Empire: World History - 43. The Birth of Saudi Arabia

Episode Date: April 11, 2023

A Saud. A Bin Laden. A Philby. They all, along with the discovery of oil and a BBC demon, come together in the birth of the modern state of Saudi Arabia. Join William and Anita as they are joined by Steve Coll to discuss Ibn Saud and the creation of Saudi Arabia.  LRB Empire offer: lrb.me/empire This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/empirepod. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnden. And me, William Durhampool. Are you this very casual today because you're on the beach? I'm recording in Goa. There's no reason to be up in the...

morning or to rush at giving my name. I mean, you're actually quite modestly dressed today compared to the chat I had with you yesterday on Zoom, which frankly needed a rating like a cinema rating on it. I'm very glad that they can watch either of these. It was Dalrymple Beach ready. Just I'll let your mind wander with that as it will. Just saying, plunging V-nex. Plunging V-nex, people.

That's what was going on in Goa. I'm very excited you found it so memorable, please. Seared in my retina forever. Anyway, look. What a perfect way to start a program of what happens? It's contrast. Life is full of contrast, darling. That's what we're saying.

Anyway, look, over the last few weeks, we've explained many of the most important historical events that have shaped the Middle East as we know it today, things like Sykes Pico, the Balfour Declaration. Today, we're going to be rounding off that story with one further historical event from the early 20th century, which involves many of the characters you've met before on this podcast. And we're talking about the rise of Saudi Arabia. And the guest we have

on to talk to us about this is my old friend Steve Cole, who is now in London, I'm very pleased to say. So we'll get to see more of him. Normally, he's stuck in the New Yorker office in New York or running think tanks in Washington or generally winning Pulitzer surprises wherever he is. But the reason we've particularly got Steve on is his extraordinary book on the bin Laden's, written, obviously, in the aftermath of 9-11, and which is the best introduction I've read to, not just the bin Laden family, but also to the wider world of the early story of Saudi Arabia, the rise of Ibn Saud, the extraordinary discovery of oil, and all that happens in Saudi Arabia to turn it from one of the least important parts of the Islamic world on the edge of things

to very much the centre and the richest place in Islam, controlling the oil of the world, and hugely altering the form of Islam globally. And this are all subjects which Steve has written about brilliantly. He's one, not one, but sickeningly two pullet surprises. I'm happy for you, Steve. I am genuinely happy for you. Don't worry. Two pullet surprises.

I mean, it's outrageous, outrageous, hogging them almost. I mean, I was so thrilled when William said that you would come on to the podcast. And I think I did actually say, what, the Steve Cole in case he had some knock off power shop Steve Cole. The unfamous Steve Cole, who never won any bullets at all. No, no. Well, listen, welcome. Welcome to our rambling introduction of a podcast here. We should really start with one man.

I think this is always a really good way into a subject. So people may think that they know what. Wahhabism is in the modern political context, but you can't really understand what Wahhabism is until you understand Abdul Aziz Ibn Saad. Can we start with very, very bare basics? Who was he and what was he like? Well, he was a tall, charismatic figure in a tribal society, very impoverished, but formidable in his own right. He's about six feet three, which in his day was a giant. And he led a band of followers who belonged to the Saud enlarged family or clan. They had ruled Central Arabia, the Arabian Peninsula, in a mudwalled fortress in Riyadh,

twice in the previous centuries during the Ottoman period. But they had lost power and were in exile in Kuwait and plotting a return. He was a formidable sort of battle leader, but in thinking about battles in Arabia, in the late 19th century, early 20th century, you kind of have to picture a bunch of malnourished men toting rifles and swords charging into one another's encampments, screaming very loudly, slashing around and trying to chase their enemies away. And he was very good at that. He bore the scars on his legs and body of more than one kind of slashing sword fight that he had prevailed in or at least survived. And that was his life. So in 1902, in Kuwait, He organized a march on Riyadh, which was a formidable march. It was a great distance across desert tracks with only a few oases to stop at. And when he got to the walls of his ancestral kingdom, as it were, not much to look at, but meaningful to him and his followers nonetheless, he succeeded in chasing away the tribe that occupied Riyadh, and he declared the,

the rebirth of Saudi Arabia, literally the Arabia that belongs to the Sauds. And that was not the first time the peninsula had been Saudi Arabia, but it was the birth of modern Saudi Arabia. Steve, we've had in two episodes lately, our episode on Lawrence of Arabia and the episode on Sykes Pico, we've heard a lot about the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein. What's the relationship of Ibn Saud to the Sharif of Mecca? They were enemies, essentially. I mean, he regarded the shirif as illegitimate, a puppet of Britain.

And he was suspicious. In which sense? Because he was obviously the descendant of the prophet and the senior most descendant. Well, in the Wahhabi reading of history, meaning the tradition of Islam and the political power that Ibn Sal had saw himself representing, the sheriffs were not entitled to rule Mecca and Medina, that their control of the holy cities had been rested illegitimately from the Sauds. And this leads us on to the ideological difference between the two men. Tell us what Wahhabism is and who Ibn Wahab was.

