Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

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modest efforts toward modernization which principally aimed at improving the population's
welfare. It also aimed at coaxing the society into the twentieth century and kept the society
in motion, yet in harmony with the state's vision. However, King Saud's reign was
marked with diffidence and was also known for its indulgence of royal family members.
Howrath wrote
Back in Riyadh, they [the princes] had to find something to spend their
money on, and among their thoughts were palaces...Saud embarked on a
concrete edifice decorated in pink and gold, set in walled gardens equipped
with swimming pools and fountains (supplied from artesian wells Americans
had drilled), and with singing birds in cages, mosaic terraces, thousands of
electric lights among the shrubs, and flood-lit minarets with loud-speakers on
top for the call to prayers. It was said to have cost 4 million, and after a few
years he...built another on the same site which, by the same rumour, cost 11
million, and was even more garish and tasteless than the first. 31
King Saud was faced with domestic, political, and economic turmoil as well as
external political challenges. These mounting crises of the 1950s were partially caused by
lopsided developments within the system. The Saudi society was undergoing rapid
development, while at the same time the administration's functional specialization was
lagging and decision making was centripetally crystalizing, so much so that when King
Saud committed an official visit to Egypt in 1954, the administration came to a standstill.
However, the 1950s was a decade of political upheavals in the Middle East. It witnessed
the fall of Arab monarchies and the rise of revolutionary regimes on popular sentiments and
the appeal to elusive slogans of wealth-sharing and Arab nationalism. The new middle
classes in the Arab world that were spawned under colonialism and fostered by the
modernization programs of the previous traditional monarchies, demanded political
participation, faster change and more equitable distribution of wealth. In 1952 King
Farouq of Egypt was toppled in a coup d'e tat by the military. In 1958, the Shariefian
monarch of Iraq, King Faisal, was assassinated and his royal house members were brutally
slaughtered in a humiliating showdown. His monarchic government was replaced by a
revolutionary military junta. Prince Abudullah of Jordan was assassinated to be acceded by
his young grandson Hussain whom later the Syrians plotted to overthrow.
Such developments in the Middle East spawned anti-system ideologies in the
Kingdom which were further complicated by a widening gap in the distribution of wealth.
In 1953, Saudi ARAMCO workers went on strike twice demanding better working
conditions. In 1956 they demonstrated when the government intended to renew the lease