ABSTRACT

When Amin al-Rihani, the Lebanese-born American traveller, arrived in Riyadh, the tiny capital of an emerging kingdom which was not yet named Saudi Arabia, he was bringing with him an ambitious project for Arab unity. In a mixture of the flamboyant romanticism of the Lebanese mountains and admiration for the United States of America, he wanted to know what his host thought of a unified Arab state (probably restricted to Asia). The king’s reaction was irritated but clear: ‘What Arab unity? We are the Arabs.’