So Ibn Wahab was a preacher of the 18th century who interpreted Islam to require its followers to live as the prophet did during his lifetime. And that meant rejecting all technology that was not available then. So, I mean, to us, in a modern day context, Wahhabism is about austerity in many ways, austerity of dress, of lifestyle, shunning, alcohol, inebrient at all. It's of veils and shrouds. I mean, that's what it means to many people in the West. But this was not a man who lived in veils and shrouds himself, is he? I mean, you know, just tell us a little bit about his, you're laughing, and I could laugh too, because I also know what's coming. How did this man live his life? Well, he said that he had three great pleasures in life, women, perfume, and prayer.

So at least prayer was one of the three. That takes a box. I could give a two of the three. But how did he square that circle? I mean, how does that work? Through interpretation, as all people who make exceptions to doctrine do, I suppose. He interpreted Islam's permission to marry four times as a license to marry serially and to divorce rapidly. So he described himself as the married husband of 135 virgins and 100 other women during his lifetime. And then he also had concupines and slaves beyond that. So this is a very particular form of Puritanism. Yes.

And, you know, okay, some of those marriages were political marriages associated with conquests of various oases. But essentially, that was the way he organized his life was around these serial marriages and the sexual activity that he could present. Steve, just quickly go back again to Ibn Wahhab and Wahhabism, because I think it's very important here. Again, if we could just explore the theological aspects of Wahhabism. I'm based in India. Many of our listeners are in India, and they're very familiar here, as in many other parts of the Islamic world, with Sufism, with visiting shrines, with a sort of syncretic Islam that blends in with Coptic Christianity.

Egypt, with Hinduism in India. What was so different about Wahhabism? Well, first to start with your mention of aesthetics, Wahhabism was austere to the point of nullification. So no adornment, no shrines, no celebration of any intermediary between God and man. So saints, of course, were anathema to Wahhabism. And this was expressed in architecture, but also in ritual and in expectations of the way a faithful Muslim lived from day to day. It wasn't just an austerity that attempted to imitate conditions during the Prophet's lifetime, but it was also an expectation that one would live a kind of interior faith away from the world and from politics.

Again, my life is in Delhi, and we have our own sort of indigenous strain of Wahhabism, which emerged from the Hajjahs at the same time with Amanko Shawaliullah, who is thought to have studied in the hajazz at the same time as Ibn Wahab, who then came back to Delhi and was advocating very much the same approach to Islam, very suspicious of Sufi shrines, wanting to pull out anything that was remotely Hindu or anything that was considered to be un-Islamic in the syncretic Islam of the time. And he goes on to found the madrasa, which in turn gives birth to Daobund. And so you get these two forms of a very similar austere puritanical Islam,

which both of which will culminate in the stories that we're about to tell in the second half that leads us to the bin Laden's and 9-11. From both of you, I'd love your insight into this, because it doesn't sound like fun. I mean, just to put it very mildly, and it does not sound like a fun way to live. Some aspects that sound quite fun. Well, I mean, the thing is, you know,

when you look at the Western canon, you have Puritanism leaps up out of an objection to the excesses of Catholicism and the oppression that Catholicism is deemed to have brought on the people who have the least. And they've just, you know, they get to this point where they've had enough and you have somebody nail something up on a church door.

Was that the same with Wahibism and the de Abundi is, as you've described them, that they are reacting against something, and that is what the popularity is based on. I mean, there wasn't anything quite as extravagant as the Catholic Church to have a revival and overthrow, but yes, I mean, certainly the prevalence of saints' shrines, the commercial exploitation of pilgrims and the building of businesses around saints and and kind of inventing Islam for commercial purposes, that was something that they reviled and revolted against in a way that might be parallel to Protestant Reformation.

And the clerics dealt with his excesses, so Abdulaziz, I bin Saad, I mean, how? Because, I mean, you mentioned the perfume, but we've missed out one beautiful little detail, which is in your book, which is just tell us a little bit about the vial of perfume, Steve, because I find that completely compelling. Well, he used to keep it in the pocket of his robes and rub it on his hands from, from hour to hour and whenever he greeted visitors he would douse himself

and then douse them perhaps to their astonishment. The man may be gone but the scent remains a bit like a calling it's still a big deal isn't it? It's only a rabid today

if you go there the Itter is something which is there even in sort of airports you see itter shops and it's put on you and it's very hard to avoid

Well I mean in the era in the era before the ubiquitous shabes we should all be grateful for the universe. Yes, true, true. Yes, small mercies and tiny vials, I understand with you now. But tell me, I mean, the clerics who adhered to, I suppose, the letter of Wahhabism, did they not tell him, look, this is lovely that you, you know, you're representing Wahhabism,

but maybe do it a bit more and carry it out a bit more, you know? Well, this is, I mean, this is critical to your question about it doesn't sound like much fun. Of course, politically powerful rulers in Saudi Arabia, continually interpreted Islam to suit their lifestyles or lived privately and had their clerics endorsed their own decisions while preaching a more austere set of requirements to the public. Both Dioban Islam and Wahhabism generated clerical influence and rule, not direct rule like you would see in Revolutionary Iran today, but influence. And yet they had to share power with the men with the guns, the men who ruled the palaces

and ultimately their preferences prevailed. And because it was a rule-making interpretive austerity, you could write the rules to accommodate whatever the boss wanted. And in the case of Ibn Saud, what he wanted was some technology that Wahhabism strictly interpreted might not permit. So he had automobiles, and he became obsessed with the radio. And it took a while to persuade the clerics that these radio broadcasts, were not the devil.

