Word: fahd
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Fahd's work habits are erratic. He will disappear for several weeks to relax at one of his houses abroad or on one of his yachts, then return to plow through all the work that has piled up in his absence. He sleeps during the day and often starts work at 11 p.m., then receives top officials and foreign envoys until 6 a.m. Some he keeps waiting for hours while he chats or watches a videotape -- the result not of discourtesy but of a lack of any sense of time pressure. Though his attentions are confined to his wives...
...Fahd's admiration for the U.S. goes back to 1945, when he attended the San Francisco convention that founded the United Nations and became so fascinated by the country that he wanted to stay. He sent all his sons to American colleges, and he stays tuned to CNN on TV sets scattered through his palaces. Nonetheless, the presence of American troops cannot help intensifying the pressures on the kingdom to come further out of its isolation and into the modern world. Whether that can be done while maintaining the system of semifeudal family rule that Fahd has so far adroitly...
...group of Saudi commoners telling their prince outright that the country needed to be shaken up? Preposterous. But these are extraordinary times, as the small group of businessmen pointed out during a meeting two weeks ago with Prince Salman, governor of Riyadh and younger brother and confidant of King Fahd. "This is the biggest challenge we have ever faced," said one entrepreneur, mindful of the menacing forces of Saddam Hussein gathered just 300 miles to the north. Said another, summoning his courage: "We have to confront our internal issues...
...royal family has faced remarkably little challenge. In the early years, Abdul Aziz struggled to hold together a scattered and widely disparate population of tribes. But he and his successors -- sons Saud, Faisal, Khalid and now Fahd -- were greatly aided in their task by the lucky presence beneath their feet of the world's largest reservoir of oil. The revenues from black crude -- which reached a high of $113 billion in 1981 and this year are expected to top $60 billion -- have enabled the House of Saud to create a modern state almost overnight and, in the process...
...counterpart, Westernization. The House of Saud has clung tenaciously to Wahhabism, the puritanical strain of Sunni Islam that was the driving force of Abdul Aziz's victorious Ikhwan (brethren) movement. The royal family, as well as most Saudis, believe Wahhabi fervor unifies the kingdom's diverse tribes. Though King Fahd is known not to relish meeting his subjects, he devotes an entire day each week, Monday, to conferring with the ulama, the country's religious scholars...