Faisal

King of Saudi Arabia (r. 1964-1975)

• Born: c. 1905
• Place of Birth: Riyadh, Arabia (now Saudi Arabia)
• Died: March 25, 1975
• Place of Death: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Faisal, as crown prince and then as king of Saudi Arabia, led his country to its status as a world power through his participation in the Arab oil embargo and the formation of the United Arab Emirates and OPEC. He also advanced many domestic reforms.

Early Life

Faisal (FI-sahl) was the third son of the founder of the modern Saudi state, Ibn Saՙūd. His mother was Tarfa, a descendant of the founder of the Wahhābī sect. Faisal was reared in the home of his maternal grandmother as a devout Muslim. He learned to recite from the Qur՚ān by age ten. His father made it clear that in addition to book learning, he wanted his son to learn the ways of the Bedouin. Faisal was trained to ride horseback, walk barefoot, eat modestly, and rise two hours before dawn. His personal life was unpretentious, even ascetic according to many who knew him. He prayed five times a day, as is customary among devout Muslims, and avoided smoking, drinking, and gambling. Faisal was known to possess an inner puritanism and great integrity. Known as a hard worker, he attended to business of state on a rigorous schedule.

Faisal studied Western technology and politics and spoke fluent English and French. Most of his own children (seven of eight) studied at the Hun School in Princeton, New Jersey, and then went on to colleges in the United States or the United Kingdom. Faisal became known in the 1930’s as a poet whose works were published in Europe. Politically, he was often considered enigmatic, replying to questions in parables rather than straight answers. Faisal’s explanation of such behavior to Yasir Arafat was, “If I say the wrong thing, or if I say the right thing in the wrong way, the Middle East will go up in flames.”

Faisal married three times. His first wife bore him one son; his second, two sons; and his third, five sons. Faisal sent his third wife to Turkey in 1940, because he did not agree with her feminism. Faisal was also believed to have had at least five daughters.

Life’s Work

After the premature death of one of his elder brothers, Turki, in 1918, Faisal became an important component of his father’s politics. Along with a group of advisers, the fourteen-year-old Faisal was sent to London in October and November, 1919, as part of the Central Arabian Mission. This was the first foreign trip by any member of the family. When he returned to Arabia, Faisal was put in charge of an operation against the Idrisi tribe of Asir, near Yemen. The Idrisi, allies of the British against the Turks, were trying to extend their power over the Aidh clan in the city of Abha. The Aidh appealed for help from Ibn Saՙūd. The Idrisis were pushed back by Faisal. He returned to the region again in 1924 to put down an uprising of the Aidh people fomented by Sherif Hussein, who had been ousted by the Saudis from the Hejaz. In 1925, Faisal commanded one of the armies of the besieged Jidda. In 1926, his maneuvers led to the fall of Mecca and Medina to the Saudis. Saudi Arabia was officially proclaimed in 1932, although power over most of the kingdom had been secured by 1926. Faisal became viceroy of the Hejaz and secretary of state for foreign affairs. He lived most of his life in Mecca, rather than Riyadh, until his accession to the throne.

Faisal was a frequent traveler to the West. He visited Western Europe again in 1926 and the Soviet Union in 1932 and was apparently very impressed by Soviet oil production in Baku and along the Caspian Sea. During March, 1934, a dispute broke out between Ibn Saՙūd and the rulers of Yemen, who belonged to a rival Zeidi sect of Islam. Faisal captured the port of Hodeida, but the Saudis withdrew quickly under pressure from the great powers. In 1939, Faisal was Saudi Arabia’s representative to the Conference on Palestine in London. The conference ended with the Arabs refusing to sit in the same room with the Zionists. In 1943, Faisal made a state visit to the United States, accompanied by his younger brother Khālid. In 1945, Faisal represented Saudi Arabia at the San Francisco conference that created the United Nations. Although he objected to the great power veto, he approved the texture of the future direction of the United Nations.

After World War II, Faisal frequently spoke out against Zionism and later Israel. In 1948, he accused Zionists of practicing “Nazi-like tactics,” a charge that would later be repeated in Middle East debates. He was visibly disturbed by the change in American policy during 1947 to support the partition of Palestine, so much so that he urged breaking relations with the United States. Faisal became crown prince and premier in 1953, when his father named Saud, another elder brother, as heir. Faisal was at first seen as apathetic to the changes that were going on within the Saudi government. He soon became the actual governor of the country because of Saud’s propensity for sensual pleasures over the interests of state. Faisal began processes of modernization, balancing respect for the integrity of religion against the demands of technology.

Faisal sought internal reform as a means of making Saudi Arabia survive. He introduced education for both genders, prohibited the importation of slaves (1959), and emancipated the slaves within the country in 1962. The slavery question was part of his “ten-point reform program” of November, 1962. Traditionalists within the country objected to the reform, and informal forms of slavery continued. Other reforms of an administrative nature, however, including increased public investment, rational planning, protection of workers against unemployment, and establishment of provincial government, continued.

