Ibn Saud Quotes

“By December 1913 London, fearful as the senior civil servant in charge of the India Office admitted in private, that Cox and Shakespear were involved in all manner of schemes aimed at gaining recognition for Ibn Saud, had relented to the extent that it had allowed the Gulf officials to sound out the Ottomans. The Ottomans, for their part, while they raised no specific objections to British officials sounding out Ibn Saud, said that they were already in touch with him and dealing with these issues. At the same time the Ottomans made it clear that they wanted much tighter controls on Ibn Saud than he was likely to accept. As a”
― Barbara Bray, Ibn Saud: The Desert Warrior Who Created the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

“At that moment Britain had reached the critical stage of negotiations, begun more than two years previously, with the Ottoman Empire, aimed at resolving the longstanding issues between the two governments over a whole range of matters, including those in the Persian Gulf. These issues included defining British and Ottoman territories and spheres of influence along the entire length of the Gulf, customs duties and terms for the completion of the long-projected Baghdad railway. One of the issues that had been provisionally resolved between the two sides was the question of Najd, which was to be recognised as an Ottoman province and to include Hasa. So Ibn Saud’s sudden seizure of Hasa and the renewal of arguments from British Officials in the Gulf and India, including both Cox and the Viceroy, for reaching some kind of agreement with Ibn Saud, were greeted in London with dismay. Sir Edward Grey, one of the longest-serving but least-travelled Foreign Secretaries in British history, had little knowledge of the world beyond Whitehall. He spoke no foreign languages and had never travelled further than France. One highly respected contemporary described him as so ignorant of the lands beyond Europe that ‘he hardly knew the Persian Gulf from the Red Sea and Europe’.11 At”
― Barbara Bray, Ibn Saud: The Desert Warrior Who Created the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

“Throughout the summer of 1911 correspondence flowed back and forth between Cox and his superiors in Delhi and London about Shakespear’s proposals and the policy Britain should adopt toward Ibn Saud. Officials in London remained fearful not only of antagonising the Ottomans but of the possibility that if Ibn Saud drove the Turks out of Hasa he might himself become a danger to British interests in the region and advance south into Muscat. In the end, despite Cox’s continued advocacy and the support of a few more far-sighted officials in the Indian and London governments, Britain’s concern to maintain good relations with Turkey as a protective buffer between Europe and Asia and against any German, French or Russian designs on Britain’s Indian Empire, together with on-going fears in London and India of taking any step which might be perceived as antagonistic towards Turkey and the Caliphate and so serve to inflame anti-British sentiment among Muslims in India, prevailed. Ibn Saud’s request for some form of alliance or protective agreement with Britain was to be politely rejected. From Britain’s point of view Ibn Saud, despite his successes and growing power, remained no more than the minor ruler of an out of the way, strategically and economically unimportant minor statelet. This was the tenth time in the nine years since his recapture of Riyadh that Ibn Saud’s overtures towards the British had been rejected.”
― Barbara Bray, Ibn Saud: The Desert Warrior Who Created the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

“Just days later new and much louder alarm bells sounded. The new Bolshevik government in Russia had found a copy of the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement in the deposed Tsarist government’s archives. They sent it to the Turks who passed it on to Husayn as proof of his British and French allies’ bad faith. When he, understandably incensed, asked the British to explain the document they hastened to assure him that it was a forgery. Husayn, although still not entirely convinced, decided that his own interests were likely to be better served by fighting on on Britain’s side than by withdrawing his troops or changing sides to support the Turks. Days”
― Barbara Bray, Ibn Saud: The Desert Warrior Who Created the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

“After helping Husayn’s son Feisal to re-organise the Hashemite troops into a series of small, fast-moving and effective guerrilla units, on July 6th T. E. Lawrence, leading a small force of these Arab fighters, seized the port of Aqaba, thus preparing the way for the British to fight their way out of Sinai and into Palestine and opening the road for an allied advance towards Jerusalem and Damascus. With”
― Barbara Bray, Ibn Saud: The Desert Warrior Who Created the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

“Simultaneously a small commando force of Husayn’s Arabs, commanded by a British officer, blew up the Damascus-to-Medina railway north of Aqaba, interrupting the flow of Turkish reinforcements to the Hijaz. In the Hijaz itself an Arab force commanded by Husayn’s son Feisal, supported by three British warships, had captured the port of Wejd towards the northern end of the Red Sea.”
― Barbara Bray, Ibn Saud: The Desert Warrior Who Created the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

“But one thing we do know for certain – for years afterwards, when asked who was the greatest Englishman he had ever met, Ibn Saud would answer without hesitation: ‘Shakespear!’ 1”
― Barbara Bray, Ibn Saud: The Desert Warrior Who Created the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia