The meteoric rise of Prince Muhammad bin Salman, 31, the tall, broad-shouldered, balding seventh son of King Salman bin Abd al-Aziz from his third wife, Fahda bint Falah bin Sultan of Al-Ajman tribe, born to him when he was fifty years old, has raised eyebrows globally, renewing the focus on the governance ethos of absolute monarchy.
Historically, monarchical rule became a byword for intrigue and counter-intrigue. The absolute exercise of power attracts an equally determined and concentrated urge to uproot such an ultimate source of power. The Saudi ruling apparatus is an anachronistic mode of handling state power but for almost a century it has successfully negotiated travails faced by arbitrary rule. The evolutionary changes in ruling patterns failed to dent the Saudi penchant for absolute power and the success of their steadfastness can be gauged by 64 years of unbroken ascendancy since 1953 of the progeny of the founder of the kingdom, Abd al-Aziz ibn Abd al-Ra?man Al Saud. However incongruent it may sound, six sons to date have succeeded Ibn Saud (Saud, Faisal, Khalid, Fahd, Abdullah and Salman) conveniently upstaging the ‘Father of Kings’ Abd-al-Malik bin Marwan, the fifth Umayyad ruler whose four sons (Walid, Suleman, the prosecutor of Muhammad bin Qasim, Yazid II and Hisham) ascended the throne after him for a 35-year period—although the continuity of succession was broken by Umar bin Abd-al Aziz (counted as one of the pious caliphs), the son of the brother of Abd al-Malik.
In the interior of his palace
A kingdom
The last one hundred years unfurled a rag-to-riches story, with Saudi Arabia emerging as a 937-billion-dollar economy, ranked 19th in the world, with a repository of 260 billion barrels or twenty percent of proven world oil reserves. It belied Islamic traditions of monarchy in which neither primogeniture nor sibling succession guaranteed success. The apparently absolute rule of the Saudi monarch is dependent on him developing prudent consensus within his extensive family, a cohort of about 7,000 members, and keeping a balance between branches and factions within the royal lineage. The dominant patrilineal branch is Al-Feisal, whose male members are accorded title of amir (prince) and the circle contains Al-Thunayan (King Feisal’s favourite wife belonged to it), a collateral branch of Al-Saud that has intermarried with the Al-ash-Shaykh Ulema family and Al-Jiluwi, a closely related third influential clan whose daughter married Ibn Saud, producing King Khalid.
The eldest of 36 surviving sons of Ibn Saud, Saud and Faisal, were born in 1902 and 1904, respectively and the births, three in 1923 (including King Abdullah), three in 1933 (including Crown Prince Nayef) and three in 1940, continued till 1947, six years before Ibn Saud died. The youngest living son, Muqrin, was born in 1943 when the old warrior was 68 years old. Ibn Saud, whose mother Sarah-al-Sudairi was from the Sudairi tribe, married three wives from this powerful tribe from Nejd. Seven of his sons (the Sudairi seven) were born to Hassa bint Ahmed Al-Sudairi, his eighth wife whom he married twice, (described by Bander bin Sultan, her famous grandson as a combination of Margaret Thatcher and Mother Teresa!) and two of them became kings (Fahd and Salman), and two served as Crown Prince (Sultan and Nayef). The Sudairi faction is regarded as most favorably inclined toward economic development, political and social liberalization, and a close relationship with the western world.
The sibling-to-sibling succession was decreed by Ibn Saud by nominating Saud as Crown Prince and Feisal as Deputy Crown Prince and since then the Saudi governance structure has been dominated by numerous political factions centered on a brother or coalition of brothers. Currently there are nine surviving sons of Ibn Saud, including King Salman, but none other than Salman hold governmental positions. Seven are, however, members of the Allegiance Council: Mishaal, Abdul Rahman, Mutaib, Abdul Ilah, Mamdouh, Ahmed and Mashur. Instead, the focus has shifted to the grandsons of Ibn Saud; 37 of them are considered prominent, and their ages range between 80 (Abdallah bin Khalid born in 1935) to 28 (Turki bin Salman born in 1987). The junior members of the royal family have acquired an education from the United States or Europe and during the 1980s, education, rather than seniority based on age, became a major source of influence for members of this generation. King Fahd appointed some of them as ambassadors, provincial governors, and deputy ministers. The older generation of grandsons, predominantly sons of former kings, spearheaded by sons of King Feisal, became operational in the 1970s. Saud Al-Feisal became the longest serving foreign minister of the world. Turki bin Feisal (a familiar face in Pakistan for doling out financial largesse to warring groups during the Afghan resistance against the Soviet Union) handled the Kingdom’s intelligence affairs for almost a quarter of a century (he failed to beat J. Edgar Hoover’s tenure as FBI chief of 37 years). The new generation, led by Feisal’s sons (Muhammad, Khalid, Saud and Turki), eschewed polygamy in stark contrast to the 24 wives of their grandfather, 4 of King Khalid, 13 of King Fahd, 30 of King Abdullah, 14 of crown prince Sultan, 3 of crown prince Nayef and 3 of King Salman. A survey of princes born in the 1950s and later, 25 in number, indicates that a majority of them, 20, have one spouse and considerably fewer children than their preceding generation.
