The atmosphere of Arabia between the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the kingdoms and states within the Arabian Peninsula was chaotic. The region was wrought with conflict amongst rival groups that were attempting to consolidate power. This is especially true within in the region currently known as Saudi Arabia whereby Shareef Hussein’s Hashemites and ‘Abd al-‘Az?z ibn Sa’ud’s Wahhabi fought for dominance. The military element of the conflict was over by the end of 1925. ‘Abd al-‘Az?z was in physical control of the entirety of the Hedjaz region including the Holy City of Mecca. However, the real war between ‘Abd al-‘Az?z and the Hashemite family for control of the region was only in its infancy. For all apparent reasons, legitimate control of Mecca was more complicated than soldiers in the streets. It was a conflict of competing interpretations of legitimacy. As such, my research endeavored to answer the following question: how did ‘Abd al-‘Az?z ibn Sa’ud establish legitimacy to rule Mecca and the Hedjaz? I argue that ‘Abd al-‘Az?z claimed his legitimacy through the Hajj. More specifically, ‘Abd al-‘Az?z focused on the institution of the Hajj and its attendance as a means to first destabilize the Hashemite government and then later to establish his own dominance in the region. In brief, my inquiry is focused on conflicted notions of Middle Eastern legitimacy and their relationship to state formation and development. My research relied on a detailed set of U.S. diplomatic documents from American consulates and embassies in Mecca, Aden, Beirut, Istanbul, Jerusalem, and Cairo that have not been used in any significant manner to this point. In addition, I also used the journals of several British diplomats including H.S.B. Philby and Sir Gilbert Falkingham Clayton who were in the region at the time. The intent of this research is to bring to light an era of Arabian history and pieces of twentieth century Islamic political thought that have long been overlooked.

This paper explores the role revolutionary South Arabia has played in the development of radical political theory in the Arab world, arguing that the experience of Yemeni and Dhofari rebels has been formative to a broader radical politics in the Arab world. South Arabia witnessed a flourishing of revolutionary movements in the 1960s and 1970s, including the North Yemen Revolution, anti-colonial struggle in South Yemen, and the Dhofar Rebellion in Southern Oman. Informed by Third-Worldism, nationalism, and Marxism, these movements fought for liberation from the forces of reaction, colonialism, and capitalist exploitation. This paper traces a genealogy of this political tradition, arguing that the revolutionary experience in South Arabia played an important role in the formation of a political discourse in the Arab World on revolution and internationalism, serving as a site for the radical imagination’s construction of revolutionary hope and possibility. While Arab revolutionaries often looked to China and Russia for inspiration, this paper problematizes the notion that theories such as Marxism-Leninism were for the Arab world simply second-hand derivatives of theories developed in the West. For while Mao and the Soviets certainly provided an example of revolutionary practice, Arab revolutionaries also looked to the Arabian Peninsula for inspiration. Egyptian journalists such as Gamal Hamdi and Rayshah Ma’mun wrote of South Yemen as part of the Nasserist revolution, while radical intellectuals and militants such as Fawaz Tarabulsi and Nayef Hawatmeh depicted rebels in Yemen and Dhofar in the tradition of socialist internationalism. At the end of the seventies, Syrian filmmaker Omar Amiralay traveled to South Yemen to document the continuing revolution against feudalism and imperialism. Finally, the protagonist in Egyptian author Sonallah Ibrahim novel "Wardah" (2000) can be seen traveling through revolutionary Arabia, demonstrating the continued salience of South Arabia as revolutionary image. By analyzing such intellectual and cultural productions, this paper shows that revolutionary theorizing in the Arab world was principally influenced by the historical, political, and theoretical contexts of Arab political struggles, particularly those in South Arabia. Furthermore, the paper argues that the image of revolution in South Arabia is still constitutive of a politics of opposition in the Arab world. Through a reading of Yemen’s Southern Movement, this paper argues in conclusion that the salience of Yemen’s image as a locus of international revolution has not faded, but rather continues to play a role in shaping the discourse of opposition politics in Yemen today.

This paper charts the evolution of business-state relations in Arabia under Ibn Sa'ud, paying particular attention to the Hijaz, which was home to the largest concentration of merchants, the center of the kingdom’s nascent bureaucratic apparatus, and the source of most of the country’s foreign exchange until the 1940s. The paper makes two principal arguments. The first is that no national alliance, developmentalist or otherwise, formed between merchants and the state in the interwar period. The second is that World War II was a major turning point for local business in Saudi Arabia, marking the state’s rise to economic dominance and the reverse of the lopsided relationship between the Hijaz and Najd. The few scholars who have examined the role of merchants in any real depth attribute too much influence and agency to the merchant community and vastly overestimate the degree to which they determined the outcomes on a national level. Merchant capital helped bankroll Ibn Sa'ud's fledgling, unsteady empire, but the vast majority of merchants were neither particularly pleased with the outcome nor involved in decisions about how their money was spent. While the largest and wealthiest merchant families in the Hijaz did have some latitude in determining local affairs, they had almost no impact on issues of national importance, financial or otherwise. They did not play a major role in politics, policy making, or administration. In fact, they often resented their position vis-à-vis the central government and were unable to staunch the flow of money from the Hijaz to Najd. At the same time, most found themselves in competition with well-connected foreign business interests in obtaining concessions and winning government contracts. Their very lack of influence, however, is an indication of the functioning and early development of the rentier state and frames the significant changes that took place during and after World War II.

