History UsefulNotes / AbdulAzizIbnSaud

Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud (15 January 1875 -- 9 November 1953) lived in the turn of the 20th century. He was a successful Bedouin warlord who founded what is now Saudi Arabia. For a long time the Arabian Peninsula was in a three-way struggle for dominance among the Al-Rashid, the Hashemite, and the Al-Saud tribes. During his early life the Saudis were in exile, and the Rashidis held the upper hand. Ibn Saud, while little more than a boy, led a war party into the desert to seize the old capital city of Riyadh in a sudden coup. Such a yarn-worthy feat of arms made for splendid propaganda among the bedouin and he quickly had an army. He was able to fight his way to the top and become sultan of what is now Saudi Arabia.

Ibn Saud fathered an unknown number of children well within the dozens, and his sons have in turn ruled over Saudi Arabia since his death in 1953. The current monarch, Salman, is the sixth of his children to reign. As late as 2015, it didn't look like power would pass to his grandsons anytime soon; Ibn Saud's youngest son, Muqrin, born in 1945, was named Crown Prince (first-in-line to the throne) in January 2015. However, that April, Muqrin was removed as Crown Prince and the position was given for the first time to one of the grandsons, namely Muhammad bin Nayef (born in 1959). He was in turn removed in June 2017 in favor of another grandson (and one of the current king's sons), Mohammad bin Salman (born 1985).

----
!! Involvement in major events:
* UsefulNotes/WorldWarI: The event that more-or-less determined that he would win the grand scramble for control of Arabia. On one hand, one of his major rivals (the Rashidis) sided with the Turks only to be left out to dry when the main Turkish armies were engaged further to the West and East in Palestine and Mesopotamia against the Western Allies, leaving the road to Ha'il open to the Saudis. His other main rival camp (the Hashemites) also sided with the Western Allies and indeed played a more active role in the war than the Saudis did... and as a result were bled out fighting the Turks AND promptly alienated both the Western Allies and the local Arab powerbrokers from them by their grand pretensions to be rulers of all Arabs.

Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud (15 January 1875 -- 9 November 1953) lived in the turn of the 20th century. He was a successful Bedouin warlord who founded what is now Saudi Arabia. For a long time the Arabian Peninsula was in a three-way struggle for dominance among the Al-Rashid, the Hashemite, and the Al-Saud tribes. During his early life the Saudis were in exile, and the Rashidis held the upper hand. Ibn Saud, while little more then a boy, led a war party into the desert to seize the old capital city of Riyadh in a sudden coup. Such a yarn-worthy feat of arms made for splendid propaganda among the bedouin and he quickly had an army. He was able to fight his way to the top and become sultan of what is now Saudi Arabia.

* UsefulNotes/WorldWarI: The event that more-or-less determined that he would win the grand scramble for control of Arabia. On one hand, one of his major rivals (the Rashidis) sided with the Turks only to be left out to dry when the main Turkish armies were engaged further to the West and East in Palestine and Mesopotamia against the Western Allies, leaving the road to Ha'il open to the Saudis. His other main rival camp (the Hashemites) also sided with the Western Allies and indeed played a more active role in the war than the Saudis did... and as a result were bled out fighting the Turks AND promptly alienated both the Western Allies and the local Arab powerbrokers from them by their grand pretensions to be rulers of all Arabs.

