Salman bin Abdulaziz
Salman bin Abdulaziz governed Riyadh for forty-eight years and became king at seventy-nine. He was made governor of the capital in 1963, when it was a town of a hundred and fifty thousand people, and left the post in 2011 when it held more than five million. He was also the family's internal arbiter, the man who disciplined princes and settled disputes, which gave him standing the office itself did not carry. He took the throne in January 2015 and moved faster in his first months than the kingdom had moved in decades. He ended the succession among the sons of Ibn Saud, passing to the next generation, and after removing one nephew he made his own son Mohammed crown prince in 2017. Power has been exercised by that son since. In March 2015 the kingdom began bombing Yemen to reverse the Houthi capture of the capital, expecting a short campaign. It has run for years and produced one of the worst humanitarian emergencies in the world. The blockade of Qatar in 2017, the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Istanbul consulate in 2018, and the detention of hundreds of princes and businessmen in a Riyadh hotel all belong to the same period. So does a genuine reordering of Saudi life. Women were allowed to drive from 2018 and no longer need a guardian's permission to travel or work, cinemas and concerts reopened after thirty-five years, the religious police lost the power to arrest, and Vision 2030 set out to build an economy that does not depend on crude. Which half of that record is the durable one is not yet answerable.
- Lived: 1935 CE – ?
- Nationality: Saudi
- Roles: head_of_state, royalty
