Saudi Arabia: Will the Country from Nowhere Repeat Dubai’s Success?

Who was Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab? Is he the ideological creator of today’s Saudi Arabia?

He was a preacher and a great reformer of Islam, especially the Hanbali school of Sunni Islam.

The Hanbali school?

Most people are aware of the Islamic world’s division into Sunnis and Shiites, which occurred as a result of a succession dispute after the Prophet Muhammad’s death. However, there are many more divisions. In Sunni Islam, four main branches differ in the interpretation of Sharia law. We’re talking about schools: Hanbali, Hanafi, Maliki, and Shafi’i. They were formed in the 10th to 11th centuries when new information and new hadiths [testimonies concerning Muhammad] were no longer added to the sunnah, that is, the Muslim tradition concerning Muhammad’s acts and utterances. At that same time, a process took place that was called the closing of the door to the ijtihad. Ijtihad is an interpretation of the rules of Sharia law. It was then decided that creative interpretation of the law should be ended on issues on which Muslim scholars had already agreed. In speaking of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, one must realize in which part of the Sunni Islam universe he functioned – and this was the area of the Hanbali school, which was never practised in the Levant or North Africa. It is only important in principle on the Arabian Peninsula, where it lasted for 600 to 700 years before the appearance of Muhammad ibn Abd Al-Wahhab, and it spread at the end of the 18th century.

What characterises it compared to other schools?

A greater reluctance than in other schools to depart from the literal record of the Koran and hadiths in issuing fatwas, which are official instructions on the application of Islamic law. The process of making and applying Sharia law is fundamental for Muslims. It’s worth remembering that Islam is a religion created by legislation and in this respect has much in common with Judaism. This element of Islam is very different from Christianity. Christianity originated in Palestine, where there was a Judaic legal order connected with the Old Testament and a secular Roman order imposed under the occupation. Whereas the context in which Islam originated is the context of lawlessness.

Islam, like Judaism, originated in the desert, and there was no law. Moses was the lawgiver, and Muhammad was also the lawgiver. A very large part of disputations in Islam concerned and still concerns how to interpret, how to apply the law. The Hanbalis believed that it was necessary to do so literally, that is, without deviating from the two sources of revelation, the Koran and the Sunnah: the information that was given orally then written down about how the Prophet acted, what he did, what he did not do, what he forbade, and what he allowed. These are guidelines for all Muslims.

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab acted in the 18th century in the area of present-day Saudi Arabia. At that time, these were the deep peripheries of the Middle East, only formally subordinate to the Ottoman Empire, but in practice independent. He proposed a vision of returning to the roots. He put forward a simple thesis based on one of the hadiths, according to which the Prophet Muhammad stated that the best people are those of his and the next two generations. On this thesis, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab built the concept that one should go back to what was before – to the time of the Prophet, be as close as possible to the original Islam, and reject all possible influences connected primarily with mystical currents in this religion, especially Sufi. In Sufism, various holy men proclaimed their inspired thoughts, gathered disciples, and founded schools. The faithful studied their writings and made pilgrimages to their graves. Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab strongly condemned such practices. He preached that they are shirk, that is, a sin of worshipping something or someone other than Allah. Shirk is about giving God extra qualities or extra companions, and it is aimed at the essence of what Islam is, that is, monotheism. According to Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, visiting graves of Muhammad’s family, his companions, or other prophets of Islam was also a sin.

He was active in a very peripheral area, he was not the only restorer of Islam of this sort. His success was determined by the fact that at the right time, he entered into a political and religious alliance with the Saud family, who were sheikhs in the central-eastern part of the Arabian Peninsula, settled around the settlement of Dirijia. This alliance between Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and the Sauds continues to some extent today.

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How did the restorer of Islam’s alliance with the Sauds lead to their conquest of the entire Arabian Peninsula and the establishment of a state?

