I was moved to write this article by a minor disagreement between George Paine and Dean Esmay in a separate thread on this weblog, regarding the legitimacy of the house of Saud. For example, Mr. Paine said, "During World War I the Saudis received Allied backing to attack the Ottomans (see 'Lawrence of Arabia' -- and this is why they were anointed by the British." This is not wrong, exactly, but 

First, while it is true enough that the Al Sauds have been "involved with the politics of Arabia for centuries," there is little indication they ruled anything larger than a few territories until the early twentieth century. Second, the Saudis did not institute the revolt against the Turks--they took advantage of it. Thirdly, they were not anointed by the British, they were accepted as the de facto rulers of a place the British had no interest in colonizing. Finally, the House of Saud does not figure in the highly fictionalized and romanticized film Lawrence of Arabia, nor for that matter its source material, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which I believe was written in part as a repudiation of Saudi rule.

The sad truth of Mao’s assertion, "power emanates from the barrel of a gun," could serve as a motto for too much of the 20th century. This is as true in the place we now call Saudi Arabia as anywhere. Much like European monarchies of earlier ages, the house of Saud gained the crown through a blend of conquest, diplomatic marriage and tenuous ties to an ancestor. In the Middle East where the path to political authority is descendency from the Prophet (through his daughter Fatima), the Al Saud family claims this legitimacy as a matter of course. (It is as if Western political capital required direct decadency from Jesus Christ.) However, without DNA evidence or other supporting documentation it is impossible to either prove or deny such a claim--which is precisely its strength in a world where familial relations are paramount. Yet the family’s blossoming is rooted in a more recent ancestor.

Mr. Paine echoes Daniel Pipes' tracing of the spiritual roots of the Saudis back to 1744, "when an ancestor joined forces with the leader of the Wahhabi religious movement." However Malcolm C. Peck traces the family’s rise further back: "The Al Saud clan's origins are somewhat obscure, with one account placing them initially in the eastern Arabian oasis of al-Qatif, then invited in the mid-15th century to Najd in central Arabia by squabbling clans in search of a mediator. What is certain is that by that time, the ancestors of the Al Saud established their rule over a small bit of territory in the vicinity of modern day Riyadh and forged close ties with the Anayzah tribal federation."

It was 18th century patriarch Muhammad ibn Saud who first linked the family’s fate to the preaching of Imam Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, who sought to return Islam to its roots. Wahabism emphasized "tawheed," the absolute oneness of Allah. It served as a focal point for Arab dissatisfaction with what they saw as the growing decadence and cosmopolitanism of Ottoman society. Pipes points out: "Saudi organization and Wahhabi doctrines created two kingdoms, both of which were destroyed within a few decades." Their rule was little more than tribal warlordism associated with a radical religious doctrine alien to the mainstream.

A hundred years ago, most of the Arabian Peninsula was sparsely inhabited and fealty lay at the clan level. Large sections of the north (the only part most ancient geographers and historians would have called "Arabia") and the shores of the Red Sea (the Hedjaz) were claimed by the Ottoman Empire, which enforced its will through local puppets. The holy cities of Mecca and Medina were ruled by Serif Hussein bin Ali of the Hashemite tribe. The interior and the Persian Gulf states belonged to anyone willing to shed the blood to hold them.

When Abdul Aziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud (hereafter referred to as Ibn Saud) led 40 men in a daring raid to reclaim his ancestral home Riyadh, in January 1902, the family was all but impoverished. His father’s rule had been overthrown in 1891 when their former allies, the Al Rashid family, claimed their territory. The family had been obliged to flee to Kuwait. Riyadh now became the base (or Al Qaeda in Arabic) for expanding Saudi control of central Arabia. His victory at Riyadh became legend in the region, and followers flocked to his side. "Ibn Rashid, however, appealed for help to the Turks, who sent troops; [Ibn Saud] suffered a defeat at their hands on June 15, 1904. But he was not driven from central Arabia and soon reconstituted his forces, the years 1907 to 1912 being passed in desultory fighting. The Turks eventually left, unable to supply their troops." *

As Peck points out, consolidation became the next task: "Ibn Saud based the legitimacy of the state he was building firmly on unquestioned adherence to the new reformism. He and his followers self-consciously emulated the experience of the first Islamic community. This was most obvious in his creation of the Ikhwan (brethren), Bedouin warriors who were settled, beginning in 1912, in communities called "hujar." These settlements provided a ready force of shock troops whose victories would effectively complete the restoration. At the same time, Ibn Saud very carefully pursued an astute external policy that would support him against his Rashidi enemies and secure the borders of his expanding state."

At the outbreak of World War One the Ottomans sided with the Central Powers, and used their foothold in the Hedjaz to harass Britain’s most important strategic resource in the region—the Suez canal. British Intelligence encouraged and supplied an uprising among the already unruly tribes of the Hedjaz, chiefly the Hashemites led by the two sons of Hussein—Feisal and Abdullah.

