What is today Saudi Arabia emerged from Turkish rule after World War I, when Ibn Saud reunified the various feudal principalities scattered across the Arabian Peninsula and held them together by patriarchal allegiance and religious devotion. The royal family has since faced daunting tasks. It governs tribes living in the traditional nomadism and fiercely loyal to the crown, as well as urban concentrations approaching—in some cases surpassing—those of Western metropoles, though placed like mirages across otherwise barren plateaus. An emerging middle class exists in the context of an age-old,
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