%% commented out real-life troping, gushing. Tropes are tools in fiction, not means of abridged biased retelling of historic events !!Associated Tropes:
%% cont. commented out
%% cont. commented out * ArchEnemy: The Ottoman Empire
%% commented out real-life troping * AsskickingEqualsAuthority: As demonstrated when he dealt with a moronic Prince who was recalled after he sexually harassed a woman while abroad, thus personally embarrassed the King.
%% commented out real-life troping * Badass
%% commented out real-life troping * BoisterousBruiser: He loved to have a good time, whether it was with [[BloodKnight war]], [[TheChessmaster conspiracy]], [[ManlyMenCanHunt hunting]], [[BigEater feasting]] or with [[ChivalrousPervert women]].
%% cont. commented out * BornInTheWrongCentury
%% cont. commented out * TheChessMaster: Again, this man survived a series of bloodbaths in Arabia leading up to UsefulNotes/WorldWarI that pretty much destroyed or fatally mauled every other serious contender for Arabian supremacy (namely the Rashidis, the Hashemites, and the Ikhwan later). Including the fact that to do so he had the manuever around the Great Power rivalries between the Turks and the Western Allies.
%% cont. commented out * ChivalrousPervert: He is said to have had as many wives as [[Literature/TheBible Solomon]], but only the maximum allowed number of four at a time, and Ibn Saud seems to have usually treated them fairly well. He also financially supported the children from these unions even if he later divorced the mother when most men in his position would have tried to weasel out of it. There's also no evidence he ever had sex with any woman who was not his wife at the time.
%% cont. commented out+SugarWiki material * CrowningMomentOfAwesome: The conquest of Riyadh.
%% cont. commented out ** One time after a battle, a rumor had gone round that Ibn Saud had been rendered incapable of producing an heir. As it happened, he had only three wives at the time. So he sent a messenger to a nearby village and he came back with the most beautiful young woman available. Whereupon he right away married her and then consummated ''in front of thousands of Bedouin warriors''. [[ValuesDissonance No one asked]] what ''she'' felt about it, of course, though she did get to live in a palace at least.
%% cont. commented out * DiplomaticImpunity: One of his sons tried to pull this when he sexually harassed a woman in New York. He left the United States unscathed--[[CrowningMomentOfAwesome but got beaten to a pulp]] [[SubvertedTrope by ibn Saud himself when he got back home.]]
%% cont. commented out * {{Egopolis}}: It became the Kingdom of SAUDI Arabia in 1932.
%% cont. commented out * [[FairForItsDay Fair for His Day]]: He was fairly merciful as Arab rulers go.
%% cont. commented out * AFatherToHisMen
%% cont. commented out * GambitPileup: He lived in an environment that was little more than a constant STREAM of these. On one level, you had the competing major Arabian clans/polities (the Saudis, the Hashemites, and the Rashidis being the largest three), each representing their own complex regional interests. Then you had various "independent actors" like the Bedouin tribes and the Ikhwan. And THEN you had the fact that Arabia was a flashpoint of conflict for the Great Powers, with Turkish and (later) German influence spreading from the Northwest from Mesopotamia and Palestine and Western Allied (mainly British) influence coming in from the Southwest and West from the Indian Ocean and Eastern Africa. And ALL of these factions had ever-more-convoluted relationships and interactions with every other faction. As this article indicates, [[GeniusBruiser This was the man that overcame all others to dominate Arabia.]]
%% cont. commented out * GeniusBruiser
%% cont. commented out * GoodIsNotSoft
%% cont. commented out * GoodOldWays
%% cont. commented out * HenpeckedHusband: Sometimes. Rather ironically for such a Badass. Not all that uncommon however in polygamous societies: the husband is after all outnumbered.
%% cont. commented out * LastPlanStanding: The British Empire, German Empire, and UsefulNotes/OttomanEmpire all went for Arabia in the GambitPileup that was UsefulNotes/WorldWarI. None of them got it.
%% cont. commented out+RepaiDontRespond ** Well, to be specific, the British officially "got" it, in that for a brief period of time, Arabia was recognized as being part of the Empire, and even after the "official" independence, it was still well within Britain's sphere of influence. Of course, the facts on the ground meant that they never really had control, and the "independence" was just yielding to the inevitable and obvious.
%% cont. commented out+dual-trope entry with a slash * MagnificentBastard / GuileHero: Depending on how you look at him.
%% cont. commented out+ZCE * MagneticHero
%% cont. commented out * MightyWhitey: Inverted. He was a local Bedouin who held his own amid the Great Power politics.
%% cont. commented out+Sinkhole * [[ChurchMilitant Mosque Militant]] : Ibn Saud created a [[UsefulNotes/TheKnightsTemplar Knights Templar]]-like order called the Ikhwan that made him effectively the only Arab WarriorPrince in the Peninsula with a standing army. This proved useful to him but later the Ikhwan became [[RapePillageAndBurn "Overenthusiastic"]], troubled his neighbors, and became a dangerous threat to his throne until UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire effectively told him, "If you can't control your people, we'll control them for you". Thus persuaded Ibn Saud forcibly suppressed the Ikhwan,
%% cont. commented out * NobleSavage: Ibn Saud is almost an exact example of this trope.
%% cont. commented out * ProudWarriorRaceGuy
%% cont. commented out * [[RealMenLoveJesus Real Men Love Allah]]
%% cont. commented out * TheRustler: Camel rustling was once the national sport of bedouin. Until people like ibn Saud stole all the fun...
%% cont. commented out * [[FourStarBadass Sheik Badass]]
%% cont. commented out * SlaveMooks : Like many Arab princes, he used slaves as police. The reasoning was that slaves would obey better, and would be less [[{{Squick}} difficult]] about the [[ATasteOfTheLash rather]] [[OffWithHisHead distasteful]] duties that came with the local style of police work then a free man would.
%% cont. commented out * StormingTheCastle: Riyadh
%% cont. commented out * {{Unobtanium}} : Oil was found late in his reign.
%% cont. commented out * WarriorPrince
----