And there was a particular problem involving the news broadcast that he liked to listen to from the BBC because they were preceded by that jingle music that we all find. So I don't know. Watch his step. Watch his step. Watch his step. You're going to be a BBC girl here. Watch his staff.

That's what I'm saying. You don't want to get her angry. Trust me. They originally the clerics said you can't listen to any of this radio because the devil is inside playing this music and they eventually had to persuade them that it was a mechanical problem that that was not an expression of the devil's will on Earth. Oh, interesting. How interesting. How interesting. So look, you know, you've got this man who has created an autonomy, which people will tolerate his excesses, but he can tell everyone what to do and people are doing what he wants

them to do. He has gone. He's reclaimed his ancestral lands, ridden into Riyadh, taken it back. The First World War, though, sort of marks a new phase for him, doesn't it? And it's defined on relations with Britain. Tell us a bit more about that. Yeah, this is fascinating because we've been, this is very much the background of the last few pods. And as we say, we've been following the Sharif of Mecca Hussein very closely. So weave us through that. Well, so the context is the competition between the British and Ottoman empires as the First World War approaches, then as it's fought, and then in its aftermath. And the The Ottomans are obviously the losers and the British are ascendant.

But one question the British have for themselves in Arabia is what do we really want? I mean, this is pre-Oil. They had subsidized Ibn Saud in Riyadh and other rulers in the interior of Arabia. And they had occasionally sent, you know, sort of adventurous official delegations across the peninsula to meet and entreat and explain Britain to these. isolated peoples, but they hadn't sought to govern. And now there was still a reluctance on their part to get involved in the center of Arabia. There was nothing there but sand and not enough water, but they wanted influence. And one of the problems they faced with Ibn Saud was that he didn't trust the British because of their support for the Sharif in the Hajjahs. And in fact, he was

planning hostilities against Britain's client in the Hajas. So they had a complicated relationship. What age is here? I'm trying to sort of picture him. You know, if you've got the Sharif in one corner and you've got him and the other, I mean, how do they compare with age experience? Ibn Saad was still kind of in his prime physically in the 1920s. He was in his 30s, I think, maybe his 40s, but he was still robust and still active on the. the battlefield. He loved to hunt, which he did in his imported Ford automobiles. He would drive around and shoot at gazelles from the back of his car, but he also still marched and rode camels into battle. And to answer your question, Anita, I just checked with the bottle in here. And 1854 is the birthday

of the, of the Sharif. So he's a full 50 years older, the Sharif. So even inside is very much two generations down. Yeah. Yeah. So that adds another. sort of layer to the whole thing. In British documents, do they have their accounts, their first accounts, or what they thought he was like? Yeah, I mean, they, they, their emissaries would typically start in the Persian Gulf protectorates, so Kuwait, Bahrain, and their, you know, British diplomats and legations were well established, and they were responsible for keeping track of what was happening in central remote Arabia. And to do that, every now and then, a party would be assembled and they would walk from Bahrain or Kuwait to Riyadh and then onward, usually, all the way

across to the Red Sea. So when those accounts are available, and they're quite wonderful, they're usually full of detail. And of course, half of these diplomats saw themselves as geographers on the side. So they're recording all kinds of obscure details about flora and fauna. flocks of partridges, that kind of detail. Yes, and then they record their dinners and the conversation and the rituals, which they were fascinated to record about what would be expected of a visitor, how a visitor was received, and who in the court was responsible for what? This was political intelligence, so if there were follow-up efforts to influence the king,

they would know how to go about buying off courtiers, that sort of thing. So they're wonderful accounts. And they accorded intervals. But nobody went through Riyadh in those days and said, you know what, we ought to stay here and build out our empire. They moved on pretty quickly. And that's because he didn't, in the time, you know, since he took Riyadh, did he not make many changes to it? Did it remain the kind of rudimentary settlements that it was when he rode in on his camels and shot the governor? Well, he needed gold.

And until oil came along, he didn't really have a lot of gold. The British subsidies were one source, but he did start building outside the walls of the original palace, but it was slow going until oil came along. And the real sort of center of merchants and culture in that region was always Jeddah, wasn't it? That's where the architecture, the links with India and the wider sort of red sea world is centered. Absolutely. I mean, Jeddah was a global city. It was the port of entry for the pilgrimages and for global Islam. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims passed through Jida in the course of a year or two, and they came from all over the world. Many stayed and built businesses, and Jada was one of the most gloriously diverse cities in the world.

And so, and the Hajas in general had benefited from its international links for centuries, and it was defined by its diversity. in many ways. I mean, it sounds to me as if he's very much on the periphery of all of the action and the empire building and shredding that we've been talking about in this series. But then he does enter into a deal with the British, who it does sound as if, you know, they completely underestimate him and just, you know, sort of throw him a bone, if you like, just to keep him on side. And what is the nature of the deal that he does with the British?