This was where T.E. Lawrence comes in. Originally sent as an observer, his lucid reports and his rapport with the house of Hussein encouraged British Intelligence to promote his role as liaison with the rebels who, with Medina behind them, could easily threaten Turkish lines of communication, especially the railroads linking Palestine and Damascus. Allied control of both shores of the Red Sea was assured with the daring, Lawrence-inspired capture of Akaba cutting off Ottoman access to the sea and, more importantly, strangling German industry by denying re-supply via their African colonies.

As Lawrence led the rebel army northward to cover Allenby’s rear during his march on Damascus, Ibn Saud remained largely aloof from the Arab revolt, preferring to pursue his territorial ambitions and harass the Turkish allied Rashidis. He entered into an agreement with the British guaranteeing his independence if he promised not to move on the British protected states of the Gulf region. Obviously, he was not much of an ally. "But despite British arms and a subsidy of £5,000 a month from the British government (which continued until 1924) he was inactive until 1920, arguing that his subsidy was insufficient." † On the other hand, he did use his family’s ties to the clergy to declare a Jihad on the Ottomans, further uniting the desert tribes behind him and cloaking himself in the mantle of the Prophet.

Religion was not Saud’s only weapon. In his review of Robert Lacey’s The Kingdom, Pipes noted: "To a remarkable extent, he used marriage as a diplomatic instrument, making his own bed the focus of efforts to bind the territories he conquered. Taking maximum advantage of a Muslim man’s right to have four wives at a time and to divorce them at will, he married some 300 women and had 45 recognized sons by at least 22 mothers." In Lacey's words, he built a kingdom "with a sword of steel and a sword of flesh."

In 1919, the Allied powers used the Paris Conference to divvy up the captured Ottoman lands between themselves. Lawrence’s passionate arguments in favor of Arab independence and Hashemite rule were undone by the British Foreign Office. The French demanded Syria and sectioned off a parcel roughly equal to the size of British mandated Palestine, to be called Lebanon. Britain took possession of Mesopotamia (present day Iraq). Sherif Hussein maintained control over an independent Hedjaz and the holy cities, taking upon himself the title of "king."

According to Lawrence biographer Jeremy Wilson: "By the end of 1920, attempts to impose a British colonial administration in Iraq had provoked open rebellion. As a result, the British Government was having to spend huge sums on repression. Winston Churchill was appointed to the Colonial Office to find a solution. He persuaded Lawrence, who had been campaigning against Government policy in the press, to join him as adviser. Lawrence was instrumental in the accession of the Emir Feisal to the throne of Iraq, and in the foundation of the Kingdom of Trans-Jordan (later Jordan). Although still under British tutelage, both countries thereafter enjoyed a much greater degree of self-government."

In the mental landscape of that time, the phrase "the Great War" carried no ironic baggage. It is hard for those of us living in a post-Auschwitz, post-Hiroshima, post-9-11 world to appreciate the emotional and spiritual devastation wrought by those four years. Commenting on poet T. S. Eliot (who famously wrote The Wasteland) and his contemporaries' loss of faith in what had seemed the certainties of Western civilization, critic Terry Eagleton wrote: "It was as though the old 19th-century doctrines - Romantic humanism, liberal individualism, dreams of social progress - had all failed to survive the Somme." All but one of the world’s great empires had fallen like dominos—Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman—all gone. Perhaps equally hard to comprehend, for those of us steeped in secular modernism, is the spiritual place these empires held in the lives of their peoples. It is not difficult to identify the results of this spiritual vacuum in the West--Weimar Germany and its successor state are textbook examples. But little attention has been paid to the spiritual crisis in the remnants of the Ottoman Empire. Similar to the status afforded Rome in the Christian world, Istanbul was for centuries home of the Sultan and the Caliphs, and until 1917 was, effectively, the real-world capital of Islam.

So in 1922, when the ruler of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, King Ali bin Hussein declared himself Caliph (or head of the community), he alienated the majority of the Moslem world and stirred the passions of the Wahhabbists. Ibn Saud’s shock troops—the Ikhwan—launched raids into Hashemite territory. Ibn Saud himself denied any responsibility. In 1925, the holy cities were captured and Saud took possession in the name of all dutiful Moslems, adopting the title "King of Hedjaz" while maintaining the title "Sultan of Najd and Its Dependencies" for the rest of his dominion.

Lawrence began writing his account of the revolt in the desert in 1919. When his original text was stolen, he turned from writing and entered the most mysterious and controversial portion of his life. He inexplicably re-enlisted as a private soldier in the British military under an assumed name (even after having been retired as a full colonel), and was known to have convinced his fellow soldiers to subject him to ritualistic reenactments of a brutal rape he’d suffered at the hands of a Turkish officer during one campaign. He appears to have picked up the pen again in 1922 and recreated much of his original text from memory. He worked feverously into 1923, and had the first editions of Seven Pillars of Wisdom were published privately. Why this sudden burst of activity and return to prominence after seeking such a bizarre form of anonymity? It begs the question: Did Britain’s failure to support the Hashemite dynasty’s independence compel Lawrence to tell the story of the revolt in the desert? Was he aware of the spiritual crisis affecting the Moslem world? Could he have been attempting to bolster the Hussein family's claims to the Caliphate? Or could he perceive the danger of an Arabian peninsula controlled by a Saud family glutted on self-righteousness and oil money? I’m speculating here, but I believe any of these explanations is as credible as any other.

