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Pilgrims' Progress. Saud has also tried to ease the lot of Islam's pilgrims. Every year 200,000 of them make the long trek to Mecca to kiss the Sacred Black Stone and walk the ritual seven times around the Kaaba. Once thousands died of sunstroke or disease, and local Arabs fleeced them of their last pennies. Saud established first-aid stations, erected sun shelters, built a $3,000,000 quarantine station at Jiddah, allocated $132 million to refurbish the Great Mosque, straighten Mecca's streets, expand its accommodations. The pilgrim's head tax (among the chief pre-oil sources of Saudi income) has been abolished. Says Saud: "Let the pilgrim come. I'll pay the tax. Allah has given me the money from oil."
To Western eyes, progress seems to run into doctrinaire Wahabi puritanism at every turn. An Egyptian physician was rebuked publicly for an article on epilepsy because it challenged the Prophet's statement that epilepsy was caused by jinn. A man who steals pays with the loss of his hand; public amputations are commonplace (one result: Arabia has probably the lowest crime rate in the world). Social reform comes hard when slavery, sanctioned by Mohammed, still exists, though Saudis protest that slaves are well treated and often freed by owners eager to gain credit with Allah (old Ibn Saud used to release one every Friday after prayer). Tax reform is blocked by the Koran's ban on any personal tax on believers except the Zakaah, a small yearly levy paid to the sheik, who is instructed to use it to support his own family and to give the rest to the poor. Thus there are no beggars in Arabia. But the social security system consists of a line of black-hooded women squatting outside the palace wall every Friday to receive a weekly dole.
As for political reform, the Koran says nothing of democracy. Neither does King Saud. Said one official: "The constitution we follow is the Koran. We don't want to replace this with any other thing."
Saud tries hard to be the Koran's conscientious father to his people. He travels the country (nowadays he flies in a Convair, has an air-conditioned trailer driven overland to meet him at his destination), listens to a sheik's troubles, soothes him with a Cadillac, a school or a clinic—given as a favor rather than as a right. But father comes first. In two years observers estimate Saud has set aside $100 million for new palaces. One just completed in Jiddah (cost: $28 million) brings his personal collection of palaces to 24, and another is planned for Dammam. In Riyadh Saud is tearing down the old palace and replacing it with a new one which will cover nearly a square mile, cost an estimated $50 million, and will' include schools for young princes, a hospital, zoo, mosque, tennis court, swimming pool and houses for all Saud's wives, concubines, and sons under 16. In the palaces, green neon tubing spells out Koranic mottoes on garden walls, loudspeakers thunderously relay a news broadcast or the chant of a court poet reciting the Koran.