A Prospect of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

U TNTIL the 1970s Saudi Arabia was rarely mentioned in the world press, it attracted scant scholarly attention, and it was largely ignored by international businessmen other than oilmen. To those few who knew anything of the country, the Kingdom was a barren, sparsely populated desert country, most immediately identified with the holy Muslim cities of Mecca and Medina, the exploits of 'Lawrence of Arabia', the forbidding sands of the Rub al Khali, and the philioprogenative King Abdul Aziz bin Saud, the eponymous founder of the country. In the late 1960s oil people knew Saudi Arabia as oilrich-but in the context of a world surplus of oil production and declining real prices for oil in world markets. Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia, was frequently missing from or misplaced on maps of the Middle East; and the rare foreigners who had visited or lived in the city were usually intrepid travellers seeking the more remote cities of the world, or the occasional technical specialist serving the Royal household or a government ministry.' Even the diplomatic community was denied permission to reside in Riyadh-it remained residentially restricted to Jeddah, a thousand kilometres away. Indeed, prior to the arrival of American oilmen in the Al Hasa region in the mid-1930s non-Muslim residents were restricted to Jeddah and were forbidden to travel to other parts of the Kingdom without Royal approval. As a result, the foreign non-Muslim community was understandably small. In the 1930s the number was usually less than a hundred, and most were staff from the legations and consulates serving their country's Haj pilgrims.