learned English.[54] Nadvi and al-Hilali founded al-Diya, which is regarded as “the first Arabic periodical in India with some circulation.”[55] Rida, reprinted the journal’s first editorial in al-Manar.[56]

 


[1] Tauber. “Rashid Rida as Pan-Arabist before World War I,” p. 108.

[2] Henri Lauzière. The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform in the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), p. 65.

[3] Shavit. “Zionism as told by Rashid Rida,” p. 33.

[4] “Aradal-khawass fi al-mas'ala al-'arabiyya,” al-Manar, 19 (August 29, 1916): 167; cited in Haddad. “Arab Religious Nationalism in the Colonial Era,” p. 270.

[5] Henri Lauzière. The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform in the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), p. 65.

[6] Sahar Huneidi. A Broken Trust: Sir Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians (I.B. Tauris, 2001), p. 72.

[7] Henri Lauzière. The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform in the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), p. 65.

[8] Saïd K. Aburish. The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1996), p. 9–10.

[9] Ibid., p. 9–26.

[10] Ibid., p. 152.

[11] Ibid.,

[12] Ibid., p. 14.

[13] Gary Troeller. The Birth of Saudi Arabia: Britain and the Rise of the House of Sa'ud (Routledge, 1976), p. 22.

[14] Ibid., p. xv–xvi

[15] Ibid., p. xv–xvi

[16] Ibid., p. 23.

[17] Ibid., p. 36.                                                                                                                                                                                                

[18] Gerd Nonneman. “Saudi–European relations 1902–2001: a pragmatic quest for relative autonomy.” International Affairs, 77: 3 (2002), p. 638.

[19] Abdullah Mohammad Sindi. “The Direct Instruments of Western Control over the Arabs: The Shining Example of the House of Saud.” Retrieved from http://www.social-sciences-and-humanities.com/PDF/house_of_saud.pdf

[20] David Holden & Richard Johns. The House of Saud (Sidgwick and Jackson, 1981), p. 48.

[21] “Biography and death.” Lives of the First World War (Imperial War Museum). Retrieved from https://livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk/story/55350

[22] Khaldoun Hasan Al-Naqeeb. Society and State in the Gulf and Arab Peninsula: A Different Perspective (Routledge, 1991), p. 69.

[23] Abdullah I of Jordan & Philip Perceval Graves. Memoirs (1950), p. 186.

[24] Troeller. The Birth of Saudi Arabia, p. 136.

[25] William Powell. Saudi Arabia and Its Royal Family (L. Stuart, 1982), p. 62.

[26] Abdullah Mohammad Sindi. “The Direct Instruments of Western Control over the Arabs: The Shining Example of the House of Saud.” Retrieved from http://www.social-sciences-and-humanities.com/PDF/house_of_saud.pdf

[27] Robert Lacey, The Kingdom (Hutchison, 1982), p. 150.

[28] Ibid., p. 153–157.

[29] Harry St. John Philby. Arabia of the Wahhabis (London: Constable & Co., 1928), p. 23–24.

[30] Ibid., p. 23.

[31] Troeller. The Birth of Saudi Arabia, p. 147.

[32] Ibid., p. 148.

[33] Cameron Zargar. “Origins of Wahhabism from Hanbali Fiqh.” Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law, (2017), p. 16.

[34] Aburish. The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud, p. 27.

[35] Aburish. The House of Saud, p. 24.

[36] Mohammed Al Mutari. “Control of al-Hasa (Saudi Arabia) and direct contact with Britain, 1910 –1916.” Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 5: 2 (August 2018), p. 144.

[37] The India Office and Burma Office List: 1947. HM Stationery Office. 1947. p. 107.

[38] Arburish. The House of Saud, p. 17.

[39] “Truman Presents Legion of Merit Medals at White House for Their Aid to the Allies.” The New York Times (February 19, 1947).

[40] Boletín Oficial del Estado: Boletín Oficial del Estado (in Spanish). Retrieved from http://www.boe.es/datos/pdfs/BOE//1952/113/A01826-01826.pdf

[41] Gilbert Achcar. The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives (London, UK: Actes Sud, 2010), pp. 106–107, 112.

[42] David Motadel. “Chapter 6: Anti-Imperialism and the Pan-Islamic Movement.” Islam and the European Empires (Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 191–192.

[43] Commins. The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia, p. 140; Hamid Algar. Wahhabism: A Critical Essay (Oneonta, New York: Islamic Publications International, 2002), p. 44.

[44] Peter Mandaville & Andrew Hammond. “4: Salafi Publishing and Contestation over Orthodoxy and Leadership in Sunni Islam.” Wahhabism and the World: Understanding Saudi Arabia’s Global Influence on Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022), p. 78.

[45] Lauzière. The Making of Salafism, p. 75.

[46] Ibid., p. 71.

[47] Ibid., p. 74.

[48] Ibid., p. 19.

[49] Ibid., p. 75.

[50] Ibid., p. 77.

[51] Ibid., p. 79.

[52] Nasim Yousaf. Pakistan’s Freedom & Allama Mashriqi; Statements, Letters, Chronology of Khaksar Tehrik (Movement), Period: Mashriqi's Birth to 1947, p. 3.

[53] Lauzière. The Making of Salafism, p. 106.

[54] Ibid.,, p. 106.

[55] Ibid.,, p. 108.

[56] Ibid.

Divide & Conquer