The March of Time - 20th Century History

[Karelian]

The unlikely alliance between the Sauds and Wahhabism - a nomadic desert tribe and an ultra-Conservative Islamic - sect had survived wars, invasions, civil war and subjugation to rival Arabian power before.

The alliance had grown deep roots in the historic region of Najd due to the process that had begun in the sixteenth century and lasted until the eighteenth. For centuries, tribes had moved into and out of Najd, either in search of new pastures or taking refuge from enemies elsewhere. This immigration to the region had created new settlements.

Here the Saud leadership had formed new political entities. The old traditional tribal systems had been replaced by a novel form of centralised power. It had been based on Wahhabism, and the premise of a religious revival that would salvage the people of Najd from a moral crisis.

The pursuit of this goal had been an uphill struggle, slow and unsteady at every step. But the Saudis had endured with mere persistence and fanaticism.
They relied on their reputation as primarily religious warriors, unlike the other chieftains who fought more concrete goals.

Under the Wahhabi banner the House of Saud had periodically challenged the Ottoman rule since the eighteenth century, always failing to gain lasting autonomy, but never submitting to the authority of the Ottomans either.

Their religious heritage made defiance the default option of the House of Saud. One of the key Wahhabi ideologues, Sulayman ibn 'Abd Allah ibn Muhammad - the grandson of Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab - had written a fatwa that was especially important for the Saudi Wahhabis at the turn of the century.

The fatwa instilled the importance of having loyalty to Muslims and enmity towards non-Muslims (al wala' wa al-bara'). The key point of the first fatwa was that true Wahhabis could not befriend the Ottomans or any of their allies. If they did so, then their lands ceased to be truly Islamic. The fatwa also argued that as true Muslims, Wahhabis could not even travel to the land of the idolaters (Ottomans and their allies) since even this risked contaminating their faith. True faith required open enmity towards the idolaters.

Another key Wahhabi fatwa was written the great-grandson al-Wahhab the senior, Shaikh 'Abd al-Latif. He argued that the Wahhabis had to hate and defy the idolaters (non-Wahhabis in general but the Ottomans and the Egyptians specifically) since this was divine will, and that any allegiance to them would be a clear act of apostasy.

This type absolutism was pleasing for the Wahhabi Ulama, but had not exactly been especially effective recipe for a lasting foreign policy or territorial expansion. Even the ’Ennezza, the Saudi home tribe, did not fully accept the Wahhabi creed. The desire to wage religious war had also so far failed to deliver lasting results. In fact, for the last twelve years, the last Saudi ruler of any importance had spent his days in exile. His ally, the emir of Kuwait, had been kind enough to shelter the family.

The young hope of the House of Saud, Abdulaziz ibn Abdul Rahman ibn Faisal ibn Turki ibn Abdullah ibn Mohammad Al Saud, was known as Abdul Aziz to Arabs and ibn Saud for the British.

He had always been very close to his paternal aunt, Jawhara bint Faisal. She had ingrained in him a strong sense of family destiny, and instilled a mission to regain the lost glories of the House of Saud. Well educated in Islamic lore, Arab customs and local tribal and clan relationships, Jawhara had urged her nephew to reclaim the lost Saudi lands and revive the religious struggle against the idolaters.

But in order to do so, he and the Saudis had to face the might of one of the largest tribal confederations in Arabia, the Shammar.

 

[Karelian]

The Shammar were a traditional major player in the Arabian power struggles. Ha'il, their home oasis settlement in northern Najd, was led by a tribal nobility among the Shammar, the Rashidis.

Their amirs ruled a population that included not only Shammar tribesmen, but also Banu Tamin sedentary farmers and merchants as well as non-tribal groups of craftsmen, artisans and slaves. Using the oasis as their base, the Rashidis had expanded into northern Arabia and southern Najd. Here they had met the Saudis.

Unlike the Saudis who followed the Wahhabi doctrine and expanded their rule with a religious pretext, the Rashidis were more traditional. They followed a tried-and-true method of taking over oasis settlements and tribal confederations with the support of the Shammar hegemony. Over the centuries this had created a fusion of the Rashidi emirate and the Shammar tribal confederation.

To meet the Saudi challenge the Rashidis had started to rely more and more on a mixed force of oasis settlement conscripts and slaves, since they were unable to rally the various Shammar tribal sections into a concentrated campaign against the Saudis. The people of the oases in Jabal Shammar had never been blindly loyal to the Rashidi leadership.

They were content to follow it for now, but only as long as the current amir was capable of providing tangible benefits. The most important part of this ruleship was the guarantee of safe passage for trading and pilgrimage caravans organised by the various groups of merchants, farmers and artisans. If this key benefit was no longer there, the oasis population saw little reason to support one ruler over a competing faction.

The Saudis, who lacked the tribal connections of the Rashidis, instead relied on the fundamentalism of the followers of Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab. And so the war between the tribalists and the jihadists had continued.

