244 • 14 MODERNIZING RULERS IN THE INDEPENDENT STATESSa'ud. The process involved many bedouin raids, battles, and wars be¬
tween the Saudi-Wahhabi combine and other contenders for power. First
they had to subdue the Ottoman-backed Rashid dynasty. After 1906 they
began to win control over the tribes of central and eastern Arabia. Few
outsiders noticed until Ibn Sa'ud's warriors challenged the kingdom of the
Hijaz, the state headed by Amir Husayn (see Chapter 13). When he con¬
quered the Hijaz and took over Islam's holy cities in 1924, Ibn Sa'ud be¬
came the most respected leader in Arabia—indeed, the whole Arab world.
How different history would have been if Britain had heeded its India Of¬
fice during World War I and backed Ibn Sa'ud instead of the Hashimites!
Ibn Sa'ud won because he believed in Wahhabi Islam and enforced its
rules among his followers, using religious belief to temper the bedouins'
love of battle and booty. His convictions, along with his physical courage
and personal magnetism, led thousands of Arabs to love and obey him. His
skills were marital as well as martial; both his victories and his marriages
were countless. Most of Ibn Sa'ud's nuptials served to cement peace with
the tribes he had subdued. To stay within the Quranic limit of four wives,
he divorced most of his wives and returned them to their guardians. Yet
people said that any woman who married Ibn Sa'ud, however briefly, loved
him for the rest of her life. We wonder who could verify this—or how!
Another way Ibn Sa'ud controlled the tribes was to weld them into a re¬
ligious organization called the Ikhwan (Brothers). These Ikhwan, though
bedouin, were persuaded to give up camel nomadism for settled agricul¬
ture. Although many of them never learned how to push a plow, their set¬
tlement in farming villages made them more tractable, more willing to
heed the teachings of the Wahhabi ulama from Riyadh, and better disci¬
plined when Ibn Sa'ud needed them in battle. Without the Ikhwan, the
Saudis could not have united most of Arabia within a generation.
But some parts of Arabia never fell under their control. Like Ataturk,
Ibn Sa'ud knew his political limits. Once he had taken Asir, the kingdom
between the Hijaz and the Yemen, and had formally created the kingdom
of Saudi Arabia in 1932, his conquests ceased. After a brief war two years
later, Ibn Sa'ud gave up all claims to the imamate of Yemen. This magna¬
nimity was wise, for the Yemeni highlanders were Zaydi Shi'is who would
have bitterly resisted Wahhabi (that is, Hanbali Sunni) rule by the Saudis.
He also disbanded the Ikhwan in 1930 after they took to raiding tribes in
Iraq, then a British mandate. Rarely did the Saudis attack Arab rulers un¬
der British protection, such as Abdallah of Transjordan, the shaykh (later
amir) of Kuwait, other shaykhs on the Persian Gulf coast, the sultan of
Muscat and Oman, or the rulers of southern Arabia east of Aden. By the