The Thief and the Orphan

A British observer, a Mr. C. C. Lewis, tells us two stories from Arabia in the early 1930s, a few years after Ibn Saud conquered the Holy Cities Mecca and Medina. The two stories are supposed to be examples of “punishments ferocious to European eyes”: “Not long ago a wretched Hadhrami stole a piece of [...]

Clayton’s Slave

In a continuation of my post from yesterday, Travelling with loaded rifles, here is a new entry from Clayton’s diary. It is five days later, 15th of October 1925, and he is well settled in Ibn Saud’s camp that is situated right outside Mecca. Every evening he, his aide (George Antonius) and their personal bodyguard [...]

Travelling with loaded rifles

On the 10th of October 1925 Gilbert Clayton was travelling to Ibn Saud’s camp outside of the besieged city of Jeddah in present-day Saudi Arabia. The road to the camp at Bahra was not an easy ride and in his diary Clayton describes the road itself like this: Hereafter, the road became very bad – [...]

A Growing Power in Arabia

In the early 1920′s the power balance in Arabia changed. Sultan Abdul Aziz ibn Saud of Nejd was expanding his realm in all directions and defeated longstanding enemies. Ibn Saud was supported to a certain degree by Great Britain, but one of his main rivals, Hussein b. Ali, Sharif of Mecca and King of the [...]