تاريخ العربية السعودية Quotes

“Certain characteristics of the conditions of slaves in Arabia deserve special mention. Slavery was patriarchal in character, which explains the generally kind treatment of slaves, who, particularly if they were muwalids, were treated as if they were subordinate members of their master’s family. Sometimes they even inherited their master’s property. Female slaves became concubines, mainly of the urban nobility. They and their children were usually manumitted after their master’s death. Although oppressed and humiliated socially, the slaves might enjoy a better standard of living than the half-starving nomads or peasants.”
― Alexei Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia

“The camel-breeding nomads’ labour was hard and required well-tested skills. They had to know how to exploit their pastures, drive camels from one grazing area to another, treat the animals when they were sick, milk the female camels, cut the wool and so on. Younger camels were trained to perform various tasks and to walk saddled and loaded. The bedouin dug and maintained wells in the desert.”
― Alexei Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia

“There were no large-scale irrigation facilities or huge tracts of irrigated and cultivated land in medieval Arabia. Combined with the isolation of the oases, this meant that there was no need for a centralized government.”
― Alexei Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia

“The profession of driver was very attractive to the bedouin: the replacement of a camel by a truck as a means of transport did not humiliate even a shaikh’s son and corresponded to the nomads’ traditional mentality.136 Aramco opened special centres where young bedouin were trained in driving and truck maintenance.137 In the 1950s and 1960s the government encouraged the sale of cars to the bedouin, and some of them sold their camels and bought trucks. Grants and gifts from the king enabled the tribal nobility to buy motorized transport of their own. Trucks replaced camels, where the terrain permitted their use.”
― Alexei Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia

“The millennia-old way of life of the Arabian nomads began changing rapidly in the 1940s. Even before the oil era, the development of motorized transport in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries had deprived the camel-breeders of the main markets for their livestock. With the creation of the centralized state, they lost their income from raids on settled peoples and from the duties imposed on caravans.”
― Alexei Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia

“Those who suffer a defeat are often branded by history as lacking in talent, whereas it is frequently circumstances that are unfavourable to them.”
― Alexei Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia

“life in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Arabia had not changed greatly since medieval times. For the overwhelming majority of people in Najd, al-Hasa and Hijaz, life was connected chiefly with two kinds of economic activity – irrigated farming in the oases and nomadic animal husbandry.”
― Alexei Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia