Biography of Shah Abdullah: – King of Saudi Arabia since 2005, Immediately following the announcement of King Fahd’s death on 1 August 2005, his stepbrother and crown prince, Abdullah ibn Abd al-Aziz, who exercised the de facto and great regency Part of the political power since 1996, became the sixth sovereign of Saudi Arabia from the creation of the kingdom in 1932.
Its coronation and the act of obedience on the part of the high dignitaries of the country were celebrated the 3 of August.
Biography of Shah Abdullah
- Born:- 1 August 1924, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- Died:- 23 January 2015, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- Bureid:- 23 January 2015, Al Oud cemetery, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- House:- House of Saud
- Spouse:- : Alanoud Al Fayez (m. 1972–2003),
- Children:- Mutaib bin Abdullah, Turki bin Abdullah Al Saud,
Abdullah was born in the capital of the kingdom in 1924, although some sources establish their birth in 1923.
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This imprecision is due to the disparity of the Muslim and Christian calendars and the fact that at that time there were no reliable records in a desert territory and extremely poor, inhabited by nomadic (Bedouin) tribes.
On the part of mother belongs to the tribe of shammar, between which it received a warrior formation after being educated by the religious heads.
The new ruler was the number 13 offspring of the founder of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in 1932, the legendary king Saud ibn Abd al-Aziz (1932-1953), extremely prolific and prodigal, who married a total of 22 women and had At least 43 children, but which (in an alliance never broken with the oil companies) transformed its desert dominions, from imprecise boundaries set by the British Empire , into a relatively prosperous state, the world’s first oil exporter, with a theocratic regime and Family dictatorship.
Abdullah is not included in the powerful sudeiri clan, so named by reference to the tribe of al-Sudeiri, to which belonged the princess Hassa al-Sudeiri, the favorite wife of the founder of the dynasty, with whom he had six Sons, including princes Sultan, Nayef, Salman and the late King Fahd, who are attributed a rivalry with the children of the other wives who form the branches of the royal family.
His first public office was that of mayor of Mecca, the city that, along with Medina, houses the holy places of Islam, and since 1962, was head of the National Guard, in charge of the surveillance of strategic places and especially of the Oil wells, a position he still held when he was proclaimed king.
In 1982, when his half-brother Fahd ascended the throne, was designated by the first deputy prime minister and crown prince, according to an unwritten rule by which, in the absence of succession law, the sovereign appoints his successor after inaugurating his reign, having Into account the convoluted family equilibria, even though the election must be approved by the family advisory council and the ulemas.
Abdullah made several trips to the United States, the first in October 1976, to meet with then-President Gerald Rudolph Ford.
In September 1998, on his first official visit as Crown Prince, he met with President Bill Clinton in the White House when US jets continued to bomb Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. In September 2000, he went to New York to speak before the UN General Assembly.
The US press said at the time of the accession to the throne that King Abdullah was a close friend of the United States and the Bush family.
As for domestic politics, his reforms have been very cautious. In 1992 he unreservedly endorsed the fundamental law which, for the first time, provides that succession to the throne is not confined exclusively to the founder’s children but open to the “fittest” of his grandchildren.
The application of Shari’a or Koranic law remains unchanged, political parties and unions are outlawed, women do not have the right to vote and cannot drive a car and mixed schooling remains prohibited.
The Regency
On January 1, 1996, he was charged with running the affairs of the State after the king had suffered a cerebral embolism from which he was unable to fully recover. Officially, the sovereign regained his functions in February of that year, but in practice Abdullah continued to act as regent and shared effective power with his stepbrother Sultan, Defense Minister.
Both muted their differences and their rivalry in the interests of the perenniality of the royal family, although the former, in keeping with its reputation as an Islamist devotee, persisted in its censures of the financial and budgetary extravagances of some of the princes.
Reticent to King Fahd’s ostensibly pro-American policy, Abdullah advocated a tempered nationalism and improved relations with all Arab-Muslim countries, while at the same time formulating some retrospective reproaches for failing to preserve neutrality in the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988).
According to most analyzes of the time, he cautioned about how quickly the monarch called on US troops to settle in Saudi territory after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwayt in August 1990, claiming that it was I must have previously informed the religious authorities or that the presence of soldiers could be blasphemous in the holy places of Islam.
Nevertheless, it strengthened its relations with Washington on the global strategy in the Middle East and the stability of the oil market.
In March 2002, at a summit conference in Beirut, he presented the so-called Arab Peace Initiative, a plan that called for Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories and the recognition of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with capital In East Jerusalem.
In return, it offered a peace treaty with Israel and its recognition by all the Arab countries. Although the plan was rejected by some Arab countries as well as by Israel, the diplomatic offensive continued with its visits to Egypt, Syria and Jordan, in what the Saudi Government described as “an attempt to resume the stalled peace process in the Middle East and Promote inter-Arab unity and cooperation “.
King of Saudi Arabia
While his stepbrothers, Sultan – Defense Minister and Crown Prince – and Nayef, Minister of the Interior, appear as ultraconservatives and not especially religious, Abdullah is pious and expresses some reformist whims. It counts on the support of the ulemas, in spite of its good relations with the “infieles” of the United States.
Because of its limited attempts to reform and its struggle against the hard line of Wahhabi sectarians (the most radical religious sect) and its disciples more or less linked to al-Qaeda, it has the support of the intelligence and Middle class, since they detest the reactionary group of the sudairis.
The fabulous interests of the family have prevailed over quarrels of any kind, but given the advanced age of both the king and his half-brothers, there is no doubt that the kingdom lives in a period of transition and agitated by two strong contradictions:
That of declining prosperity with its aftermath of social tensions and that of its international status as an ally of the West, but at the same time a protector for religious reasons of the forces that seek to destroy it through terrorism.
Abdullah suffers a defect of speech, is withdrawn and does not appear much in public. The chroniclers portray him as a lover of a pious, austere and traditional life, and the population considers that he is free from the corruption that afflicts part of the family.
It follows the Salafist interpretation of Islam, characterized by rigor, and the press sometimes reports that every week it holds a meeting with the religious leaders to seek its advice. According to US newspaper sources, he has four wives, seven children and fifteen daughters.
