Word: korans
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...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...
...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 the rest to the poor. Thus there are no beggars in Arabia. But the social security system...
...political reform, the Koran says nothing of democracy. Neither does King Saud. Said one official: "The constitution we follow is the Koran. We don't want to replace this with any other thing...
Saud tries hard to be the Koran's conscientious father to his people. He travels the country (nowadays he flies in a Convair, has an air-conditioned trailer driven overland to meet him at his destination), listens to a sheik's troubles, soothes him with a Cadillac, a school or a clinic-given as a favor rather than as a right. But father comes first. In two years observers estimate Saud has set aside $100 million for new palaces. One just completed in Jiddah (cost: $28 million) brings his personal collection of palaces to 24, and another...
Exchanged Sarcasms. Such respectful words have beauty of a sort for Charles Randall Brown, a heavy-set and hard-boiled Southerner who reads the Bible in the King James version nightly, revels in discussing the Koran with Turks and writes round-robin letters to his friends back home about his visits to foreign ports. Admiral Brown is both sensitive and salty. "You can't put a martini in a refrigerator," he says, "any more than you can put in a kiss"; and he sums up his 1921 wedding to Marylander Eleanor Green in a quaint, jazz...