(3 of 10)
Ibn Saud, the Old Lion, reared his son in the stern tradition of the desert. Saud's formal schooling consisted of the Koran, and ended at 13. But he learned the slashing swordsmanship of the Arab horseman; and as late as 1929, young Prince Saud was dealing with a domestic crisis by the simpler method of chopping off the heads of captured tribesmen. Once he saved his father's life by leaping between him and an assassin, taking the descending knife in his shoulder. Saud's concepts of government were formed in a land where there are few inner boundaries, and sheiks control not a domain but a tribe constantly on the move as their flocks wander in search of pasture. The Old Lion ruled them through the power of the sword, held their allegiance with the promise of protection and with gifts, cemented it with his prodigious sexual prowess. He used to take a sheik's daughter as wife for a night, divorce her next day with royal gifts—leaving the tribe well pleased at the honor and perhaps contributing one more to his proud total of 40 sons and uncounted daughters.
Wealth & Whim. By the time the oil came, the Old Lion was failing. He never understood the dimensions of his new wealth, still less what to do with it. By tradition, everything in the country belongs to the King, and he treated this wealth as a personal possession. His sons, given bottomless allowances for travel abroad, poured out of Arabia and into the gay spots of the Middle East. Soon the Middle East seethed with stories of their excesses. Nearly every Cairo nightclub had its Saudi prince surrounded by procurers and willing belly dancers. There were stories of a $15 tip given a waiter for a box of matches, of girls getting diamond rings just by admiring them, of a drunken Saudi prince staggering into an "exclusive Egyptian club shouting: "Pigs, stand up in the presence of a prince of the royal house of Saud."
Within Saudi Arabia princes built palaces for their private comfort, hotels and apartment houses for their private profit. Officials and palace hangers-on made fortunes in kickbacks and invested their profits in Egyptian or Lebanese real estate. When a Western diplomat tried to hint to Ibn Saud that his money was being stolen by corrupt officials, the Old Lion summoned his finance minister and demanded 1,000,000 riyals on the. spot. Soon sacks of coins were stacked around him. Triumphantly, the old king turned to the diplomat, declaring: "As King I must know that there is money available for state needs. This proves that it is available. Beyond that, I am not concerned:"
But the austere old warrior was distressed at the stories of his sons' excesses. He had one publicly flogged for a drunken brawl. "Who would have thought even a few years ago that I should live to see liquor and drugs coming into Riyadh, when we used to condemn even the use of tobacco," he cried. "If it were in my power to choose, I would have doomsday now." When another prince shot and killed the British vice consul in Jiddah because he refused to hand over a visiting English girl, the Old Lion offered the widow his son's life in forfeit (she declined, settled for $70,000 damages). In sorrow and anger, he forthwith banished all liquor from Saudi Arabia. In 1953, the Old Lion died, a stranger in a world he never dreamed of. At 51, Saud became King.