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There remained the vast desert heft of the rest of Arabia. To prevent even this from attaining true unity, it was divided into various territories: the Kingdom of the Hejaz, the principalities of Asir and Yemen, the British-controlled Hadramaut, Oman on the tip of the Persian gulf, and Nejd, the great central core. What they did not reckon on was the mettle of the man who had already won for himself part of this dusty district — Ibn Saud, ruler of the Nejd. Abdul Aziz ibn Abdur Rahman Al Faisal Al Saud, Knight Grand Commander of the Indian Empire, better known as Ibn Saud, is a towering figure, 6 ft. 4 in. in his sandals. His simplest method of holding tribal loyalties is to marry the sheik's daughter. He has taken to wife over 100 of them in the past ten years, divorced most of them (no disgrace in Arabia). Because he has given up camels for fast bullet-proof motor cars in conducting desert warfare, his favorite wives follow the flag in a close-shuttered regulation police van or pie wagon, safe from prying eyes. Ever since the War Ibn Saud has been fighting to extend his realm. By 1925 he had completed conquest of the Hejaz which contains the holy cities of Medina and Mecca, winning at the same time his greatest source of income, a toll on Mohammedan pilgrims. In 1926 the principality of Asir accepted his suzerainty and the following year Britain signed a treaty recognizing the complete independence of Ibn Saud's domains. (From 1917 to 1923 Britain paid him a total of £542,000 in subsidies "that he be guided generally by the wishes of His Majesty's Government in regard to his foreign policy.") In 1932 Ibn Saud's conquests were sufficiently consolidated and stable to allow him to change the name of his realm from Kingdom of the Hejaz and Nejd and its Dependencies to The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He continued to rule this new domain (nearly four times the size of Texas) from Riyadh, his birthplace 54 years ago and his old capital since 1901. But on the Red Sea there still remained Yemen.
Explorer Harry St. John Bridger Philby has described the greater part of Yemen as "the worst mapped region of the inhabited globe." Its mountainous valleys are perhaps the most fertile in southern Arabia. Its almost deserted seaport of Mocha has become a synonym for coffee the world around. Coffee is still grown on Yemen's mountains but what little is exported goes through the port of Hodeida.
Elderly Yahya, the Imam of Yemen, is as crafty and penny pinching as strapping Ibn Saud is brave and generous. Where the latter won sheiks' loyalties by marrying their daughters, Yahya the Imam kidnapped his sheiks' children and held them as hostages. The latest dispute over the unmapped boundary between Yemen and Asir has been going on for two years, complicated by the fact that last year the Idrissi of Asir, repenting his surrender to Ibn Saud, fled over the border to join Yahya the Imam.
Last year Ibn Saud sent a mission to Yemen to settle the boundary dispute peaceably. Yahya the Imam pleaded illness as an excuse for not seeing them, then clapped the delegation into jail and sent an armed force into Asir under the former Idrissi.