We rarely deal with the formation of a state in complete emptiness, in a space in which no state entity existed before. And this is the history of Saudi Arabia. The Arabian Peninsula is empty. Because of geographical conditions, sedentary people couldn’t live there. Apart from Hijaz, the area of the western peninsula where Mecca and Medina are, it didn’t have urban centers or agriculture. On the Arabian Peninsula a nomadic population lived, gathered around oases. These aren’t conditions in which a state can be created.

But it was there that the history of Islam began.

That’s true, but though Mecca and Medina are holy cities and the Prophet Muhammad taught the laws of faith there, the capital of the emerging Arab empire moved north very soon, to Damascus. Damascus became the first capital of the caliphate because there was water, food, agriculture, and the heritage of previous cultures. Those empires weren’t interested in the Arabian Peninsula. The Umayyads, Abbasids, Ottomans, and Persians avoided areas dominated by the Bedouins. There was nothing of value and its inhabitants fought wars with each other over animal herds and access to water, which was incomprehensible to the rest of the Arabs. The political map of the Arabian Peninsula consisted of tribal federations and individual tribes, within which families of lesser and greater importance functioned. A given family’s importance was determined by two factors: wealth, derived from the skills of military chiefs – a talented leader was able to take flocks and slaves from another tribe – and the derivation of one’s origin from the Prophet Muhammad.

Do the Sauds derive their lineage from Muhammad?

They aren’t related to the Prophet’s family. That’s why the offer of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab turned out to be so interesting for them. It fit into their political ambitions perfectly. After all, he said that people are unimportant, God and only God is important. Also, the Prophet Muhammad should not be worshipped, so what does it matter if someone comes from his family? It’s completely irrelevant. The Sauds noted that Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s new, purifying vision of Islam could be of great political importance to them in their rivalry with other families for dominance in the Arabian Peninsula. Probably this was the basis of the Sauds’ close alliance with the reformer and his successors. The ambitions of this family were already being revealed in the first decade of the 19th century when the Wahhabis and Sauds jointly conquered Mecca and Medina, which were formally under the patronage and protection of the Ottoman sultan. The sultan sent an expedition from Egypt, and regular troops drove the Bedouins from Hijaz. It turned out, though, that the Wahhabis managed to destroy both the memorabilia of Sufis, that is, Muslim mystics, and of Muhammad and his family. The same thing happened in 1924 when the Sauds finally took Mecca and Medina. Then the Wahhabis destroyed the first mosque and the Prophet’s house. They wiped away almost all traces of Muhammad, his wives, and his daughter Fatima. The Sauds wanted people to believe only in God and not focus on the Prophet. It’s clear how compatible the Wahhabi religious doctrine and the Saudi political project were.

At what point on the basis of the political-religious alliance did Saudi statehood crystallize?

After the end of the First World War. The founder of the state was a very capable ruler who went down in history as King Abdulaziz, also called Ibn Saud. Hijaz, the best-developed part of the Arabian Peninsula, was formally subordinated to the Ottoman Empire, which was at war with the Triple Entente states. However, three houses had the greatest influence and actual power in Arabia: the Rashids, the Hashemites, and the Sauds. The Rashids were Ottoman allies, and the Hashemites were British allies. At one point the Hashemites, who acted as the sharifs, that is, guardians of Mecca and Medina, rejected obedience to the Ottomans and started a guerrilla war. Faisal, one son of Sharif Husain, succeeded in taking Damascus. The second son, Abdullah, took control of what we now call Jordan. The Sauds were also allied with the British, but unlike the Hashemites, they didn’t fight. They got arms from the British and waited. When it became clear that the Ottoman Empire would lose the war, they attacked and eliminated their main enemies, the Rashids. In 1918, only the Hashemites and the Sauds remained on the battlefield. Only the two most talented members of the Hashemite family went north with their troops and took territories more valuable than those from which they came.

