Special Section: KING FAISAL: OH, WEALTH AND POWER

The Middle East, said Henry Kissinger recently, is “an area of remarkable personalities, the last bastion where great men can come out of the desert and do unbelievable things.” One of the men that the Secretary surely had in mind was Faisal ibn Abdul Aziz al Saud of Saudi Arabia, with whom he had ceremoniously sipped mint tea in Riyadh only six days before the King was assassinated last week. When he died at the age of 69, Faisal was not only among the richest men in the world, thanks to Saudi Arabia’s incredible oil wealth, but one of its last absolute monarchs, and a powerful voice for conservatism in the Arab world.

Despite his wealth and power, Faisal lived simply and ascetically; his code was the Koran and his customs those of a Bedouin Arab. He neither smoked nor drank, prayed five times a day, and was anxiously concerned with the welfare of his subjects. Thus he continued the tradition of the majlis, or weekly royal audience, at which Saudis were free to approach their King with a message or a petition. No matter how farfetched or long-winded the complaints, Faisal would listen patiently. “If anyone feels wrongly treated, he has only himself to blame for not telling me,” he said. “What higher democracy can there be?”

The King mixed beneficence with discipline. He could be exceedingly kind to a desert tribesman who sought the King’s ear for a petty grievance. But he could also be severe with a junior member of the Saud dynasty who had discredited the royal family by gambling away huge sums of money on the roulette wheels of Monaco or Las Vegas. An aide who once asked Faisal why he did not compliment people who did good work for him received a blunt answer: “It is their duty.”

Faisal had a reverence for desert ways, and strove mightily to keep alien influences from corrupting his kingdom. He had seen it founded, after all, out of a backward region of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. In 1932 his crusty father, Ibn Saud, after a series of skirmishes that ended in his defeat of Sherif Hussein of Mecca (great-grandfather of Jordan’s present King Hussein), established the kingdom. Ibn Saud had 36 sons but he took an early liking to Faisal, partly because the youth displayed a notable fighting spirit and an ability to carry out his father’s orders. “I wish I had three of him,” said the old King, who frequently sent Faisal abroad on diplomatic missions and eventually named him Foreign Minister of the desert kingdom.

In 1953 Ibn Saud died and was succeeded by his eldest son, Saud; Faisal was named Crown Prince. An amiable sensualist with little talent for government, King Saud spent so profligately that by 1964 his country was deep in debt. A convocation of elder princes of the family finally packed Saud off into exile and named Faisal King. It was perhaps the most momentous decision that the family ever made.

Faisal quickly cleared up the debts his brother had incurred. He also used the royalties from Saudi Arabia’s fast-developing U.S. oil operations to benefit its citizens. All of Faisal’s subjects became eligible for free medical care and education; the King sent his own eight sons to U.S. and British colleges to study, then gave them jobs in government when they returned home again. Against the protestations of traditional Moslems, Faisal went ahead and abolished slavery, opened schools for girls and introduced television to his kingdom. At the same time, he kept the Koran as the law of the land. Harsh penalties continued to be handed out to those who violated its proscriptions against adultery and the drinking of alcohol. Even today, public executions of murderers are occasionally carried out in the main public squares of Saudi Arabian cities.

As protector of the Moslem shrines in Mecca and Medina, Faisal had a certain claim to spiritual leadership within Islam. But in an era when kings were being overthrown in Egypt, Iraq and Libya, Faisal’s ambitions for political leadership in the Arab world were sharply challenged, most notably by Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, the secular prophet of a new kind of Arab nationalism. The two strong-minded leaders clashed directly only once before Nasser’s death in 1970. After Yemen’s Imam Badr was ousted in a Republican coup, Nasser sent in Egyptian forces to support the new regime. Faisal backed a counterrevolution by Yemeni Royalists. Eventually, Badr renounced his claim to the throne and the Republican regime prevailed — but Nasser suffered heavy losses, and the cost of the war came close to bankrupting Egypt.

After the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War of 1967, however, and the Khartoum conference that voted continuing Arab support for Egypt and other confrontation countries, Faisal’s role changed. As anti-Zionist as he was antiCommunist, the King lavishly subsidized Arab governments battling Israel. He grew ever more bitter against Israel in recent years, most often mak ing no distinction between religious Jews (whom he professed to respect) and political Zionists. Until recently, he made no exception to his ban on Jews entering Saudi Arabia and distributed free copies of that discredited anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the (Learned) Elders of Zion, to Western tourists. Despite his suspicions of radicalism, Faisal backed Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization, primarily because they fought for Palestinian Arabs. Not until 1973, when Egypt and Syria attacked Israel in the October war, did the West fully appreciate the King’s influence. The canny Faisal used oil as an economic weapon by imposing an embargo.

At his death last week Faisal was mourned by an imposing delegation of Arab leaders, ranging from ardent socialists like Algeria’s Houari Boumedienne to semifeudal sheiks from neighboring gulf coast states. The King would probably have been more moved, however, by the national outpouring of grief from Saudis of every level, with whom he had never lost touch.