Peck points out that one of the early challenges to Ibn Saud’s empire bears eerie parallels to what could happen when a ruler attempts to remain aloof while religious-fascist thugs do his dirty work: "The ikhwan chieftains, contemptuous of Ibn Saud’s adoption of Western ways, spurned a final offer for reconciliation, [acceptance of the borders with Hashemite controlled Jordan and Iraq, ed.] and they and their followers were mowed down by machine guns. Ikhwan resistance continued into the following year, but their defiance could have only one end. Ibn Saud had learned that piety and traditional Bedouin virtues could no longer be practiced in Arabian isolation, but must coexist with a new world that pressed ineluctably on the desert. This meant that inevitably the third Saudi state would differ in fundamental respects from its predecessors. The two previous Saudi states were commonwealths, their rulers using the title 'imam,' to emphasize the religious authority and obligations intimately linked to their temporal position…." This incongruous arrangement was abandoned in 1932, when he named the country "the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia," thereby boldly stamping the family’s identity upon it.

For the final word on the house of Saud, I return to Daniel Pipes: "[B]y the time of his death in 1953, [Ibin Saud] was a relic from a distant age and… the Saudi Government reflected this fact. [Ibin Saud] was the state, and his personal advisers and close relatives made up its administration. There were no government functions other than royal assemblies, and palaces were the only state buildings. The king personally distributed the government's funds, usually in lavish thousand-and-one-nights style, from sacks of gold coins.

"Everything changed during the next decades. [A] bureaucracy grew, committees replaced patrimonial rule, and massive social programs took the place of gold coins. Yet to this day, the broad lines of Saudi institutions and politics follow those established by [Ibin Saud]. Two examples: royal family members still occupy the most sensitive political and military positions in the kingdom, and [Ibin Saud]’s effort to remain aloof from intra-Arab quarrels still characterizes the Saudi position in world affairs."

The last Hashemite king of Iraq was murdered in a coup in 1958. The royal family of Jordan remains in power. The present King Abdullah (son of the late King Hussein) is a direct descendent of Hussein of Mecca and is a linchpin in any hopes for a regional peace settlement. His uncle Prince Hassan (often whispered as a royal replacement for Saddam Hussein, who appropriated that family's name) recently attended a London conference on post-regime-change Iraq.

I have seen David Lean’s 1962 epic Lawrence of Arabia innumerable times and I revere it as one of the most outstanding examples of the cinematic art. My love for it comes almost organically--it is my father’s second favorite movie (#1 is still The Quiet Man). But my love for the movie is aesthetic, not historical.

While many of the characters and incidents portrayed were grounded in actuality, many more were either (at best) cinematic expediency or (at worst) downright fabrications. The most egregious is the time line. In the film, one of Lawrence’s first acts is to suggest the raid on Akaba. This incident came roughly half way through Lawrence’s exploits during the Arab revolt. His earliest adventures consisted mostly of harassing Turkish communications by cutting telegraph wires and dynamiting trains, which form the middle part of the film. The character of Prince Feisal (played by Alec Guinness) is a conglomeration of Feisal and his father Hussein. Omar Sharif’s character, Ali Ibn El Kharish seems to be a fictionalized version of an historical character mentioned by Lawrence in Pillars and Prince Abdullah—Feisal’s brother. Obviously, General Lord Allenby (Jack Hawkins) was a historical personage whose record is well documented, but Colonel Harry Brighton, played by Anthony Quayle, is a highly fictionalized conglomeration. But he works admirably as a foil, as does Claude Reins' consummate portrayal of Foreign Office weasel Dryden. Of all the performances in the film, my favorite (after Peter O’Toole) is Anthony Quinn as the bigger-than-life Auda abu Tayi, who seems fictional, but is a historical personage akin to Jordan’s version of Davy Crocket and whose grandson consulted on the film.

Those who know me know that I don't always give historical movies a free pass for dramatic license—don’t even get me started on Braveheart! But I will never argue to inhibit an artists' right to do with what they will to tell a good story. However, when we contemplate the gravity of the Middle East situation, and contemplate legitimacy of regimes and assess who we can and cannot trust, I believe it does not behoove us to mistake Hollywood for history.

References (in no particular order)

Filmsite.org's entry on Lawrence of Arabia

IMDB on Lawrence of Arabia

Arabies Trends Special Report

Saudi Arabian Info Source Entry on Ibn Saud

Encyclopaedia of the Orient entry on Fatima

Naqshbandi.org entry on Ibn Sa'ud, Abdul-Aziz

T.E. Lawrence Factfile

Ibis Communications on T.E. Lawrence

Dennis Denis McDonnell's Links

The Sunday Times, 22 August 1920

Daniel Pipes reviews The Kingdom by Robert Lacy

Recent interesting article from The Times Online

Also, special thanks to Matthew Alexander, whose article on Arabian Monarchy was quite useful.

Amateur historian and freelance writer Paul Fallon lives in the wilds of Livonia, Michigan. He has a truck, a son and a wife. Despite himself, he also he liked the movie Gladiator.