Emirate of Diriyah

The first Saudi state, founded on a bargain between a small-town ruler and a preacher, and destroyed by an Egyptian army. Muhammad ibn Saud governed the oasis settlement of Diriyah in the Najd when Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab arrived in 1744 after being expelled from a neighbouring town for his preaching against saint veneration and grave visitation. The agreement they made gave each what he lacked. The emir provided protection and an army; the scholar provided a doctrine that made the conquest of other Muslim towns a religious duty rather than a raid. The arrangement between the house of Saud and the descendants of ibn Abd al-Wahhab has structured Saudi politics ever since. The emirate expanded across the peninsula through the second half of the eighteenth century, absorbing the Najd, then Riyadh, and eventually the Hejaz. In 1802 its forces sacked Karbala and destroyed the tomb of Husayn, and in 1803 and 1806 they took Mecca and Medina and levelled the domed tombs there - acts that made the Ottoman sultan's failure to protect the holy cities a public humiliation. The state itself was thin and effective. Revenue came from zakat collected in kind and from the spoils of expansion rather than from trade, justice was administered by Hanbali judges appointed from the scholar's own students, and enforcement of public observance was delegated to men appointed for it - the origin of an institution Saudi Arabia kept until the twenty-first century. Loyalty was owed to the imam personally and was renewed by oath, which made the state expand well and inherit badly. Istanbul delegated the response to Muhammad Ali of Egypt, whose son campaigned in Arabia from 1811. Diriyah was besieged in 1818, taken after six months, systematically demolished and left uninhabited; the last emir was sent to Istanbul and beheaded. A second Saudi state was founded within a decade and a third in 1902, which is the one that became Saudi Arabia.

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