During the previous centuries, the region had simply had too poor infrastructure to support full integration to a larger political entity, religious or tribal. Traditional warfare in Arabia had therefore been more about raids and temporary conquest rather than permanent changes of ownership.

In this regard, both sides had been rather similar in their outlook. The Rashidis demanded khuwwa (tribute), but allowed the conquered group to remain more or less autonomous in their internal affairs in return. The Saudis, in turn, had collected the religous zakat payment as an indication of a groups submission to its authority.

 

[Karelian]

For twenty days Abdul Aziz ibn Saud and his two hundred cousins, fellow tribesmen and sympathetic Bedouin followers (the few remaining ones, most had deserted at the prospect of Ottoman reprisals) had camped outdoors during the Ramadan in a remote location around the windswept Yabrin oasis. They were waiting for Abdul Aziz to decide when they would attack the city of Riyadh.

Geographically isolated and with an area of only one square kilometre, Riyadh was a glorified walled hamlet rather than a true city. It sat alone atop a high plateau, away from major caravan routes and had only few water sources to sustain it.

Nevertheless the young Abdul Aziz was determined to reclaim his ancestral home, where his family and tribe had been driven away a generation earlier. His father had repeatedly attempted to reclaim the city, but in vain.

Now, rallying the disgruntled local Bedouin tribes to a new revolt, the son was attempting to finish what his father could not achieve. Abdul Aziz knew that his followers were growing more impatient by the day. Finally, his cousin, sent to spy on the city, returned with good intel.

After reviewing the daily schedule of the governor, the state and defences of the city fortifications and the overall life inside the walls, Abdul Aziz ordered his followers to ride towards Riyadh by sunset.

Travelling in the dark Arabian night until they were among the date palm trees that surrounded the town, the warriors were able to approach without raising alarm.

Stopping their camels well outside the walls and approaching from a direction his cousin claimed to be unguarded, they quietly cut down a tall date palm and leaned it against the wall.

Abdul Aziz selected forty trusted men to follow him and prepared to scale the wall and enter the city, leaving the rest of the men under the command of his brother, Muhammad.

"If by tomorrow noon no message has come from me, hurry back to the others and flee together to Kuwait. Tell my father I am dead or a prisoner of the Rashidis. There is no power nor strength but from Allah the Exalted."

Abdul Aziz had no particular plan in mind. As one of the survivors later said, "We thought to ourselves, 'What shall we do?"

Their luck held. The heart of the night was cold and windy and the guards were few and poorly paid. Abdul Aziz and his men scaled the walls and made their way down to the dark alleys of Riyadh unopposed.

They sneaked to the house of a shepherd and former al Saud servant named Juwaisir, conveniently located right next to the former Saudi house now used by the Rashidi governor. Here they contemplated their next move. Juwaisir allowed his wife to tell them more about the daily routines of the governor installed by the Rashidis, Ajlan.

After resting for a while and waiting for midnight, Abdul Aziz jumped across the narrow alley and landed onto the roof of the governor's house. Overpowering the wife and sister of the governor, his warriors locked them inside and stalked through the house in search of their target, only to learn that the governor was not there.

His wife told that the governor preferred the security of the walled fort he had built in Riyadh, al-Masmak, for his night sleep. Ajlan would only return home at dawn.

Abdul Aziz and his men hunkered down to wait until morning, having decided to attack Ajlan when he returned from the fortress with 10 bodyguards for the morning prayers. They recited passages from the Quran and sipped strong coffee through the rest of the night. Muhammad and the other men remaining outside the walls were also brought in without raising alarm.

As the dawn began to break and the muezzin started to call the faithful to adhere the ṣalāt al-fajr, the doors of the fortress were opened. Ajlan and his bodyguards hastily made their way towards their mansion, where the Saudi warriors were waiting for them.

The ambush started when Ajlan stepped into the dimly lit courtyard. Without making a sound, Abdul Aziz himself rushed forward, followed by half a dozen men. As the morning wind kicked up dust from the ground as the door was opened, it was hard to see what was happening.

Abdul Aziz was renowned for his swiftness, and he closed the short distance to surprise Ajlan just when the governor and his bodyguards realised that they were under attack. The hastily-drawn sabre met the barrel of Abdul Aziz's jezail musket, and as Abdul Aziz tackled the governor, both men were soon tussling on the ground. As Ajlan tore himself free and sprung back up, he charged Abdul Aziz who hastily covered his face to protect himself from the sabre, hastily hip-firing his jezail from a point-blank range.[1]

The shot alarmed the garrison force that rushed in to join the battle. Desperately Ajlan, clothes bloody and torn, staggered back towards the fortress. Ibn Jalawi, cousin of Abdul
Aziz, reached the fleeing governor, and cut him down at the doorsteps of al-Masmak. With their leader killed, the demoralised garrison forces fled the city in disarray.

The daring assault had succeeded.