And who does he do the deal with, very crucially? Well, yes, let's start with the dealmaker. I mean, it's Harry St. John Philby, isn't it? It is. And so, I mean, Harry St. John Philby, a geographer, self-styled, took a first-class degree from Cambridge and came down to Arabia where he went into business and lived in Jetta and built up a car dealership, primarily, a Ford dealership, where he had exclusive rights. And he became a vital sort of interpreter and interlocutor for Ibn Saud. and came to understand what the king wanted. The king rewarded Harry St. John with a slave girl of his own. A car dealer?

I never knew he was a car dealer. Can I always have to pause for an e? Carry on. I mean, his principal is a car or the slave dealer? You can guess. Yes. So the Ford franchise turned out to be his real ticket to influence with Ibn Zaud, because he plied.

the king with automobiles and at a discount and arranged for all of the financing and developed a role as a negotiator for the king. Am I led to a spoiler here, Adita, a little look forward. No. No. No. No. No.

No. No. No. Look into my eye. Honestly, Steve, I'm sorry. I'm only shouting him because I have to. It's because it happens all the time. No.

You are the one who will shout Butler did it in the middle of a theater. No. No. I'm saying to you. No. Hold on to it. We'll save it up. We'll save it up.

No. Just concentrate on the word Philby, everybody, then. That's all I'm saying. We've got two Pulitzer Prizes here. Steve, two Pulitzer Prizes. No. No. No.

Okay. Do you carry on, Steve. Okay. So this man, I mean, it's, it is funny. It just struck me that today we talk about political horse trading. But it does car dealing. It's one of the Texas car dealing at this time. But it's a Ford dealership.

I know. It's a depressing home. I mean, 250 vehicles that this king eventually possessed. And he used them. And he used them. And he numbers the roads by about 249, doesn't it? Maybe 250. But he would drive them in, on sort of hard, scrabble desert to hunt gazelles.

And then he would, of course, abuse them, misuse them, and then just leave them to rust in the desert. So he didn't use them, he didn't park them back into the garage and have them polished up for his next outing. He would just use them for a single hunt and then abandon them. So all that stuff that goes on where you go to Egypt or to Saudi Arabia or Dubai, where they take you rolling, you know, on four-wheel drives over saddudes. That begins with them and sides. Exactly, exactly.

Right, okay, so we've got the name Philby. Well done for your restraint. No one's going to know what's coming. I mean, you've hardly flagged it or passed a brass band by it at all. It's going to be a huge shocker when it comes out. No one will see it coming. But, okay, so, you know, he's living the fast life, quite literally, in his Ford automobiles. What are his political ambitions at this time?

Well, he wants to conquer the Hajas is the most important of them. That is his overriding ambition. It is the greatest source of wealth in pre-Oil Arabia by orders of magnitude. Three million British pounds, 1920s pounds in direct tax revenue and then an economy worth many millions more. And when you are sitting in a mud palace that you want to rebuild and you have a hundred wives and you want a hundred more and you want all the scent required to greet all your visitors, you can't live on the income available in Riyadh at that time. The Hajjah's beckons. And it's a place that his family had ruled before.

And it is also an ambition endorsed by his clerics because he believes that it is righteous for the Wahhabi. and the Sauds to rule the two holiest places in Islam. So he musters a campaign to invade the Hajas. So what has happened to the Hussein dynasty, the Shariaeufs of Mecca? Because we last saw them really with Lawrence of Arabia, with all the children getting sort of kingdoms parceled out in Iraq and Transjordan. What's happened since then? I mean, they've weakened to the point of, you know, complete evisceration.

And they've lost their connections to, you know, the Ottoman Empire is no more. The sort of whole system that they presided over has crumbled. Britain is, you know, there to support them, but is hedging about the future of the Hajjahs. And this is the critical thing. Their old sponsors are gone and their new sponsors are ambivalent. And so when Ibn Saoen marches out towards Tai'iqaer, and then eventually Mecca Medina and Jida, the British don't go into action to back up the Hashemites. And so that actually makes this campaign a rather simple one for Ibn Saud.

And is it a surprise that the British just sit back and let this happen? Are they in secret negotiations with Ibn Saud? Or have they fallen out very publicly with the Hashemites? They've built up relations with Ibn Saud. They've done some side deals with him. They're subsidizing him. They see him as a man of the future. They think he's probably inevitably the superior military power,

and that if he's determined to conquer the Hajas, it might be better to deal with him than not. Their larger anxieties are the future of the Hashemite family, but Germany and other imperial encroachments as the Ottoman Empire dissolves. And if Ibn Saud is their man and nobody else has access to, him, maybe better to bet on the future through him. And the way he sort of takes and holds land, I mean, this is really interesting, the Iquan, have I said that right?