Abdullah was stationed in Jordan and later became Emir of Transjordan under British auspices. Faisal sought to create the Arab Kingdom of Syria. In 1920, he was expelled from there by the French, but thanks to the British he became king of Iraq two years later. Therefore, no top Hashemite people were left in Hijaz. Only Abdullah and Faisal’s father, Emir Husain, remained there. His position quickly weakened: cooperation with his sons wasn’t good, he couldn’t build alliances, and he quarrelled with the British. When Ibn Saud came out against him, leading fanatical troops animated by the Wahhabi mission, Emir Husain had no chance. The Sauds came from Najd, the less-developed part of the peninsula (Riyadh, today’s capital, is there), and conquered the much richer Hijaz and all the provinces the British let them to take control of. They didn’t touch the emirates under Britain’s hold, such as Kuwait, Bahrain, and those that later became the United Arab Emirates. The same with Oman and Yemen, which was already a separate state. However, wherever there were no British or rulers under British favor, the Sauds took power. The armed conquest of most of the Arabian Peninsula ended in 1926, and Ibn Saud began to consolidate his rule.

How did he do it?

The first Saudi state was called the Sultanate of Najd and the Kingdom of Hijaz. Ibn Saud didn’t immediately declare himself King of Najd and Hijaz, because in Islam the very concept of a kingdom is problematic. Muhammad repeatedly spoke up against the monarchical form of government in the Koran and Hadiths, specifically against people wearing a crown. Thus, by the way, no Muslim king wears a crown. So it was safer for Ibn Saud to proclaim himself a sultan. So he became Sultan of Najd, but he also took Hijaz, where his rival, the old Emir Husain, had already declared himself a king. After the conquest of Hijaz, he took over the title of king after the Hashemites. He also took over the local elites – people who could write, read, and count, and Ibn Saud had almost none already on his side. The first structures of power and elements of administration functioned due to the elites of the Hijaz. In 1932, when Ibn Saud considered his authority solidified, he proclaimed himself king. Only, king of what? Najd, Hijaz, and the also conquered Hassa, Hail, and Asir had never been political communities. The name Arab Kingdom wasn’t an option, because Arab kingdoms had historically functioned in the north and had capitals in Damascus and Baghdad. The only keystone of Ibn Saud’s domain was him. So he called his country Saudi Arabia. This way, a state arose that had never existed on the map and that took its name from the ruling man and dynasty.

Was that when rules for exercising power and functions of the social system crystallized that remain in force today?

They were formed in the process of building this country. Saudi Arabia was founded as an absolute monarchy, built on a social contract in which the legitimacy of the king’s rule comes from being an exemplary Muslim who spreads Islam in the Wahhabi sense. We aren’t dealing with a theocracy, but Ibn Saud and his sons were aware that their success was based on a combination of the charismatic and ancestral with religious leadership – carrying on the fundamentalist mission of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. The process of building the state itself was different from models we know from Europe and Asia. In medieval feudal systems – to which Saudi Arabia in its initial period can be compared – when the king conquered some territory, defeated local elites recognized his power and paid him tribute. In the conditions of desert politics, it was the opposite: to maintain the loyalty of tribes and families, they had to be paid. After conquering the Hijaz, Ibn Saud had lots of funds, because Muslims from all over the world went there every year on pilgrimage. That was a source of income allowing power to be stabilized while buying the loyalty of conquered tribes in the inital period of state functions. At the same time, a mission was carried out to spread the Wahhabi version of Islam and, importantly, to cement ties connecting the crucial subordinated families and the House of Saud. Because Ibn Saud had about a hundred children with women from powerful families in conquered tribes, tribal federations, and clans. He never had more than four wives at a time, but he changed them. Ibn Saud’s sons, and he had about 40 of them, were sent to individual tribes as administrators of a given area and were seen there as “their own” because their mothers came from a local family. It was similar with women from the House of Saud: they also became wives of members of the elites of a given province. This matrimonial policy built bonds and made it possible to maintain unity in the first, most difficult period of statehood.

