Saud bin Abdulaziz
Saud bin Abdulaziz inherited his father's kingdom and was removed from it by his own brothers. He was the eldest surviving son of Ibn Saud and had been crown prince for twenty years, governing the central province and leading campaigns. He took the throne in 1953, in the first year the oil revenue was large enough to be a political fact in its own right. He spent it. He built a palace complex outside Riyadh with its own wall and power station, kept a household of hundreds, and distributed money to tribal leaders in the old manner at a scale the old manner had never known. The state had no budget worth the name and no separation between the treasury and the family. By 1958 the currency had lost most of its value against the dollar and the government could not pay its bills, despite an income most states would have envied. His reign nonetheless founded institutions the country still uses. The first Saudi universities opened under him, and in 1960 his oil minister Abdullah Tariki went to Baghdad with the Venezuelan minister and founded OPEC, which took the price of crude out of the hands of the American and British companies for the first time. The family moved against him in stages. Faisal was given executive power in 1958, lost it again in 1960, and got it back in 1962. In March 1964 the senior princes and the religious scholars issued a ruling transferring authority to Faisal, and in November they deposed Saud outright. He left for Egypt, made broadcasts against his brother from Cairo, and died in Athens in 1969. The succession has been decided inside the family, by the family, ever since.
- Lived: 1902 CE – 1969 CE
- Nationality: Saudi
- Roles: head_of_state, royalty