Is that the correct pronunciation? So just describe how that system works and why it's so effective for him? Well, the Iquan, literally brotherhood, a militia that was loyal to him, but also a bit of a tiger that he had to ride, independent-minded, well-armed, effective in battle. And this was a part of the calculation, if you were a British colonial officer in Jeda writing letters home to say, what should be done, you had to account for the fact that nobody could really defeat the Aquan in battle if they were determined to conquer a particular city or territory. And they had given Ibn Saud control over other less significant parts of Central Arabia, Oasis and minor kingdoms. And now, they shared his ambition to conquer Mecca and Medina. They too were fired by a sense of religious zeal, righteousness, and ambition and thought that they should rule the streets of Mecca and Medina and enforce the precepts of Wahhabism that were so blatantly flouted by the behavior

of pilgrims in those days. And it's very difficult for the British to get their heads around this or anybody because you cannot buy off religious people. Because if they believe that they have a religious mission. It isn't as if you can sort of inval your way and promise them, you know, riches or a minor kingdom. Because there is something bigger. There is something bigger at play here. That's it. And also, the Aquan were particularly fierce and independent in their thinking. Even Ibn Saud was nervous about them and had trouble managing them. If you came in all of your colonial finery to meet with their leadership, you would have the reception that many European diplomats today have when they try to visit with the Taliban's leadership in Kandahar and explain to them why they should change their ways. It is not diplomacy as typically practiced by the colonial office in those days. So what happened, Steve, when they take Mecca? Describe the arrival of the Saudis for the first time into Mecca with their equine warriors. Well, imagine them dressed in their austere, uniformed robes, waving black and white flags.

black robes and waving black and white flags. Modelled on the followers of the prophet, is that the idea? Yes, and I think just again expressing through their aesthetic choices, the primacy of the Word of God and the absence of intermediaries between the life of the Prophet as recorded in the Quran and the Haddits and their role on earth. and at the point of a sword, literally, to come in and to clean out anyone who opposes them in the name of this cause. And so they were not militarily opposed as they filtered into Mecca and Medina.

They just arrived as this kind of tide of zealous militia, police, who established checkpoints in control and got to work at dismantling all that they encountered that violated their sense. Are we thinking, you know, like the Lawrence Arabia film, are they literally coming on camels and horses? Or are they all got fords now? What are we talking about? I think they're on foot, on camel, on horses, but not in possession of a lot of forts. That was the King's Garage. They didn't have access to the keys, generally speaking. And so they come in and what do they do to the shrines that they regard as idolatrous?

They destroy them. destroy them vigorously and quickly. Is there no resistance to that by pious locals? I'm not aware of a recorded, organized resistance. I'm sure there were people who were appalled and surprised and angered, but the Iquan broke no dissent as they go about this campaign. Just to break in here and give a little bit of chronology for our listeners that may be slightly at sea.

So we've had an episode on the Burning of Smirla. That's 1922. We then talked about the last Sultan Abdul Majid, the last Ottoman who is thrown out of Istanbul and gets into the Orient Express. That's 1924. This is happening 1926. So this is two years after the Ataturk has launched the Turkish Republic. This whole Ottoman world, the last fragments of it are now disappearing.

And we're very much heading towards the world that we recognize today, the map that's there on the Middle East now. And do you know what? It's a good place to take a break because now we've got, Ibn Saud has taken those religious sites. Join us after the break when we find out what comes with that because if you control those places, you also control enormous tax revenues that may come with. And global Islam is at your feet. Welcome back. Our very special guest star today is Steve Cole and we are talking about the rise of Saudi Arabia. The fall of the Ottoman Empire gave rise to so much of the world that we recognize today, and our gaze now settles on Ibn Saude. And just before the break, we had Ibn Saud with his Iquan, taking Mecca, Medina,

smashing up the shrines that he found were idolatrous. The Iquan are now running the show there. There is money as well to be made by doing this. Just describe what follows when you take a religious site like Mecca. Well, there's direct tax revenue that's always been extracted from, the pilgrims who arrive and from the institutions that serve them. As I mentioned, I think that amounted to about three million British pounds a year at the time in Saoud conquered the Hajjahs. And then there is all sorts of business going on in Jida, everything from, you know, from the

time a ship arrives off Jida's ports to the time a pilgrim departs. There's, you know, ferry boats and hotels and transport companies. companies and companies that provision the rituals of the pilgrimage and companies that sell Zam-Zam water and all of them are taxable. And if you think about Arabia though in those days, pre-oil, and just imagine this expanse of underpopulated desert with a few oases pocketed here and there. And yes, on the far eastern shores, there's some pearl diving and some fishing that people can make a decent living from.

most of Arabia is barren of economy. And the Hajas is this extraordinary source of wealth. So it's transformational for Ibn Saud to capture it. And you say pre-oil, so when do we start getting the beginning of prospecting? How quickly does that come after Ibn Saud has seized Mecca? Well, the oil age is underway. You know, it was Winston Churchill during the First World War who sought to change the British Navy's fuel from coal to oil. and prospecting is happening in other parts of the world. The Anglo-Persian oil company is becoming very important in Persia, isn't it? Yes. And so the 1920s is really the beginning of the commercial exploitation of oil.

And in Arabia, it was sort of always obvious that it was there in eastern Arabia, what we now call Eastern Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, because it would bubble up from the surface of the sea and the sand. And where there's oil, bizarrely, there's also Harry Philby. Tell us, I mean, he's no idiot, is he? This guy did very well. I mean, he got the exclusive Ford franchise, but more presciently, he made himself the exclusive agent for SoCal, which is a part of the Rockefeller Oil Dynasty of America, an American oil company based in California, that. that is now coming to the Middle East to join other Western oil companies in seeking access to

consortia to produce and sell. And he becomes their exclusive agent. He gets a monthly fee in the thousands of dollars to basically guide them through Arabia. And it's probably a pretty good choice for the oil company because he's the only Westerner who sits at the right hand of Ibn Saud. And Ibn Saud now controls the territory where everyone knows the oil is right there, just just beneath the surface, if not on the surface. And Philby is converted to Islam at this point.