At his desk
A series to watch
The ongoing episode of ‘game of thrones’ opened when Abdullah, the longest-reigning monarch (10 years as king and 10 years as regent during Fahd’s incapacitation) slid into immobility. He commanded the National Guard, which is a Nejdi-dominated force of Bedouin tribes loyal to Al-Sauds and raised as counterpoise to the Saudi army comprising Hejazis and Yemenis who were not considered reliable by the Nejdi ruling family. His command established him as a leading prince that led to him becoming king. During his thirty-year command, he transformed the National Guard, a unit not accountable to the Ministry of Defense but to the Ministry of National Guard, into a modern force trained by US-led veteran troops of the Vietnam War, and handed its command to his son Mutaib after ascending the throne.
The succession struggle was waged between factions led by the non-Sudairi Mutaib bin Abdullah and the Sudairi Muhammad bin Nayef. The background maneuvers were brokered by an outsider inside the palace, Khalid al-Tuwaijri (known as Cardinal Richelieu, the famous French Royal interlocutor) who inherited his position from his father, Abdul Aziz Tuwaijri, head of the Royal Court and Royal Guards as well as Private Secretary to King Abdullah who acted as the king’s gatekeeper. No royal audience could be held without his permission, involvement, or knowledge. But immediately after the demise of the King, the Sudairi faction moved with alacrity and appointed Muhammad bin Nayef Deputy Crown Prince. In the hectic melee, it was curtains for Khalid al-Tuwaijri and it also signified a break with the royal tradition of appointing a non-royal to manage the royal court as Salman brought in his son, Muhammad bin Salman, as General Secretary of the Royal Court and Defense Minister, a change stirring up the hornet’s nest.
The ascendance of Muhammad bin Salman was carefully choreographed by his father, adept at balancing princely, tribal and clerical interests, a trait he acquired during his 48 years as governor of the kingdom’s political hub Riyadh. He is a patriarch arbitrating family feuds and was termed a ‘prince of loyalty’ by older brother Sultan whom he tended during his last illness. Nevertheless, bin Salman’s elevation is seen with bewildered disbelief in the kingdom known for its caution and reticence. With cocky assurance, the media savvy potentate-to-be is performing a trapeze act of insisting on nationwide austerity (profoundly slashing his country’s budget, affecting pay cuts in salaries and imposing a freeze on all government contracts) but he is unwilling to give up the trappings of power. He fell for a 440-foot yacht in France, owned by Russian vodka tycoon Yuri Shefler and scooped it up instantly for 500 million Euros ($550 million). His brash demeanor, in profound contrast to the traditional Bedouin reserve, is attributed to the fact that the did not study abroad. Instead he has raw energy and combative insouciance. His rise, however, is viewed positively by the youth of the kingdom whose median age is 27. But the general feeling is that the kingdom may not be amenable to decades of rule by a single ruler.
The kingdom, faced with the crucial question of devising a new succession formula, may have temporarily warded it off by declaring that further succession will devolve on ‘fittest among them to hold the reins of power’. Yet how the family would reconcile open favouritism shown by the patriarch by removing one son of Ibn Saud from succession (Muqrin) and sidelining his more experienced grandson (Muhammad bin Nayef) in favour of his progeny, is open to question. To mollify the populace, Salman extended the Eid holidays for a week and returned all financial emoluments that were recently withdrawn from the official machinery, emulating the time-honoured monarchical tradition of doling out ‘accession donative’ (large chunks of money) patented by the king-making restive Janissary Corps during the Ottoman Empire.
Ali Siddiqi is a former bureaucrat and runs an academic training outfit in Karachi. He can be reached at tviuk@hotmail.com
