Khalid ibn Abd al-Aziz al Saʿud
1912 - 1982
King of Saudi Arabia, 1975 - 1982.
Khalid ibn Abd al-Aziz Al Saʿud was born in 1912 in Riyadh, the seventh son of King Abd al-Aziz Al Saʿud (known as Ibn Saʿud in the West), the founder of Saudi Arabia. Khalid's only full brother was Muhammad ibn Abd al-Aziz Al Saʿud, two years his elder.
Khalid was educated in the royal court, studying the Qurʾan, Islamic history, and a limited range of several practical subjects, together with firsthand observation of court politics. He did not pursue an overtly political career. Nonetheless, from early adulthood he played an important part in family councils and by his thirties had become part of the small circle of princes that would guide Saudi Arabia's affairs. Of all his brothers he was, perhaps, the closest to the aloof Faisal. When only nineteen, Khalid acted as viceroy in Hijaz during Faisal's absences, and he later accompanied Faisal to the United States in 1943 and was deputy prime minister in the cabinet that Faisal, acting as the Saudi prime minister, appointed in October 1962. Following Faisal's accession as king in November 1964, the senior princes and he pressed the reluctant Khalid to become crown prince. After several months of resistance, Khalid yielded to their pressure.
Khalid rose to the throne three days after the assassination of Faisal in 1975. Although the period of his rule was characterized by tremendous economic wealth generated by oil exports, and rapid development in nearly all sectors of the economy and society, Khalid's reign included some of the most turbulent episodes in recent Saudi history. Contradictions in Saudi society that had begun to develop during the reign of Faisal broke to the surface during the Khalid years. For example, although Khalid's regime supported the spread of religious education and encouraged a conservative Islamic worldview, many members of the ruling family espoused or at least tolerated Western values and lived a lavish lifestyle untrammeled by religious restrictions. This and other factors led to deep resentments among segments of the population and open opposition, which broke out most dramatically in the seizure of the Grand Mosque of Mecca in 1979 and uprisings in the Eastern Province among the Shiʿite population.
Khalid acknowledged the legitimacy of some complaints that those who seized the Grand Mosque had raised and sought to address them. Following the disturbances among the long-mistreated Shiʿia of the Eastern Province (al-Hasa) in 1979 and 1980, he launched a major new development project in the principal Shiʿite area and made a personal visit - the first time a reigning Saudi monarch had done so. His 1976 tour of the other conservative Arab Gulf states to discuss common security concerns initiated the process that led to creation of the Gulf Cooperation Council in 1981.
Bibliography
Al-Rasheed, Madawi. A History of Saudi Arabia. New York and Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Bligh, Alexander. From Prince to King: Royal Succession in theHouse of Saʿud in the Twentieth Century. New York: New York University Press, 1984.
Holden, David, and Johns, Richard. The House of Saʿud: TheRise and Rule of the Most Powerful Dynasty in the Arab World. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1981.
— MALCOLM C. PECK
UPDATED BY ANTHONY B. TOTH
