Word: ibn
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...shores last week came a strapping, bearded man in white kaffiyeh and flowing robes who stirred up as much fascination and comment as though he had fluttered to earth on the magic carpet with which most cartoonists endowed him. Saud ibn Abdul Aziz al Faisal al Saud, King of Saudi Arabia, leader of uncounted millions of people, counter of untold millions of dollars, prodigious master of a prolific harem, had come to call on the President of the U.S. He arrived on the U.S. liner Constitution, said his farewell to the ship's hands with gifts of money...
...Majesty King Saud ibn Abdul Aziz al Faisal Al Saud, with a 65-man entourage, was on his royal way to Washington for a state visit with President Dwight Eisenhower...
...Ibn Saud, the Old Lion, reared his son in the stern tradition of the desert. Saud's formal schooling consisted of the Koran, and ended at 13. But he learned the slashing swordsmanship of the Arab horseman; and as late as 1929, young Prince Saud was dealing with a domestic crisis by the simpler method of chopping off the heads of captured tribesmen. Once he saved his father's life by leaping between him and an assassin, taking the descending knife in his shoulder. Saud's concepts of government were formed in a land where there...
Within Saudi Arabia princes built palaces for their private comfort, hotels and apartment houses for their private profit. Officials and palace hangers-on made fortunes in kickbacks and invested their profits in Egyptian or Lebanese real estate. When a Western diplomat tried to hint to Ibn Saud that his money was being stolen by corrupt officials, the Old Lion summoned his finance minister and demanded 1,000,000 riyals on the. spot. Soon sacks of coins were stacked around him. Triumphantly, the old king turned to the diplomat, declaring: "As King I must know that there is money available...
...hand; public amputations are commonplace (one result: Arabia has probably the lowest crime rate in the world). Social reform comes hard when slavery, sanctioned by Mohammed, still exists, though Saudis protest that slaves are well treated and often freed by owners eager to gain credit with Allah (old Ibn Saud used to release one every Friday after prayer). Tax reform is blocked by the Koran's ban on any personal tax on believers except the Zakaah, a small yearly levy paid to the sheik, who is instructed to use it to support his own family and to give...