Special Section: KING FAISAL: OH, WEALTH AND POWER

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Faisal quickly cleared up the debts his brother had incurred. He also used the royalties from Saudi Arabia's fast-developing U.S. oil operations to benefit its citizens. All of Faisal's subjects became eligible for free medical care and education; the King sent his own eight sons to U.S. and British colleges to study, then gave them jobs in government when they returned home again. Against the protestations of traditional Moslems, Faisal went ahead and abolished slavery, opened schools for girls and introduced television to his kingdom. At the same time, he kept the Koran as the law of the land. Harsh penalties continued to be handed out to those who violated its proscriptions against adultery and the drinking of alcohol. Even today, public executions of murderers are occasionally carried out in the main public squares of Saudi Arabian cities.

As protector of the Moslem shrines in Mecca and Medina, Faisal had a certain claim to spiritual leadership within Islam. But in an era when kings were being overthrown in Egypt, Iraq and Libya, Faisal's ambitions for political leadership in the Arab world were sharply challenged, most notably by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, the secular prophet of a new kind of Arab nationalism. The two strong-minded leaders clashed directly only once before Nasser's death in 1970. After Yemen's Imam Badr was ousted in a Republican coup, Nasser sent in Egyptian forces to support the new regime. Faisal backed a counterrevolution by Yemeni Royalists. Eventually, Badr renounced his claim to the throne and the Republican regime prevailed — but Nasser suffered heavy losses, and the cost of the war came close to bankrupting Egypt.

After the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War of 1967, however, and the Khartoum conference that voted continuing Arab support for Egypt and other confrontation countries, Faisal's role changed. As anti-Zionist as he was antiCommunist, the King lavishly subsidized Arab governments battling Israel. He grew ever more bitter against Israel in recent years, most often mak ing no distinction between religious Jews (whom he professed to respect) and political Zionists. Until recently, he made no exception to his ban on Jews entering Saudi Arabia and distributed free copies of that discredited anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the (Learned) Elders of Zion, to Western tourists. Despite his suspicions of radicalism, Faisal backed Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization, primarily because they fought for Palestinian Arabs. Not until 1973, when Egypt and Syria attacked Israel in the October war, did the West fully appreciate the King's influence. The canny Faisal used oil as an economic weapon by imposing an embargo.

At his death last week Faisal was mourned by an imposing delegation of Arab leaders, ranging from ardent socialists like Algeria's Houari Boumedienne to semifeudal sheiks from neighboring gulf coast states. The King would probably have been more moved, however, by the national outpouring of grief from Saudis of every level, with whom he had never lost touch.