He's now become not Harry Sinjin Filby, but Abdullah. He has. At Ibn Saud's sort of suggestion, and I think seeing both the potential to expand his own fortune and his own prestige, he's a complicated character. He's increasingly becoming alienated from his British homeland. At the same time, he wants to be recognized as the world's foremost, English geographer. And one of the things that he keeps asking Ibn Saud is for permission to exclusively document the flora and fauna of Arabia, such as it is. And then he uses these

multifaceted kind of conversations with Ibn Saud to introduce him to the oil age. And you know what? He said, no, no, no, I'm going to let it. No, I'm opening the door for it. This is the drum roll. I wanted to get him before you. And Steve, he's feathering quite a lovely nest. Very interesting egg is about to be laid in that nest. Well, the egg is already laid, is it? 1912, the egg is laid? You mean his, his child? His child. Go for it, Steve. This is the big moment. The one that's had no indication that this is coming at all. I mean, everybody throw your hands in the air in shock. Who is his child, Steve Cole? His son, Kim Filby. Kim Filby. Kim Filby. Who follows his father to

Cambridge where he is recruited to the global cause of Soviet communism and becomes the greatest and most successful traitor in modern British history. Did not see that coming. Didn't see it coming. But just quickly to just hang on that for one second. Philby's, you mentioned, the father is already alienated from Britain in what sense? I mean, can we see Kim Philby's alienation from his homeland, partly through what his father's doing at this moment? I mean, it's a book someone should write. I would certainly like to read it. I think there is a connection. How to describe it gets complicated involving fathers and sons generally. But, you know, his father was alienated. His father was attracted to radical. It's a brilliant idea for a book. Steve, I'm kidding. I'm immediately new one to see to this is allowed to put in this book proposal. But yeah, his father was alienated not only from Britain where he felt he just didn't get his due. He'd been away from a long time.

He was also, you know, intrigued by fascism. He was intrigued by Germany and in the 30s by Hitler, as Ibn Saud was. You know, Philby moderated Ibn Saud's growing obsession with fascism and actually helped Britain prevent Ibn Saud from defecting formally to Germany. But they were both sitting around. around the radio talking, you know, smack, as we would say, in New York about all of the European powers. Yeah. And can I just say, William Dower and Paul has genuinely written down book proposal Phil will be on a piece of paper, haven't you? It's in front of me. I know, I can read you

like a pamphlet. He went on to, in his reverie. It's such a pretty good idea. Why? I was in that book. Can I just, for the sake of the copyright recording, note who in I was introduced the idea of the book. Yeah, yeah. I was thinking about it on my walk over to the office this morning, an anticipation of this podcast. I just know that anybody else in the universe would have thought, oh, he's writing something down about the Saudis.

I know you. I know what you wrote. Anyway, hilarious. Anyway, I love it that this is a podcast where brilliant books may be born. So, okay, there's Philby, and he's sort of, you know, filling his new best friend, the oil magnet that is Ibn Saud, with, with, you know, sort of building up his already existing suspicion of the British. So what happens next? What happens next? He cuts a deal with the Americans for oil rights and cuts the British out, which satisfies Zibin Saoud and increasingly Philby.

So two generations of traitors to the British cause? Yes. I mean, this one's a little bit more transparent. He's on the payroll of the Americans. And so he's advocating for their commercial interests over those of Britain. But at the same time, he's growing alien. from Britain and Ibn Saude, who is very suspicious of the British for having propped up the Sharif in Mecca for so long, they're sort of, they reinforce each other in conversation, as it were. But mostly because he's paid to do it, Harry St. John Philby cuts a deal with the Americans as the exclusive producers initially of oil in Eastern Saudi Arabia. What an extraordinary story. What an extraordinary story. It's so interesting. So when you you've got these oil deals, you've got lots of money coming in. Does that transform Riyadh very

quickly? Because one would assume that that money gets spent. Yes, how quickly do it do, how quickly does things change now? I mean, the gold starts coming in. What, what Ibn Soud wants is gold. He doesn't want dollars. He doesn't want sterling. He wants gold. And he used that to build. Initially in Riyadh, he started to build a palace outside the walls of the historical one. And he's making, yes, he is starting to transform things fairly quickly in the late 1920s, but remember, on the horizon is the Great Depression, which is going to affect the oil industry, global travel, revenues in the hajahs, as well as the amount of gold he can get in a given year. But while he's got the gold coming in, while he's, you know, there are contracts going up for

building, transforming Riyadh, you know, building Saudi Arabia, basically. and one of the people who's central to the property boom that follows is Muhammad bin Laden. Yes. Guess who his son was, will you? You think you could get away with that. There we go. We can write, yes, a double father and son biography. Yeah, and it's just writing itself, frankly.