Then after 1945, oil appeared. This gave the king more leeway in action. The Americans began extracting it under better terms for the Arabs than the British companies had. Ibn Saud had more money at his disposal, which doesn’t change the fact that in the 1940s, the state treasury was still located under the king’s bed, in his tent. The capital moved around with the king, who meandered between oases. When money had to be sent to sheikhs, a plane would arrive and the king handed over gold bars that went to the local elites. Once a year, after the transfer of gold, the Baja was renewed, that is, the oath of allegiance. Slowly the administration began to develop, and Arabia began to enter the path of civilization development. Ibn Saud died in 1953. Since then, his sons have reigned: Saud first, then Faisal, then Khalid, Fahd, Abdullah, and Salman, who took power in 2015 and continues to this day. Currently, between 7,000 and 12,000 people belong to the royal family’s closest circle. It’s the largest royal family in the world.

As I understand it, Ibn Saud built a state that systemically was an absolute monarchy and in which social life was regulated by Sharia law interpreted in accordance with fundamentalist Wahhabi doctrine. Do these foundations remain to this day?

The foundations haven’t changed. In Saudi Arabia, several processes have taken place simultaneously over the years: society was educated in the spirit of Wahhabi Islam, the money economy began to function, new settlements, cities, and infrastructure appeared, and the wealthier classes grew increasingly settled. What is characteristic is that it was the king who brought civilization and prosperity. Buildings, roads, cities, and cars appeared because the king had money from oil sales, with which he bought goods abroad and gave them to his country. In an absolute monarchy, the sovereign is the man who’s at its head, not the people. The people can gratefully accept gifts from the king. And they accepted.

How did wealth distribution emerge when Saudi Arabia reached the status of the world’s second-largest oil exporter? How dynamic was civilizational progress?

First of all, it was gigantic. Saudi Arabia, when it was founded, was the poorest part of the Middle East. People there were dying of hunger. The leap it’s made in less than a century of existence is hard to comprehend. It took place in two phases. The first falls in the late 1940s and 1950s. Then, oil production began and an alliance with the US was formed. An administration and an army were created, and one can say that a genuine state began to function. The Sauds began going to study in neighboring countries. The second acceleration came after the oil shock of 1973 when oil prices soared to sky-high levels. In the 1950s, Saudi Arabia jumped from zero to a developing, still-poor country, and in the 1970s, it reached the position of a wealthy state.

How, despite such great changes, does it manage to maintain its system of governance and social order, transferred basically from the late 18th century?

Because the Sauds don’t want any fundamental changes, and society sees no reason to demand them. When young Sauds began to go study in Arab states, in fact, they began bringing new ideas into the country. In the 1960s, the Arab world’s hero was the president of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Arab elites with the exception of Saudi Arabia and neighboring emirates supported Arab nationalism coupled with socialism. Some young Sauds also believed in it. A movement of “free princes” appeared – there was even something that could be called an attempted creeping coup d’état. But it turned out unsuccessfully, it was thwarted. First of all, family ties proved stronger than ideological beliefs. The young princes were pacified, and King Faisal, who took power in 1964 from his inept elder brother Saud, proved to be a very capable politician. He was very conservative. In Islam and Wahhabism, he saw a shield against anti-monarchist and anti-religious socialism. On the other hand, though, he was able to establish relations with Wahhabi ulemas [sacred-law scholars] so it was possible to introduce novelties in the country.

Television gives a good example. It emits images, and showing them is a sin. God forbade the creation of images of people and his own. For the ulemas associated with the Wahhabi establishment, the matter was obvious: images must not be shown, and television must not be introduced. On the other hand, the king was under pressure from his family: cousins and nephews who traveled to the West bought TV sets and wanted to have television at home. How did it get done? Television has appeared, but mainly religious content is broadcast. That remains the case to this day. Half of Saudi state television’s airtime is filled with religious talks, disputes, and questions from worshippers to ulemas who issue fatwas or simply advise on how to live well. This, of course, contributes to the further spread of the Salafi message and the consolidation of its principles in society.

Could Saudi Arabia’s sociopolitical system function without petrodollars?

No, it could not.

So the source of legitimization of Saudi power is the fact that it provides prosperity to society.

