This paper analyses the development of historiography in Saudi Arabia since the kingdom's foundation in 1932. My analysis of this process, which has not been comprehensively studied before, is based on intensive fieldwork in the kingdom, including interviews with dozens of Saudi historians. I argue that Saudi historiography has been characterised by three important tendencies, which reveal wider struggles over identity and resources between people close to the government, representatives of local communities, and academics: The first tendency reduces the modern history of the country to one of the Wahhabi movement and Saudi rulers and elevates their achievements. Based on earlier pro-Wahhabi chronicles, it contrasts a dark age of idolatry, heresies and chaos in the Arabian Peninsula before the Wahhabi movement with a blessed age of security, stability, education and unity. Due to the comparatively late establishment of modern formal education in the kingdom, this tendency was first expressed by foreigners close to Saudi kings and particularly supported by King Faisal's government in its conflict with Nasser in the 1960s. Later, it has become the dominant tendency of narration in textbooks and the National Museum. However, with the spread of mass education due to expanding oil production since the 1970s and in reaction to the dissolution of traditional communities with increasing mobility and urbanisation, a second tendency gained strength: local and tribal historiography. Saudis have produced a growing number of books focussing on and elevating their regions, tribes and branches of tribes in history. While some of them emphasise their community's contributions to national unity, others emphasise their region's long struggles against Saudi forces and refute the argument that the pre-Wahhabi history of regions such as 'Asir or Hejaz was one of idolatry and heresy. Finally, a third tendency has appeared with the sending of history students with scholarships abroad and the development of Saudi universities since the 1970s: Academic studies, which neither elevate the Saudi rulers or other groups nor employ religiously biased perspectives and arguments, but explain the appearance of the Wahhabi movement and establishment of the modern Saudi kingdom through an analysis of social and economic factors. Although this tendency remained marginal and received few incentives for further development in the 1980s and 1990s with dropping state revenues, it has gained strength in recent years with the increasing expenditure on universities and the general opening of the country in the 2000s.