The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia celebrates the founding day of the Saudi state nearly three hundred years ago. A long and great history has passed, which witnessed the stages of prosperity and the stages of the fall of the state. And because I read history, I find it helps to understand today and helps to anticipate the future.
The anniversary of the founding day opens the door to discussion. Was the Saudi state a necessity three centuries ago? Is it true that it was founded to fight polytheism? Was it really not colonized by the great powers? How did you deal with international conflicts?
In the year 1727, the beginnings of a new state in the Arabian Peninsula emerged from the town of Diriyah, which was crowded with dozens of microscopic states. Practically, since the end of the Rightly Guided Caliphate, there was no central state until Muhammad bin Saud came, and succeeded in eliminating the independent city-states and villages, and creating a large state entity.
As for Sheikh Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab, he came to him fleeing from a neighboring town, (Al-Uyaynah); Because he was the only one who was able to protect him.
Historically, the sheikh was an important and influential figure in the framework of his role as a religious reformer, and he was one of the men of Imam Muhammad bin Saud, but his biography and role were distorted in later ages. It depicted Najd and the peninsula as a land of semi-polytheists, and he was the savior. His biography was woven with exaggeration to match the story of the Messenger, peace be upon him, the call for monotheism, the outcast emigration from Al-Uyaynah to Diriyah, and his call to Islam and his wars for it. The version closest to reality is that the sheikh was a preacher, and most of the people of Najd and the Arabian Peninsula were not polytheists. The exaggeration was not intended to sanctify the sheikh, but to sanctify the role of the clergy who came after him. Some groups exaggerated his biography in order to give themselves legitimacy in power or participation in it. And the state did not extend its authority over most of the Arabian Peninsula, except after the death of Muhammad bin Saud and his successor, Abdul Aziz bin Saud, who ruled for about 40 years. Iraq and Syria during the reign of the third “King” Saud bin Abdulaziz. It was the largest Arab country since the Abbasid era.
In recent decades, and with the rise of the extremist religious current, a narrative has prevailed that sanctifies the sheikh, exaggerating his role and insulting him with comparisons. The hardliners forbade any dissenting narrative. Dr. Aida bin Metrik Al-Juhani wrote his doctoral dissertation on “Najd before Wahhabism”, and he exposed that stage upon which allegations were built that it was a polytheistic country. Persecuted for any dissenting idea, he asked his alma mater in Seattle, Washington, not to publish his thesis for five years. He hid it and later found that it was issued from Beirut, translated in a book in his name, and it is still one of the important references about that era. Through it, we can realize that the project of establishing a central state in the disjointed peninsula into dozens of states, which are fighting over power and resources, was never aimed at spreading Islam, in countries that are all Muslims, but the goal was to stop the invasion, looting, and famines and resort to a central state like the rest. regions of the world.
What about three hundred years ago, it is said that the country was not subjected to colonization, unlike the countries of the region? There was no colonialism similar to the European armies, as happened to the Levant, except that the Ottomans invaded it for many years, and colonized wide parts of it for decades, and they either fought directly, or funded the other parties with weapons, in Al-Ahsa, the Hijaz, the north and the south. The British were present, symbolically, through their management of the forces of the Sharif of Mecca. All of them were expelled during the years of founding battles that lasted thirty years. It is not true that they were only internal battles.
Influence and balance in international relations is a delicate and difficult process, especially before the outbreak of World War II, when there was fierce competition between the British and Germans, and to a lesser extent the Soviets, to attract Saudi Arabia into their alliances. King Abdulaziz, the founder of the third Saudi state, sought to establish a balanced relationship with the major powers, but the British Empire was still the most dominant in that part of the world. The king gave the oil concession to the United States, and it did not have a military presence, and he sought to buy weapons from Hitler’s Germany, which were delivered to him through other countries, as well as weapons from Italy, and he maintained a diplomatic relationship with Moscow, which was preoccupied internally under Stalin’s rule, and did not want to anger Britain, also.