Calls for a change in the status of southern Yemen, ranging from greater autonomy to outright independence, are becoming increasingly vocal. However, there is also dissonance among these voices. In Hadramawt, formerly part of the British East Aden Protectorate, there is talk of secession not only from northern Yemen, but also from the south. This position is promoted by a loose coalition of interest groups in Hadramawt and in Saudi Arabia under the banner of the Hadhrami Forces League. Secessionists invoke the illegitimate occupation of Hadramawt by FLOSY forces in 1967 and betrayal by the British administration, who colluded in the annexation of Hadramawt by South Yemen as they withdrew from Aden. Both the British period and the communist period are now viewed with some nostalgia as the central government hands out Hadrami land to northerners and appropriates oil revenues in return. Secessionists in Saudi Arabia claim that an independent Hadramawt, with a properly managed economy and free from the corrupt practices of northerners, would rapidly develop and become a candidate for GCC membership, unlikely propositions for a unified Yemen in the foreseeable future. Political and economic discourse promotes the view, widely held elsewhere including in Hadramawt itself, that the region would be more prosperous as an independent state; but affective discourse is particularly acute in Saudi Arabia, where exclusionary citizenship rules have constituted a group of Hadramis, many of whom raised or long-term residents in Saudi Arabia, who are not entitled to Saudi citizenship. However, Hadramis have much in common with Saudis that northern Yemenis do not share, and as a result maintain social and cultural characteristics that members of the Hadrami diaspora elsewhere may have lost. As a result, Hadramis in the kingdom, excluded from full civic participation as Yemeni passport holders, cultivate a nostalgia for an idealised homeland where their belonging is not contested. At the same time, however, an independent homeland within the GCC would allow them to maintain their Saudi affiliations. This paper, based upon fieldwork in Riyadh and Jeddah as well as in Hadramawt, looks at the social and cultural background to expressions of Hadrami identity among members of the Hadrami community in Saudi Arabia and suggests that, particularly among the older generation, the cultivation of nostalgia allows for the construction of an authentic Hadramawt that is closer to their Saudi imagination than to Yemeni reality.

In 1925 the Sa‘udi Ikhwan razed the domed mausoleums of the Prophet’s family and companions in the cemeteries of Mecca and Medina. The act prompted a wave of criticism in the broader Islamic world, which saw the imposition of Sa‘udi-salafi rule over the holy cities as an attack on the beliefs and ritual practices of the majority of the community of believers. This was the especially the case in India. Scholars and activists representing the Shi‘i, Barelvi, Jamiat-e Ulama, and Khilafat movement disseminated a number of treatises defending the practices associated with “visitation,” including the ability of the Prophet and his companions to intercede on the behalf of believers (tawassul) due to their continuing life in the grave. This paper takes the issue of the life in the grave as a point of departure for an investigation of the birth of a modern biopolitical regime in what was to become Sa‘udi Arabia. It suggests that the juridical and theological arguments mobilized by the Sa‘udi regime against the practice of visitation (ziyara) and life in the grave must be read in a the broader framework of a type of government increasingly interested in the management of biological life, especially as it intersected with the Hajj pilgrimage by means of the sanitary regulation of pilgrimage by both the British and the nascent ministry of health formed by the Sa‘udi state. The continuing life of the Prophet and his companions threatened these new forms of religious-juridical and biopolitical sovereignty by their refusal to conform to bare life. Drawing on polemical tracts and legal works written between 1924 and 1926 by South Asian Shi‘i and Barelvi scholars in Arabic and Urdu, this paper seeks to determine the ways in which debates over religious belief and practice were also debates over the meaning of the political and the political life.

The unique characteristics of the Saudi bureaucratic system have seriously challenged the implementation of Saudi economic policies. Steffen Hertog argues that so-called “spoke and hub” bureaucratic system with growth of fief-like ministries since the 1950s has historically undermined the state’s capacity to implement economic policy such as “Saudization” program. This bureaucratic system has basic coordination difficulties in implementing reforms and long-term economic policies, which threaten the interests of each ministry. Saudi regime autonomy has been dramatically restricted by this bureaucratic system and it is difficult for the Saudi government to embark on economic policies at its own will without any interference of certain interest group. Saudi Arabia has tried to formulate its oil policy within the independent and consistent framework, because of the predominant role of oil revenue in the Saudi economy. To get rid of the political influence of any royal family group in the Saudi cabinet on oil policy, technocrats such as Sheikh Zaki Yamani, Hisham Nazer, and Ali al-Naimi, have been employed as the Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources. Although the Saudi regime tries to implement its oil policy at the discretion of the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources without any serious interference of certain royal family group, it is hard to say that oil policy has been free from the negative effect of the Saudi bureaucratic system. During the first half of the 1980s, Saudi oil policy as a “swing producer” to sustain certain level of oil prices in the world oil market was undermined by barter deals such as the purchase of ten Boeing 747’s engines and related equipment by bartering crude oil. This was a major breech of Saudi Arabia’s steadfast adherence to OPEC production and pricing discipline. Although Yamani opposed barter deals, he could not stop these activities because of the increasing influence of some royal family members, particularly Minister of Aviation Prince Sultan and his allies, on Saudi oil policy in the period of austerity. During the oil boom period when cash was more readily available, Saudi oil policy was not seriously challenged by bureaucratic fragmentation. However, when Saudi Arabia suffered from financial difficulties, its oil policy became vulnerable to the influence of certain interest group. By analyzing primary materials in the Ronal Reagan Presidential Library, I will demonstrate how this unique Saudi bureaucratic system undermined policy autonomy, particularly oil policy, in the first half of 1980s.