When Ibn Saՙūd died on November 8, 1953, there were some analysts who believed that Faisal might take power. Any thought of this was dispelled quickly as Faisal swore allegiance to his brother Saud, who in turn made Faisal crown prince and heir apparent. In 1957, Faisal had a serious stomach problem in the form of a nonmalignant tumor, which was treated in the United States. He returned home in early 1958, after a stop in Cairo for discussions and reconciliation with Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, to find most of the country’s wealth dissipated by Saud’s excesses. As a result, on March 22, 1958, power was handed over to Faisal, who immediately started to cut spending to alleviate a major crisis in Saudi finances. Faisal retired part of the debt, increased oil production, and limited payments to the king. Saud, however, reasserted his kingly powers in December, 1960, and Faisal resigned his posts. Liberal Saudis hoped that Saud’s reassertion of power would lead to a constitutional monarchy.

The process of reconciliation of the two brothers, Saud and Faisal, began in August, 1961. After accommodation worked out by his other brothers, Faisal became prime minister in 1962. On March 28, 1964, Faisal took full power as viceroy, premier, and commander in chief of the armed forces. From March until November, Saud remained a figurehead and was formally deposed on November 2. Faisal appointed his brother Khālid as crown prince in March, 1965.

Nasser and Faisal drifted apart after the 1958 coup in Baghdad. Nasser was later seen as a menace to Saudi Arabia when he began interfering in the affairs of Yemen in 1962. On September 26, 1962, local revolutionaries backed by Nasser overthrew and killed Imam Mohammed al-Badr, the ruler of Yemen. The Saudis subsequently supported the royalists. The result was a near-war situation with Egypt over the Yemen question, with Faisal attempting to establish a closer relationship with the United States. There were Egyptian air raids on Saudi towns near Yemen during 1963. On August 24, 1965, Nasser and Faisal signed the Jidda Agreement, which promised a withdrawal of Egyptian forces within a year. At the same time, Nasser tried to destabilize the Saudi government by supporting terrorist and dissident groups. The Yemen War wound down only after Nasser’s 1967 defeat at the hands of Israel, and the remaining troops were withdrawn after his death in 1970.

Faisal generally had support from the more moderate Islamic states, such as Jordan and Iran, for solving regional disputes. Faisal reconciled himself with the new president of Egypt, Anwar el-Sadat, in June, 1971, during a weeklong visit to Cairo. Sadat’s strategy, of which the king approved, was to remove Soviet influence, seek rapprochement with the United States, and confront Israel if no peaceful solution could be found to the issue of Israeli-held territories. In 1971, Faisal established more cordial relations with the Baՙthist regime in Syria.

During 1971, Faisal sought to promote a confederation of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the nine Persian Gulf emirates. This plan, however, was complicated by Saudi political claims on the territory of Kuwait and Abu Dhabi, as well as family disputes between the Saudis and rival families. Most of the remaining emirates were formed into a new state, the United Arab Emirates . Common frontiers were recognized in 1974.

During 1960, Faisal was one of the founders of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). While oil shipments to the United States and the United Kingdom were halted for a short time in 1967, it was in 1973, at the time of the October War, that an oil boycott was used as a serious weapon in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Faisal, through his petroleum minister, Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, also engineered participation-type agreements with the foreign oil companies that were active in the region. The General Agreement on Participation of October 5, 1972, gave a 25 percent share of operations to the Saudis. As oil revenues rose, Faisal committed the kingdom to spreading the wealth among its citizens through development of educational, technological, and modernization projects.

As king, Faisal’s aim was to steer Saudi Arabia into a stable type of middling politics within the Arab world. He sought to please all ideologies, except Zionism and communism, both of which he detested. Faisal was a prime supporter of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) against Israel, providing Saudi funding for arms and other purposes. Al-Fatah, led by Arafat, was the prime beneficiary of Saudi money during the 1960’s and early 1970’s. At the same time, however, Faisal was fearful of the more radical elements within the PLO, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which sought to solve the problem of Palestine by replacing all traditional regimes in the region with socialist states. Faisal attended the Rabat Summit Conference in September, 1969, which recognized the PLO as the “sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.” In all the peace proposals that emerged during the early 1970’s, Faisal indicated his special interest in returning the Muslim Holy Places in Jerusalem, the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, to Islamic control. This was, in his view, a Muslim obligation in addition to a political question.

From July through October, 1973, Faisal was one of the principal architects of the Arab oil embargo against the United States and other countries that were supportive of Israel. Warnings of the changes in Faisal’s policy began in early July when the king called for a more evenhanded approach by the United States to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Faisal encouraged the price rises, which led to a tenfold increase in Saudi oil revenues between 1973 and 1975. The international frenzy that surrounded the oil boycott and rise in prices made Saudi Arabia a major player in not only the Middle East but also world politics.

