Word: ibn
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...heart of Saudi Arabia's problem is the unfinished task of creating a modern state out of a cluster of Bedouin tribes that were unified by Abdul Aziz (Ibn Saud) under the present kingdom in 1932. The royal leadership is worried by the growing polarization of Saudi society; thousands of young Saudis return from the West every year with university degrees, only to chafe under a puritanical, semifeudal system designed to appease the disparate desert tribes. "When the graduates come back, they are given nice jobs with plenty of money," remarks one educated Saudi. "But how long they will...
...ancient popular belief that has recurred throughout Islamic history. In the colonial era, several "Mahdis" announced themselves as liberators. Perhaps the most famous was the "Mahdi of the Sudan," Mohammed Ahmad ibn Abdullah, whose dervish troops killed General Charles ("Chinese") Gordon and the other defenders during the siege of Khartoum...
...mysterious band of Muslim fanatics seized the Sacred Mosque of Mecca, taking an unknown number of hostages. At week's end, the situation at the Sacred Mosque was unclear. Government officials in Riyadh said that Saudi armed forces, including the crack National Guard commanded by Prince Abdullah ibn Abdul Aziz, were in "complete control" of the mosque. Other sources, however, suggested that some of the invaders were holding...
...well, he being my wartime boss at M16, never gave me an impression of having any serious intellectual interests. I regarded him as just an adventurer, who found in Stalin's very ruthlessness something to admire, as his father, St. John Philby, the Arabist, had found in King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. Anyway, his appalling stutter would have precluded any sort of Marxist dissertation: Marx spoken is bad enough, but Marx stuttered would be intolerable...
...decay, the seasons of human life, for example. Animals, people, have birth, growth, periods of vigor, then decline and death. Do societies obey that pattern? The idea of decadence, of course, implies exactly that. But it seems a risky metaphor. Historians like Arnold Toynbee, like the 14th century Berber Ibn-Khaldun and the 18th century Italian Giovanni Battista Vico, have constructed cyclical theories of civilizations that rise up in vigor, flourish, mature and then fall into decadence. Such theories may sometimes be too deterministic; they might well have failed, for example, to predict such a leap of civilization...