Monarch of Arabia
The capture of Riad fifty (Moslem) years ago, which Ibn Saud and his subjects have been celebrating this week, was an act of inspired buccaneering. By it Ibn Saud seized the imagination of his contemporaries and began the slow conquest of the Arabian peninsula which was ultimately to bring )im fame, wealth and honour. Fifty years is a long period of pe...fer, and the congratula- tions which have been showered on the king in the last few days will naturally have encouraged speculation as to what is going to happen when he dies or becomes incapacitated from ruling. He has, it is true, gone against tradition to the extent of nominating one of his sons as his heir ; but will the succession be universally accepted ? Will his defeated rivals, notably the Hashemites and the Rashidis, stage a comeback ? Will the kingdom split into its age-old provincial divisions? What form will the diplomatic inter- vention (if any) of Britain, the United States, Egypt and the other Arab States take ? What about the oil companies ? All these questions start a chain of largely fruitless guesswork, but they are nonetheless legitimate, for the union of Arabia, to which we have now become accustomed, is in fact the creation of one man, and has been kept in being solely by the force of one man's personality. Whatever emerges after Ibn Saud's death, the pattern is bound to be different from that of today. If it had not been for the enormous revenues which now flow in from oil royalties there can be no doubt that even Ibn Saud would have been unable to continue governing his kingdom on the lines of traditional paternalism which he instinctively favours. Today in Arabia there are still no secular courts, hardly any civil service, and no public accounting. There are, it is -true, aeroplanes, motor-cars and telephones, to shock the more orthodox of this most orthodox monarch's subjects, but the West and its ways have not yet been allowed to break down the religious and tribal bases of society. How much longer can the huge barren peninsula of Arabia (and the oil beneath it) remain insulated from the contaminating world ? Not longer than the life of the great king.
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