It's getting more complicated at this book, yeah. So tell us about Mohammed bin Laden and what was his sort of position in all of this. So, Muhammad bin Laden was born in the Hadramat. in Yemen and migrated to Jida as a boy, walked there with his brother. Literally walked. Yes, literally. Well, took a ship and then walked a lot of the distance where a ship wasn't workable. And he arrived at perhaps 11 or 12 in Jada as basically a street urchin, got a job hauling

baggage, and then made his way into the building trades during the late teens. In the 1920s, he moved to Dachran in eastern Saudi Arabia as. the Americans got going with oil production, and he learned to build there as a bricklayer, essentially, taking advantage of the boom that the American oil production was creating. And then, once he learned how to build things, he took advantage of his language and his flexibility and ambition to ingratiate himself with Ibn Saud in Riyadh and started to get the first contracts as a palace builder for the royal family. And my brain is just exploding.

This is just so... It's extraordinary. How will these things come together. It's recent history and every... Yeah, the whole picture starts to form. It's amazing. So, Bernardin accumulates wealth too, and he actually ends up being a creditor to the king. Well, if you wanted to do business with the king, you really had no choice but to be a creditor.

This was something that... His perfume bills are stuck up. Yes. And, you know, essentially, this was not a contracting economy that was very well regulated. there were no laws to follow, there were no courts to seek redress in. So you basically had to be patient and to work on the king's terms and hope that his sense of conscience and his desire to have you come back and finish the wall you started would result in him handing over some of his gold. But bin Laden was over time brilliant at allowing debts to build up in his favor and

continuing to get the job done. He was also incredibly flexible about change orders, which was important since the princes that he worked for, including Ibn Zaud, the king were constantly changing their minds about what they wanted and how they wanted it to look. And, you know, each day that he worked on some change that had come to him overnight was another day that he built up credit. And, you know, there would be moments when he would humbly petition for the clearing of the books and the king might nod and somebody would bring a satchel of gold. him that evening and he would be back at square one, he did get paid, but sometimes he had to wait

three to six months to be paid. So time marches on, around him, Riyadh is growing and, you know, it's not really fits and starts. People are being paid in fits and starts, but Riyadh keeps growing, you know, that was how sadly he keeps growing very, very quickly. But as the kingdom grows, the man himself at the heart of this starts to diminish somewhat, doesn't he? I mean, is it just age and exhaustion that starts reducing this towering six-foot-three, charismatic political figure, giant in the desert that he was? Across the 1930s and 1940s, he ages and suffers increasingly. He has cataracts.

His war-wounded legs begin to fail him, and he needs to be carried around on a chair or moved on a wheelchair where there are surfaces. he starts to build palaces around the kingdom. He now presides over, and one of the problems is, you know, how do you get him inside when he can't walk and you don't want to parade him in an undignified way against, you know, in front of onlookers as he makes his way from his automobile to the, to the door. And so they build ramps into car ramps into one of his palaces so he can drive onto the second floor

and then walk directly. and then walks directly onto his throne. That's amazing. But he couldn't see by the end. And that was one of the losses of pleasure that he complained about. Steve, there's a lovely moment in 1951 just towards the end in your book when Adel Aziz is shifting his entourage from Riyadh to Taif in the summer. And you say it takes 55 flights over three days to get his young fleet to the other back.

Yes, I mean, just as Wahhabism did not deter him from the automobile, it did not deter him from the aircraft either. And it became a very active buyer of aircraft and flyer and brought in pilots to help him out. And he used those. And, of course, none of his sons who were growing up now to be princes, heirs to the realm, and not all of them vigorous about their exercise, they generally preferred to write around a car, and fly in planes. I mean, in fairness, you know, sudden wealth, they had lived in poverty for centuries.

They associated walking and camels and horses with an age of poverty that was behind them. And they embraced the conveniences of transport technology with real gusto as a result. So they flew everywhere. Yeah, I mean, there is a saying, isn't there, it's clogs to clogs in three generations, but that only happens when you don't have oil gushing out of the ground. You can afford to get even better clogs. So look, I mean, he sort of dwindles. He passes away. What year does he actually die? Is it 1953 or 1951?

Okay. So the early 1950s. What state does he leave the kingdom in? Well, he had many children by his hundreds of wives. He recognized ultimately somewhat more than five dozen sons as his legitimate heirs. And he faced a central question, which how would this kingdom that he had built? preserved and ruled in his absence. It's the only country in the world named after one man, isn't it? Do you really the others? I don't know, but I can't immediately think of another one.

Twitter will tell us if we're wrong, but it sounds right. I can't think of another one. Yeah, I mean, it's certainly not the sort of form of possession, you know, the Arabia of the Sauds. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, I suppose, is almost, yeah. Yeah. But no one says Hashemite Jordan, do they just say Jordan, don't they? In any event, I find fascinating because it affects Saudi Arabia today, this problem he had of succession. There was no clear rule of succession in Saudi Arabia among the Bedouins that he took influence from.

There was no rule of primogeniture. There was no alternative rule. I think that's true of the Islamic world as a whole. There's never been a rule of primogeniture. It's a Western thing. And you find that that's the reason, for example, that every mogul emperor ends with an enormous five-way fight between all the different sons after each. And the Ottomans galloping back to the, you know, to the throne and having to kill all their brothers to make sure that nobody challenges them. So what happens in the House of Saad?

