'A ruler of the desert' [‎109r] (5/8)

10 +
prominent lips and long narrow chin accentuated hy a pointed
heard. His hands are fine with slender fingers, a trait almost
universal among the tribes of pure Arab blood, and in spite of
his great height and breadth of shoulder he conveys the impres
sion, common enough in the desert, of an indefinable lassitude,
not individual but racial, the secular weariness of an ancient
and self-contained people* which has made heavy drafts on its
vital forces and borrowed little from beyond its own forbidding
frontiers- His deliberate movements, his slow sweet smile and
the contemplative glance of his heavy-lidded eyes, though they
add to his dignity and charm, do not accord with the Western
conception of a vigorous personality. Nevertheless report
credits him with powers of physical endurance rare even in hard*
bitten Arabia. Among men bred in the camel saddle he is said to
have few rivals as a tireless rider. As a leader of irregular
forces he is of proved daring, and he combines with his qualities
as a soldier that grasp of statecraft which is yet more highly
prized by the tribesmen. To be M a statesman” is perhaps their
final word of commendation.
Politician, ruler and raider Ibn Sa*ud illustrates a
historic type. Such men as he are the exception in any community
but they are thrown up persistently by the Arab race in its own
sphere and in that sphere they .net its needs They furnished
the conquerors and military administrators of the Mohammadan
invasion* who were successful just where Ibn Sa»ud 9 if he had
lived in a more primitive age, might have succeeded, and failed
just as in a smaller field he may fail, in the task of creating
out of a society essentially tribal a united and homogeneous
state of a durable nature. Muhammad al Rashid was the classic
example in the generation before our own - he has been dead
twenty years but his fame survives. Like him *Abdul "Aziz har
drawn the loose mesh of tribal organization into a centralized
administration and imposed on wandering confederacies an
authority which, though fluctuating, is recognized as a
political factor. The Sa»ud have in the palm groves of Riyadh
and the cases of their northern and eastern provinces* $asxm