File 2182/1913 Pt 9 'Arabia Policy towards Bin Saud' [‎150v] (298/406)

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A solitary incident—the only instance in the course of 12 months so far
as I am aware, of the active ebullition of the dreaded militant Wahhabi move-
ment—occurred, about this time, to lend colour to the stories circulated by
the King's sons. A party of non-Wahhabi Ataiba tribesmen, including' a
Shaikh, had come into conflict with the Akhwan of Ghat Ghat, whither they
had repaired apparently to raid or rob, and had paid for their temerity ■ with
their lives. The injured relatives rushed to the Sharif for redress and the
latter drew alarming pictures of the ubiquity of Wahhabi propagandists and
the urgency of checking the movement in its initial stages. Ibn Saud was
accused of fostering the movement for the furtherance of his own political
ambitions. _ _ •_
Suffice it to say that, from this time onwards, the fear of a Wahhabi rising
played no small part in disposing H.M.’s Government to regard unfavourably
any proposal likely to increase the military strength of Ibn Saud. The crisis
created j>y the Sharif’s attacks on the Wahhabi tribesmen of Khurma and the
growing possibility of an open rupture between Ibn Saud and the King, which
clouded the latter part of the period under report, confirmed Government in
their reluctance to arm the former, though the necessity of keeping his atten
tion distracted from Sharifian affairs by active employment against the enemy
was recognised.
Subsequent study of the situation in Central Arabia tended to confirm me
in my view that the Wahhabi peril, as such, was the fiction of prejudiced
Piinds; I became convinced that Ibn Saud had the movement under perfect
control. At the same time, it became increasingly apparent that the most
alarming factor of the situation was the Sharif’s apparent determination to
provoke Ibn Saud to set the forces of Wahhabism in motion against himself,
cither to convince H.M.’s Government of the justice of his warning or, at the
worst, to force Government to choose between himself and Ibn Saud—a
dilemma, which, obviously, could only be resolved in one direction. This fact
has not perhaps been sufficiently recognised—the Sharif’s persistence in the
affair of Khurma, unimportant as it was in itself, can have had no other
object than to provoke Ibn Saud into open hostility. This was patent to Ibn
Saud, who was not blind to the inevitable consequences of action by himself
to asseit his lights by force, and his determination to avoid being drawm into
conflict on a matter, on which, on its merits, he had no strong' feelings, was
equalled only by the difficulty he experienced in persuading his subjects to
be patient. Fortunately for him, the people of Khurma were well able to
look after themselves.; their defeat by the forces of the Sharif would certainly
nave precipitated a conflict. ’
Two great difficulties have, from time immemorial, beset the path of
those who have sought to rule Arabia—the nomadic habits of its tribesmen
and the lack of a common rallying point. To a certain extent, the house of
Kaslnd has been able to triumph over these difficulties by reason of the pecu
liar constitution of the Shammar tribe, whose solidarity is emphasised bv the
possession of a common capital and a ruler of their own blood. It has how
ever, been otherwise with the house of Saud—a line of foreign rulers residing
m a centre of their own creation and ruling a confederation of tribes neve?
unready to throw oft their allegiance m the event of its becoming
inconvenient. < &
tl.P rWb C of vJ 31 ’! 8 ’ if n We r, Ca J. them ’ of the decades which followed
the death of 1 aisal, aptly exemplify this point, and the present ruler of Kajd
JmnriTn S f«?> ne + r i COme u^ 11 ® ° f ^^dh, than he found himself called
f A Ce , th ! sam e difficulty pretenders of his own house not only raising
e standard of revolt against him but receiving strong support among the
tribes and townships of Kajd. Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud proved himself how
ever, to be a man of no mean mould,-the first years of his reign were spent
m expelling the foreign invaders from his furthest frontiers then followed
a period, during which he had to face the claims of rival candidates for the
throne, then a short sharp successful effort to extend his frontier at the
expense of the Ottoman Empire; finally followed the period of reconstruction
which though retarded by the war, has been steadily pursued Now as
Tlb’^siiiK ^ ^ & ll0m0geneous P° litic al entity acknowledging the rule
, } n A t. 0 ' . work at the task of consolidation, by which he was con-
fronted, Abdul Aziz cannot have failed to be impressed by two models from
the history of Central Arabia. Muhammad Ibn Rashid had owed Ms stoenoth
to the peculiar characteristics, which made the Shammar what they have
been and are—a Badawm tribe based on a Badawin city,—while his own great
ancestor, Saud Ibn Saud, had carried his conquering arms to the farfhest
corners of Arabia by reason of the judicious combination of religion and
policy, to which he owed his power.
Ibn Saud followed neither the one model nor the other in its entirety-
lie set to work to combine the two and the result was the Akhwan movement
whose essential characteristics are as follows : — ’
(1) it was restricted to the Badawin, who, though nominally for the
most part, adherents of the Hanbali or, as they came later to be called, the
t