Well, he was thinking about the practical problem of his eldest son, Saud, who was not fit to rule. He had become a very heavy drinker. He was obese. He had no political ambition. He lacked connections to the Iquan or he had lost their respect. But his next son, Faisal, was an austere and more organized and purposeful individual who, you know, ultimately lived monogamously for a time in his life and had an interest in modernity as, you know, a state-building project. And Ibn Saud recognized that Faisal was the suitable heir, but he also didn't want to disrupt his family or create a bloody conflict by passing over Saoud who desperately

wanted to be king. So he basically arranged a succession that where power would move laterally from eldest to youngest son after he was gone, starting with Ibn Saude and Faisal as the prime minister to Saud's kingship. And on his deathbed, he essentially put that deal together. These brothers were not close. They had different mothers. They were different personalities. But Faisal was loyal and perhaps quietly ambitious enough to see that it was in his interest to accept this role as the man who would actually run everything while Saad sat around in his palace. Steve, how far in Ibn Wahab's own life do you begin to get the export of Wahhabi? around the Islamic world, because that, in a sense, is the biggest global result of this,

along with the power of the Saudis in terms of their oil wealth. I mean, I think it really begins after the Second World War, along with a lot of other features of the global oil age and Saudi Arabian power within it. And so I would say it may have begun in the 1950s as clerically led oil-funded charities within Saudi Arabia began to move out of the kingdom to neighboring countries in the Middle East and to establish mosques and seminaries and sort of proselytizing platforms. Because this is, I mean, this is responsible for a massive change in the nature of Islam within our lifetime today. So, Steve, out of these new Wahhabi madrasas come in due course what?

Well, the Taliban, al-Qaeda. I mean, in Pakistan, for example, these institutions that were already present in 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded spread and gained influenced and became part of the resistance, the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan, and they influenced the Islamist outlook of the Afghan fighters, but also attracted Arab volunteers, including Osama bin Laden. And out of some of these seminar, came sections, puritanical sections of the Afghan resistance, including the groups we now call the Taliban. And particularly, there's one isn't there, which is hugely important, the Darululam in a Korokatak, near Attic. This is the cradle, in a sense, founded very largely by the Saudis. Yeah, I mean, the Hakani's, the Taliban. I mean, it's a, it's theology, you know, has roots in Wahhabism and also in Dioband.

But it was... Our friend, Shao Waliullah, who we talked about at the beginning, who comes out of the same seminaries as Ibn Wahab, and then these two streams of puritanical Islam meet at this crucial moment. They do. And they become political. They become politicized, and they become militarized, and they become a battlefield cry as well as a form of individual devotion and Islamic sort of theology and learning. So, yes, I mean, these ideas fired the imaginations of many volunteers in the Afghan war. They explain the thinking that led to the 9-11 attacks. They were literally the only education that the Taliban leadership had in the 1990s when they took power. Taliban meaning student. And they are students at these Wahhabi madrasas.

Yes. And do they continue to grow and proliferate? I mean, we talked about 9-11. We talked about this coming together, you know, of different strands of the same ideology or from the same route, if you like, the same tap route. Yeah, I mean, they do. They continue. The investment continues to flow.

The oil age has not ended or deprived Saudi institutions of the funds needed to build new mosques or to hire and pay clerics all around the world and to vet them for their adherence to their theology and outlook. I mean, in my experience, if you ask a Muslim friend where they pray and you ask them, are you aware of sort of, is there a quote unquote Saudi mosque in your neighborhood or in your region? Or do you feel their influence? I have never asked that question without getting an emphatic and alarmed yes. Yes.

In Los Angeles or in Minneapolis or in Delhi or any number of. of other places. And many people I don't think understand this. It is specifically that Saudi funding that has encouraged this strain. We've seen in the last few weeks the Taliban embracing China in a way that we would have thought imaginable two or three years ago. And we've seen this new deal between the Saudis and Iran, brokered by China. Do you see Saudi in the future heading into the Chinese orbit? Is that something that you think is likely now? I think China will become much more important to Saudi Arabia. They already are important customers, and they may remain consumers of oil for longer than Europe and the United States do if Europe and the United States make the energy

transitions that they're talking about. Saudi Arabia, like most mid-sized powers, would like to have balanced relations with the great powers of the world. It preserves one's independence gives you a little bit more maneuvering room. So I don't think anybody wants to be China's client, but in order to have maneuvering room in today's world, having correct relations with both China and the United States and possibly Russia as well is the preferred policy of the middle guise in this world. Absolutely fascinating. So, so interesting. Thank you, Steve. Thank you so much. To take us from the ancient sand to the modern day, it's wonderful and it's brilliant to have had you on.

Can I just recommend and I really can't recommend it enough? The Bin Laden's by Steve Cole, oil, money, terrorism and the secret Saudi world. I've got a different subtitle in my one. It says The Story of a Family and Its Fortune, which I've got different editions. I've got the better edition. Anyway, look, that is all from us here on Empire. Till next time, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnand. And goodbye from me, William Durember.

You've saved it till the end, just so I wouldn't. tell you off in front of Steve Cole. You did. You did that. So sneaky.