A-Brief-History-of-Saudi-Arabia

The First Saudi State
of Riyadh, became restive and recommenced his campaign against
Diriya, the 1754 armistice lasting less than two years. In 1758 Abd al-
Aziz brought the battle to Riyadh, with inconclusive results. But in the
early 1760s the Wahhabis resecured Dahham’s loyalty, even extracting
a large payment from him in tribute.
They also made successful advances into Hasa, which was under
the rule of the Al Juaid dynasty and the chiefs of the Arayar tribe of
the Bani Khalid. Hasa’s tribal rulers had wrested it in 1669 from the
Ottoman Turks, who had seized it from independent rulers in 1592.
Ali, the fourth caliph, who gave rise to the Shia through his martyred
son Husayn, had made his capital in Kufa, just over the Kuwaiti border
in present-day Iraq. That had established the Persian Gulf coast and
eastern Arabia as a Shia stronghold. With their rites involving veneration
of saints and visits to tombs, Shia opposition to the Wahhabi was
especially intense.
In the late 1750s the Bani Khalid chief of Hasa, along with allies from
many Najdi districts, engaged in a series of raids against Diriya’s forces.
However, the battling reached a virtual stalemate, and some tribes simply
gave up their fight and agreed to pay Diriya for their disloyalty. But
dissatisfaction with Wahhabi rule and Saudi power continued to fester
while Diriya’s boundaries expanded. In 1764 a Bedouin confederation
from the region around Najran, the city in southwest Arabia, rose up
against the Wahhabi, attacking their stronghold, Diriya. Abd al-Aziz
lost some 500 killed and more than 200 taken prisoner. The attack was
instigated by the Arayar tribe in Hasa, allies of the Najrani Bedouin who
had previously suffered defeat at Wahhabi hands.
Forces from the Arayar were meanwhile advancing toward Diriya
under their chief, Arayar ibn Dujain. Abd al-Wahhab quickly negotiated
a settlement with the leader of the Najrani Bedouin, and their
forces withdrew before the Arayar could join the fray. Nonetheless
when the Arayar arrived in 1765 they laid siege to the village for three
weeks, but Diriya’s defenses held. The defeat by the Najranis and the
siege by the Arayar represented the most serious threat of Ibn Saud’s
reign, and the last. He died that same year.
The Reign of Abd al-Aziz
Shortly after Muhammad ibn Saud’s death in 1765, his son Abd al-Aziz
ibn Muhammad ibn Saud became emir of Diriya. Having withstood the
threat posed by the Arayar, Diriya was now perhaps the most powerful
of numerous city-states in Arabia’s deserts. Even when under attack at
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