Ibn Saud fathered an unknown number of children well within the dozens, and his sons have in turn ruled over Saudi Arabia since his death in 1953. The current monarch, Salman, is the sixth of his children to reign. As late as 2015, it didn't look like power would pass to his grandsons anytime soon; Ibn Saud's youngest son, Muqrin, born in 1945, was named Crown Prince (first-in-line to the throne) in January 2015. However, that April, Muqrin was removed as Crown Prince and the position was given for the first time to one of the grandsons, namely Muhammad bin Nayef (born in 1959). He was in turn removed in June 2017 in favor of another grandson, Mohammad bin Salman (born 1985).

%% cont. commented out+Sinkhole * [[ChurchMilitant Mosque Militant]] : Ibn Saud created a [[TheKnightsTemplar Knights Templar]]-like order called the Ikhwan that made him effectively the only Arab WarriorPrince in the Peninsula with a standing army. This proved useful to him but later the Ikhwan became [[RapePillageAndBurn "Overenthusiastic"]], troubled his neighbors, and became a dangerous threat to his throne until UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire effectively told him, "If you can't control your people, we'll control them for you". Thus persuaded Ibn Saud forcibly suppressed the Ikhwan,

-->''And we broke them and slaughtered of them three hundred and seventy men.''
-->''And God restored to us our kinsmen of the family of Saud that were prisoners in their hands''
--> ''...And, by Almighty God, but two of the bedouin at our side were slain. Then we returned to the villages of our friends''
--> ''And they had taken the castle and laid hold of the family of Yassim and those with them...''
--> ''And our intention, by the Grace of God, is that we should speed to Buraida, if God wills. Thus far. Greeting."''
--> Translation of a battle dispatch by Ibn Saud, from ''The Desert King'' by David Howarth.

Ibn Saud lived in the turn of the 20th century. He was a successful Bedouin warlord who founded what is now Saudi Arabia. For a long time the Arabian Peninsula was in a three-way struggle for dominance among the Al-Rashid, the Hashemite, and the Al-Saud tribes. During his early life the Saudis were in exile, and the Rashidis held the upper hand. Ibn Saud, while little more then a boy, led a war party into the desert to seize the old capital city of Riyadh in a sudden coup. Such a yarn-worthy feat of arms made for splendid propaganda among the bedouin and he quickly had an army. He was able to fight his way to the top and become sultan of what is now Saudi Arabia.

Ibn Saud fathered an unknown number of children well within the dozens, and his sons have in turn ruled over Saudi Arabia since his death in 1953. The current monarch, Salman, is the sixth of his children to reign. As late as 2015, it didn't look like power would pass to his grandsons anytime soon; Ibn Saud's youngest son, Muqrin, born in 1945, was named Crown Prince (first-in-line to the throne) in January 2015. However, that April, Muqrin was removed as Crown Prince and the position was given for the first time to one of the grandsons, namely Muhammad bin Nayef (born in 1959).

%% commented out real-life troping * {{Badass}}

%% cont. commented out * HenpeckedHusband: Sometimes. Rather ironically for such a {{Badass}}. Not all that uncommon however in polygamous societies: the husband is after all outnumbered.

* UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne: The event that more-or-less determined that he would win the grand scramble for control of Arabia. On one hand, one of his major rivals (the Rashidis) sided with the Turks only to be left out to dry when the main Turkish armies were engaged further to the West and East in Palestine and Mesopotamia against the Western Allies, leaving the road to Ha'il open to the Saudis. His other main rival camp (the Hashemites) also sided with the Western Allies and indeed played a more active role in the war than the Saudis did... and as a result were bled out fighting the Turks AND promptly alienated both the Western Allies and the local Arab powerbrokers from them by their grand pretensions to be rulers of all Arabs.