In November, 1973, Faisal met with United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, an encounter that was very tense on both sides (Kissinger was a Jew). The discussions regarding Saudi and American interests were frank. Kissinger later described Faisal as a religious fanatic who had little interest in the Palestinians; he apparently failed to understand the level of Faisal’s commitment to Arab causes. During 1974, however, a special relationship developed between the United States and Saudi Arabia, which saw future Crown Prince Fahd visit Washington and a return visit to Riyadh by President Richard M. Nixon. U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia increased.

Faisal possessed a great interest in the spread of Islam beyond the Arab world. To achieve this goal, he visited non-Arab Islamic countries in 1970, journeying to Afghanistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia, as well as Algeria. The wealth of Saudi Arabia was enhanced through rises in international oil prices during the 1970’s, which, when connected with more sophisticated planning, secured a favorable financial situation for the Saudi government.

Faisal’s reign ended abruptly on March 25, 1975, when he was shot and killed by a nephew who was described as deranged. The assassination took place on the anniversary of the birth of the prophet Muhammad. Faisal himself believed that events such as birth and death were preordained and permitted security to lapse. The assassin, who had been educated in the United States and had been involved in several drug-related incidents, was later beheaded. Faisal was succeeded by his brother, Khālid. Real power was subsequently exercised by Crown Prince Fahd.

Significance

King Faisal left a definite mark on the history of Saudi Arabia and may be regarded as having saved the kingdom from destruction from within. His deft handling of the politics surrounding his irresponsible brother Saud led him to become king with a broad consensus. On an international level, Faisal had been recognized early in his career as a responsible and capable diplomat well before he received the throne. While Faisal possessed a strong understanding of Saudi Arabia’s problems, his personal outlook and puritanical attitudes led him to resist extreme change and compromise where religious principles were involved. In the long run, this may have been the correct policy, as it has been observed that developing countries with traditional regimes that undergo rapid modernization are often susceptible to revolution.

In his later years, Faisal became more autocratic and fearful about the future of Saudi Arabia. Corruption in the form of bribes at the top became rampant, largely because of the lack of educated administrators in top positions. The Saudis felt continually threatened by nationalist and radical forces within the Arab nations.

Faisal was genuinely loved by his people, partly because of the way he moved Saudi Arabia onto the world scene and partly because of his attempts to distribute wealth among the bulk of the population. In Western eyes, however, particularly as a result of his position on the Arab-Israeli conflict and his role in the 1973 oil embargo, Faisal was considered no friend of the West and, in fact, someone who had inflicted great harm. At the time of Faisal’s death, many Saudis believed that the assassination may have been a plot by foreign intelligence services, American or Soviet, to replace him. In this respect, Faisal was an interesting figure, because he was disliked by both American and Soviet politicians. The shooting, however, was undoubtedly the work of a single person.

Bibliography

Beiling, William A., ed. King Faisal and the Modernization of Saudi Arabia. London: Croom Helm, 1980. A useful book of articles that deals with various dimensions of the modernization process that Saudi Arabia underwent during the Faisal era.

De Gaury, Gerhard. Faisal: King of Saudi Arabia. London: Arthur Barker, 1966. An early but detailed biography of Faisal, useful more for his early life than later. Because of its date of publication, it does not cover the critical period of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War through the Arab oil embargo of 1973.

Hart, Alan. Arafat: Terrorist or Peacemaker? London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1985. Hart’s biography of PLO leader Arafat contains significant information on Faisal’s relationship with the Palestinians.

Holden, David, and Richard Johns. The House of Saud. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981. This is an exceptionally comprehensive and detailed history of the Saudi monarchy and state, with substantial details of the life and activities of Faisal. One of the authors, Holden, was murdered in Cairo in 1977.

Lacey, Peter. The Kingdom. New York: Avon Books, 1981. A sympathetic yet sensitive and sometimes critical account of the history of Saudi Arabia, with extensive information on Faisal, who was perhaps the most controversial Saudi ruler because of his preconceptions about Jews and his dualistic attitude toward the United States.

Mackey, Sandra. The Saudis. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. This is a journalistic account and memoir written by a Christian Science Monitor reporter who lived in Riyadh in various disguised professions other than journalist. The work contains many perceptive views of daily life in Saudi Arabia.

Osaimi, Mohammed Al-. The Politics of Persuasion: The Islamic Oratory of King Faisal Ibn Abdul Aziz. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, 2000. This examination of Faisal’s oratory includes a chapter on his life, mind, and rhetorical philosophy.

Sampson, Anthony. The Seven Sisters. New York: Viking Press, 1975. An account of the rise of the oil companies in the Middle East and their importance in global politics. The work includes significant information on the 1973 Arab oil embargo.