ABSTRACT
Modern Sa‘udi Arabia exists because the ruling Al Sa‘ud family forged together enduring tribal alliances that withstood the test of time. 1 Although this analysis is based on a corpus of contemporary works on the kingdom, a recent study by Toby Jones posits that Sa‘udi Arabia “was founded on conquest and violence” and, even worse, while “Saudi leaders hoped and then subsequently claimed it was the case, Islam was not a unifying force … [because] the kingdom was not culturally or religiously homogeneous.” 2 For Jones, the kingdom was little more than a conglomerate of essentially incompatible tribes, which were tamed and held together by the sword. Regrettably, Jones saw nothing that united Sa‘udis, although any visitor to the kingdom could easily attest to rising nationalism. Even worse, according to Jones, the founder allegedly displayed little understanding of what concerned or ailed the people he and his family ruled, which did not pass socio-political muster. Few readers will be satisfied with this thesis — that the application of violence as a form of coherent governance before the reign of oil or since — defined the kingdom. To be sure, Shari‘ah is applied, but few ought to dismiss the Al Sa‘ud's political shrewdness to unite the many divergent groups, secular and religious, which make up the country. The Al Sa‘ud were and are not ignorant of the peninsula's wider realities, though it was Arabism and Islam — the twin pillars of Sa‘udi ideology — that guaranteed their power and assured their longevity.