%% cont. commented out * TheChessMaster: Again, this man survived a series of bloodbaths in Arabia leading up to UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne that pretty much destroyed or fatally mauled every other serious contender for Arabian supremacy (namely the Rashidis, the Hashemites, and the Ikhwan later). Including the fact that to do so he had the manuever around the Great Power rivalries between the Turks and the Western Allies.

%% cont. commented out * LastPlanStanding: The British Empire, German Empire, and UsefulNotes/OttomanEmpire all went for Arabia in the GambitPileup that was UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne. None of them got it.

Ibn Saud fathered an unknown number of children well within the dozens, and his sons have in turn ruled over Saudi Arabia since his death in 1953. The current monarch, Salman, is the sixth of his children to reign, and power doesn't look like it will pass to his grandsons anytime soon; Ibn Saud's youngest son, Muqrin, born in 1945, was named Crown Prince (first-in-line to the throne) in 2015.

Ibn Saud was a charismatic ruler of magnanimous but forceful disposition. He was not merely able to succeed in the continuous GambitPileup of desert politics, but could hold his own when he later had to deal with Great Powers. He was respected by Sir UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill, among other notable people.

Ibn Saud lived in the turn of the 20th century, but he lived the life of an [[TheEpic Epic]] [[{{Badass}} hero]]. He was a successful Bedouin warlord who founded what is now Saudi Arabia. For a long time the Arabian Peninsula was in a three-way struggle for dominance among the Al-Rashid, the Hashemite (see WarriorsOfTheDesertWind),and the Al-Saud [[TheClan tribes]]. During his early life the Saudis were in exile, and the Rashidis held the upper hand. Ibn Saud, while little more then a boy, led a war party into the desert to seize the old capital city of Riyadh in a sudden coup. Such a yarn-worthy feat of arms made for splendid propaganda among the bedouin and he quickly had an army. He was able to fight his way to the top and become sultan of what is now Saudi Arabia.

!!Associated Tropes:

