Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

Overwhelmed by the new wealth, the nouveau riche royal family members
constructed palaces and orchards and began spending on luxurious belongings hitherto
considered contradictory to the austerity imposed by puritan Islamic traditions and
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prodigious by desert standards. According to H. St. Philby, during the early the 1950s,
the construction of Amir Abdullah's palace, presently the heir to King Fahad, cost 400,000
English pounds, while a palatial house in the heart of Riyadh, where land prices had
already began to soar, cost 15,000. He lamentably wrote
Sad to say, the King remained alert enough to be aware of the extravagance
and display on which his family and court spent oil revenue that was
increasing almost hourly. Princes lost count of the noughts. Salesmen
crowed round them like vultures after prey, and during the first years of
plenty tempted them to endless expenditure on glitter and luxury; in Riyadh
the largest of the new palaces consume three times as much electricity as the
rest of city put together. 28
The rest of the money went to establishing a standing army, a state-financed education and
health care and the laying and surfacing of limited road network to meet the increasing use
of automobiles.
These dramatic improvements in the national economy were too fast for a traditional
leadership to handle. The King's administration suffered from its tribal perception, which
did not differentiate between what was for the King and what was for the people. Oil
revenues were considered the property of the King. Commenting on the effects of these
developments on the national scale, Howrath noted "while the members of the royal family
wanted heavenly gardens, splendid cars and concrete palaces, Abd-al-Aziz wanted a royal
railway from the Persian Gulf to Riyadh and then an extension to Jidah. The shrine was
regarded by all of the advisors living in the country as an old man's folly." 29
Nevertheless, the project, which was completed in 1951, profoundly altered the economic
status of Riyadh and contributed to its growth as a modern capital during the 1950s. The
completion of the railway coincided with the King's decision to demolish Riyadh's
historical wall, ushering in the new era of the metropolis. The railroad served as the major
means of transportation to the capital, which lay in the midst of the desert, until a paved
road was laid in 1962 relieving the railway of its traffic and simultaneously encouraging the
growth of new settlements which dotted the road and catered to the needs of travelers