ABSTRACT

The invitation to visit His Majesty in al Murabba‘a palace in ar-Riyadh reached me when I was still enjoying to the full the many opportunities that Al Kharj offered. Yet it was the hope of securing this invitation that had chiefly brought me to Sa‘udi Arabia, so it was with delight that I learnt that my hope was going to be fulfilled. On Sunday, 2nd March 1952, Joe and Winon Clark drove Bram and me the fifty-four miles to ar-Riyadh. We saw in the distance the places known to have been the former favourite camping-grounds of Ibn Sa‘ud when he could allow himself a little relaxation. In talking to us, the foreigners, and to leading Hejazis he liked to tell of the good healthy life one lived in tents and in the open, fanned by the pure desert breeze, drinking warm, frothy camel’s milk out of wooden bowls and eating with it dates and some handfuls of mutton and rice. That simple and unvaried diet of the desert, he claimed, did him a lot of good. Sitting in front of his tent he had found rest in looking at his camel herds as they were driven past by herdsmen he knew and with whom he would exchange greetings and information about the numbers and condition of the animals.