* ArchEnemy: The Ottoman Empire
* AsskickingEqualsAuthority: As demonstrated when he dealt with a moronic Prince who was recalled after he sexually harassed a woman while abroad, thus personally embarrassed the King.
* {{Badass}}
* BoisterousBruiser: He loved to have a good time, whether it was with [[BloodKnight war]], [[TheChessmaster conspiracy]], [[ManlyMenCanHunt hunting]], [[BigEater feasting]] or with [[ChivalrousPervert women]].
* BornInTheWrongCentury
* TheChessMaster: Again, this man survived a series of bloodbaths in Arabia leading up to UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne that pretty much destroyed or fatally mauled every other serious contender for Arabian supremacy (namely the Rashidis, the Hashemites, and the Ikhwan later). Including the fact that to do so he had the manuever around the Great Power rivalries between the Turks and the Western Allies.
* ChivalrousPervert: He is said to have had as many wives as [[Literature/TheBible Solomon]], but only the maximum allowed number of four at a time, and Ibn Saud seems to have usually treated them fairly well. He also financially supported the children from these unions even if he later divorced the mother when most men in his position would have tried to weasel out of it. There's also no evidence he ever had sex with any woman who was not his wife at the time.
* CrowningMomentOfAwesome: The conquest of Riyadh.
** One time after a battle, a rumor had gone round that Ibn Saud had been rendered incapable of producing an heir. As it happened, he had only three wives at the time. So he sent a messenger to a nearby village and he came back with the most beautiful young woman available. Whereupon he right away married her and then consummated ''in front of thousands of Bedouin warriors''. [[ValuesDissonance No one asked]] what ''she'' felt about it, of course, though she did get to live in a palace at least.
* DiplomaticImpunity: One of his sons tried to pull this when he sexually harassed a woman in New York. He left the United States unscathed--[[CrowningMomentOfAwesome but got beaten to a pulp]] [[SubvertedTrope by ibn Saud himself when he got back home.]]
* {{Egopolis}}: It became the Kingdom of SAUDI Arabia in 1932.
* [[FairForItsDay Fair for His Day]]: He was fairly merciful as Arab rulers go.
* AFatherToHisMen
* GambitPileup: He lived in an environment that was little more than a constant STREAM of these. On one level, you had the competing major Arabian clans/polities (the Saudis, the Hashemites, and the Rashidis being the largest three), each representing their own complex regional interests. Then you had various "independent actors" like the Bedouin tribes and the Ikhwan. And THEN you had the fact that Arabia was a flashpoint of conflict for the Great Powers, with Turkish and (later) German influence spreading from the Northwest from Mesopotamia and Palestine and Western Allied (mainly British) influence coming in from the Southwest and West from the Indian Ocean and Eastern Africa. And ALL of these factions had ever-more-convoluted relationships and interactions with every other faction. As this article indicates, [[GeniusBruiser This was the man that overcame all others to dominate Arabia.]]
* GeniusBruiser
* GoodIsNotSoft
* GoodOldWays
* HenpeckedHusband: Sometimes. Rather ironically for such a {{Badass}}. Not all that uncommon however in polygamous societies: the husband is after all outnumbered.
* LastPlanStanding: The British Empire, German Empire, and UsefulNotes/OttomanEmpire all went for Arabia in the GambitPileup that was UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne. [[CaptainObvious None of them got it.]]
** Well, to be specific, the British officially "got" it, in that for a brief period of time, Arabia was recognized as being part of the Empire, and even after the "official" independence, it was still well within Britain's sphere of influence. Of course, the facts on the ground meant that they never really had control, and the "independence" was just yielding to the inevitable and obvious.
* MagnificentBastard / GuileHero: Depending on how you look at him.
* MagneticHero
* MightyWhitey: Inverted. He was a local Bedouin who held his own amid the Great Power politics.
* [[ChurchMilitant Mosque Militant]] : Ibn Saud created a [[TheKnightsTemplar Knights Templar]]-like order called the Ikhwan that made him effectively the only Arab WarriorPrince in the Peninsula with a standing army. This proved useful to him but later the Ikhwan became [[RapePillageAndBurn "Overenthusiastic"]], troubled his neighbors, and became a dangerous threat to his throne until UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire effectively told him, "If you can't control your people, we'll control them for you". Thus persuaded Ibn Saud forcibly suppressed the Ikhwan,
* NobleSavage: Ibn Saud is almost an exact example of this trope.
* ProudWarriorRaceGuy
* [[RealMenLoveJesus Real Men Love Allah]]
* TheRustler: Camel rustling was once the national sport of bedouin. Until people like ibn Saud stole all the fun...
* [[FourStarBadass Sheik Badass]]
* SlaveMooks : Like many Arab princes, he used slaves as police. The reasoning was that slaves would obey better, and would be less [[{{Squick}} difficult]] about the [[ATasteOfTheLash rather]] [[OffWithHisHead distasteful]] duties that came with the local style of police work then a free man would.
* StormingTheCastle: Riyadh
* {{Unobtanium}} : Oil was found late in his reign.
* WarriorPrince

* [[ChurchMilitant Mosque Militant]] : Ibn Saud created a [[TheKnightsTemplar Knights Templar]]-like order called the Ikhwan that made him effectively the only Arab WarriorPrince in the Peninsula with a standing army. This proved useful to him but later the Ikhwan became [[RapePillageAndBurn "Overenthusiastic"]], troubled his neighbors, and became a dangerous threat to his throne until TheBritishEmpire effectively told him, "If you can't control your people, we'll control them for you". Thus persuaded Ibn Saud forcibly suppressed the Ikhwan,

* ChivalrousPervert: He is said to have had as many wives as [[Literature/TheBible Solomon]], but only four at a time, and Ibn Saud seems to have usually treated them fairly well. He also supported the children from these unions even if he later divorced the mother when most men in his position would have tried to weasel out of it.

* ChivalrousPervert: He is said to have had as many wives as [[Literature/TheBible Solomon]], but only four at a time, and Ibn Saud seems to have usually treated them fairly well.

* ChivalrousPervert: He is said to have had as many wives as [[Literature/TheBible Solomon]], but only four at a time. To be fair, Ibn Saud seems to have usually treated them fairly well.

Ibn Saud fathered an unknown number of children well within the dozens, and his sons have in turn ruled over Saudi Arabia since his death in 1953. The current monarch, Abdullah, is the fifth of his children to reign, and power doesn't look like it will pass to his grandsons anytime soon; Ibn Saud's youngest son, Muqrin, born in 1945, was named Deputy Crown Prince (second-in-line to the throne) in 2013.