Saudi Arabia: Revolution from the Throne

• Share

By Saudi Arabia's Islamic calendar, this year is 1386, and visitors to the-desert kingdom often feel that is about where Saudi Arabia stands on the Western calendar. Justice still decrees an eye for an eye. Marriages are arranged sight unseen. A few weeks ago the deputy rector of the Islamic University at Medina even came out in support of a 14th-century theory that the world is flat and mountains are only ballast to keep it from tipping over. But for all this, Saudi Arabia's old ideas and old ways are giving way to the 20th century. King Feisal ibn Abdul Aziz, 62, is not afraid to call it a revolution. "Revolutions," he says, "can come from a throne as well as from a conspirator's cellar."

Across the country, new hospitals, schools, housing projects and factories are sprouting up on the hot horizon. In the privacy of their homes, many Saudis no longer fear that drinking, dancing or a little poker will bring down the wrath of Allah—or the government. Out in the desert, the country's ever-wandering Bedouins, who comprise 80% of Saudi Arabia's 3,500,000 people, are swapping their camels for Land Rovers and pickup trucks, and—thanks to a government well-drilling program that guarantees them water—are abandoning their nomadic ways and settling into community life.

In the process, a true nation 'is emerging out of what once was four major tribal confederations and two or three urban centers. As its leader, Feisal himself was his own best proof of the change last week. In his flowing white robes and gold headband, he flew off to Spain for five days of trade and foreign-investment talks with Francisco Franco. From Madrid he goes on to Washington this week, where he will meet with President Johnson to discuss economic development and other problems of the Middle East. In the old days of Saudi extravagance, there would have been one plane for the King, another for his luggage and 100 to 150 traveling companions. This time there were only one black, green and white Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 720B and a mere nine assistants.

Riches to Work. Unlike his profligate half-brother—ex-King Saud, whom he nudged aside in 1964 after Saud had all but bankrupted the country—Feisal is an energetic, reform-minded ruler determined to put Saudi Arabia's oil riches to work for the people. No sooner was he in power than he ordered free education and medical service for all Saudis, stepped up oil production and trimmed the country's budget. Today Saud's lavish, pink-walled Nasiriyah Palace in Riyadh—with an air-conditioning system said to be second in size only to the Pentagon's—lies deserted.

Feisal lives instead in a smaller economy model. Saud's beloved fleet of Cadillacs has given way to a pair of Chrysler New Yorkers, and with a deftly democratic touch, Feisal always sits up front next to the driver. To get just as close to the people, Feisal holds a daily majlis (assembly) and invites everyone—from the richest merchant to the scruffiest Bedouin—to come and get his gripes off his chest. "We believe," says Feisal, "that we represent democracy in its highest form, though its structure may be alien to Western ways."