Certainly, but it’s not the only source of legitimization for their power. There’s no doubt that the Saudi state is a distribution state, not a production state. In a “normal” state, the government structure must think about how to generate income and how to redistribute it. In countries such as Saudi Arabia, there’s only one vector: distribution. Such a state deals with how to divide income that doesn’t require any effort to produce, and as efficiently as possible because that’s simply the nature of oil-deposit exploitation. Saudi power is based on the material, but also on the ideological dimension associated with religion and loyalty to the dynasty. It’s not known in what proportions. Social research would have to be carried out to answer this question, and there’s no freedom of scientific research in Saudi Arabia.

If the oil suddenly ran out, what would happen in Saudi Arabia?

It would cease to be an absolute monarchy. The system we’re dealing with in Saudi Arabia can work in societies where there are no significant conflicts. Societies that have become aware of how politics work no longer function within absolute monarchies, excepting microstates and rentier states, such as Saudi Arabia. Because in a non-rentier society, which doesn’t have ready access to resources distributed by the authorities, conflicts of interest are so great they force the emergence of lobby structures, influence groups, and ideological associations that lead to the system’s evolution in a more pluralistic direction or to autocracy. To maintain the anachronistic structure we have in Saudi Arabia, one must be a microstate or a rentier state. The Saudis rule absolutely because they have oil. But this state won’t last forever.

Saudi Arabia supposedly has enough oil for another 200 years.

There’s a saying in Saudi Arabia: those saying they know when the oil will run out have no idea. Those who know don’t say. The state of its oil reserves is the country’s most closely guarded secret. We don’t need to know that, though, to say the current model of state functioning, which consists of “eating” money from oil sales, will exhaust itself. Because there’s a second variable, demographic growth. Saudi Arabia maintains GDP-growth dynamics, but GDP per capita is no longer growing. A very large natural increase, in line with the family model being promoted, given the limited possibility of increasing the production level above 11 million barrels a day, means there’s still plenty of money in the budget, but there are also more and more people the state must provide with their livelihoods. Statistically, a Saudi woman gives birth to about three children. Until recently, the fertility rate was 11, so it slows down a bit but is still very high. This will make life harder for the average Saudi, because wealth will have to be divided among more and more people.

Could this jeopardize the stability of the system?

Indeed. Just as succession may turn out to be problematic. With the death of King Salman, the last son of Ibn Saud who was able to rule will leave this world. Power will be transferred not from brother to brother but to the grandson of the dynasty’s founder. This means one branch of the family will become more influential than the others. When the king dies, the king’s council meets and, after deliberations behind closed doors, indicates a new ruler. The equivalent of a king’s swearing-in is the moment when members of the Saud family, the heads of ministries, and all the important people in the state take the oath of loyalty to him. Securing this moment is a priority for Mohammed bin Salman. He’s the son of the currently reigning king, Salman – he is already the crown prince, who formally should take power after the death of his father. However, in Islam, in order not to deprive God of agency, the principle of primogeniture doesn’t function. There are many indications that Mohammed bin Salman has threatened, arrested, or stripped potential opponents of their property, but in the face of Saudi Arabia’s first succession of power to sidelines of the family, there’s necessarily an element of uncertainty.

Saudi Arabia says it wants to make its finances independent of oil extraction. Can it succeed?

Repeating the success of the United Arab Emirates in Saudi Arabia will be very difficult. The resource curse works so that oil states have big problems building any other efficient sector of the economy, except mining. Russia and Venezuela have failed, and Iran has also failed. In the UAE, this plan has been successful, but largely because it is an unusual country with a decentralized structure: we have seven emirates, one of which has oil and the others have little or no oil. It was them, above all Dubai, that have created new branches of the economy. Mohammed bin Salman knows perfectly well that the current model of functioning of the Saudi economy is running out. We can assume that Saudi Arabia will open up to a certain extent. There will be tourists, new investments, and ventures that haven’t been functioning in the country of the Sauds to date. However, an attempt to build a second Dubai in Saudi Arabia, in my view, will face many problems.

Dr. hab. Łukasz Fyderek: professor at the Jagiellonian University, assistant professor at the Institute of the Middle and Far East. He deals with issues of authoritarian states and countries undergoing political transformation. His research interests include foreign-policy issues in Middle East countries, restoring statehood, and public management.