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Saudi Arabia
HISTORICAL ROLE OF THE ARMED FORCES
Armed Struggle of the House of Saud
The kingdom was founded in 1932, about thirty years after Abd
al Aziz had begun the reconquest of the Arabian Peninsula for
the House of Saud. During the eighteenth century, the Al Saud
established hegemony over many of the tribes of the peninsula
but lost it during the nineteenth century. The Islam of the forces
led by Abd al Aziz was based on Wahhabism (see Glossary), the
creed of the Al Saud since the eighteenth century. Inspired by
the stern reformer, Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab, the armies of
the Al Saud gradually forced the other tribes of Najd to accept
their dominance and slowly extended their rule to the shores of
the Persian Gulf. In the first decade of the nineteenth century,
they seized Mecca and Medina, destroying shrines and images they
considered sacrilegious. Learning the fate of the two holy cities
and of the Wahhabi action of turning back Islamic pilgrims as
idolaters, the Ottoman sultan-caliph in Constantinople sent his
viceroy in Egypt, Muhammad Ali, to mount a campaign to destroy
the Al Saud. In 1816 Mecca and Medina were recaptured and, after
a bloody campaign, the Ottoman army conducted a savage invasion
of the Al Saud homeland in Najd (see The Saud Family and Wahhabi
Islam, 1500-1818 , ch. 1).
During the course of the nineteenth century, the Al Saud gradually
resumed their dominance of the central Najd region only to be
superseded in the 1890s by the Al Rashid, who originated in Hail,
northwest of Riyadh. After the dramatic capture of Riyadh in a
dawn raid in 1902, Abd al Aziz and his allies defeated the Rashidi
forces in a series of battles, gradually winning control of the
remaining settled areas of Najd. Although Ottoman forces equipped
with artillery combined with the Rashidi armies, they could not
prevent Abd al Aziz from consolidating his mastery over all central
Arabia in the middle of the first decade of the twentieth century.
Taking advantage of the crumbling of the Ottoman Empire and the
weakening of Turkish garrisons on the peninsula, Abd al Aziz invaded
the Eastern Province (also seen as Al Ahsa) in 1913 and then the
entire gulf coast between Kuwait and Qatar after overcoming the
Turkish garrison at Al Hufuf. Although it had remained part of
the Ottoman Empire, most of the peninsula had been almost a world
unto itself until the tribes were drawn into larger outside conflicts
during World War I. Relying on the Ottomans to maintain stability
in the Middle East before the war, Britain had earlier disdained
a pact with Abd al Aziz, but after Britain's declaration of war
against the Ottoman Empire in October 1914, the British sought
an alliance with the House of Saud. By a treaty signed in December
1914, the British recognized Saudi independence from the Ottoman
Empire and provided Abd al Aziz with financial subsidies and small
arms. As his part of the agreement, Abd al Aziz promised to keep
4,000 men in the field against the House of Rashid, which was
associated with the Ottomans. Bolstered by Ikhwan (brotherhood--see
Glossary) forces, Saudi control was extended to the outskirts
of Hail, the Rashidi capital, by 1917.
Data as of December 1992
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