But there was little joy in the news that Muhammad bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud sent to his father. Their old hometown was now again under the control of the House of Saud - but Abdul Aziz was dead.

1. In OTL the shot hit Ajlan but did not kill him. Everything up to this point is indeed OTL. Here the shot narrowly misses, Ajlan charges in, and kills Abdul Aziz a few seconds later.

 

[Karelian]

Muhammad and his late half-brother Abdulaziz had reclaimed Riyadh, but the old struggle for power in the Arabian wastelands was far from over.

While the natives were clearly restless, Sir W. Lee Warner, member of the Council of the India Office, was primarily worried about the future of Ottoman railway projects in Arabia. In his view, Britain should steer clear of any involvement in Central Arabia. Arthur Hirtzel, Secretary of the Political Department, speculated that should the Sauds manage to drive the Ottomans garrisons out of Hasa and the Gulf was blockaded, "...Turkish authority would disappear from the Arabian coast of the Gulf."

Hirtzel was the key official in London to consistently support the Saudi cause. Yet he was more reformist than reactionary: although Britain’s satisfactory diplomatic relations with the Porte precluded any agreement with local Arab chieftains, Hirtzel merely pointed out that they should not be completely rejected either.

A trucial-type agreement with Great Britain would be consonant with British policy in the Gulf, and the old maxim of non-involvement in central Arabian affairs would still remain in effect.

After Paris, Berlin and London managed to settle their differences regarding a joint Ottoman railway project, the respective interests of Britain and Ottoman Turkey in the Persian Gulf region were intertwined to the Baghdad Railway and Ottoman custom duties. British diplomatic activitity in the region increased noticeably as other Great Powers were clearly attempting to expand their spheres of interests. The Ottomans were also using every diplomatic means available to defend their legitimate interests in the area. The resulting flur of diplomacy created several new conventions relating to the Persian Gulf and the Shatt-al-Arab waterway. All of these treaties were signed while the Saudi-Shammari struggle was gradually changing facts on the ground.

It was not that London was ignorant on what was happening. On the contrary: British policy was marked by divided opinion on how to deal with the growing local power of the resurgent Saudis.

The India Office and the Government of India were usually in accord in wishing to treat directly with Muhammad bin Abdul Rahman, lest he impinge upon British interests in the area. Meanwhile the Foreign Office wanted to settle the outstanding issues between Britain and the Ottomans to avoid a war, and viewed the Saudis as a figures of minimal importance.

From the Foreign Office standpoint the question of Saudi overtures was remarkably insignificant when viewed against the overall importance of Anglo-Ottoman relations. The India Office viewed the British interests in the Gulf as paramount, and restricted their interests to this part of the world. What both sides did agree was that the Saudis could not pursue an anti-British police, since their holdings were vulnerable against a seaborne invasion.

At the time the house of Saud was still determinedly pursuing expansion towards all directions, including the small Gulf coast emirates of Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
Meanwhile the Muscat Rebellion also threatened the stability of Trucial Oman. The views of India Office were clear: the Wahhabi leaders had to be ”conciliated or estranged.”

 

[Karelian]

Sharif of Mecca, Husain ibn ’Ali was appointed by imperial firman after the previous Sharif, ‘Awn al-Rafīq Pāshā ibn Muḥammad ibn ‘Abd al-Mu‘īn ibn Awn, died after a period of illness in 1905. As a member of the Quraish tribe and the family of Hashim, his successor Husain ibn ’Ali had a legitimate claim to be a linear descendant of the Prophet himself. Having spent sixteen years in Constantinople, he was a veteran of the Hamidian-era court intrigues. As one of the few high-ranking Arab rulers present in the capitol in 1905, was also well-positioned to take advantage of the emerging Arab political movements in the turmoil of post-Hamidian Ottoman domestic politics. And to his credit, Husain ibn ’Ali seized the opportunity when it presented itself without hesitating.

As the new Parliament[1] started its activities, many of the Arab deputies joined a society called the Arab-Ottoman Brotherhood (Al-ikha’ al-‘arabi al-‘uthmani, or Uhuvvet-i Arabiyye-i Osmaniye). This new organization had been formed in September and had welcomed the Arab deputies to the capital with a big reception, orchestrated by Husain ibn ’Ali.

The Al-ikha’ gathered the Arab deputies under its banner with a dual purpose in mind. On the one hand, it was aimed to constitute an extension of the existing societies that Arabs, mainly students, had formed in the capital before the restoration. On the surface the Al-ikha’ thus merely sought to promote contacts among the new Arab deputies and the local Arab community of the capitol region.

On the other hand the original founders, most of whom had been government officials of the Hamidian regime, mainly hoped to anxiously preserve their status in the volatile new political situation by representing themselves as the protectors of Arab interests in the empire. They aimed to do this by developing an Arab coalition that would collectively work toward the achievement of Ottoman unity.

Husain ibn ’Ali had his own ideas how to preserve and achieve this unity against the Western encroachment.
His plan was simple: the new Caliph should summon a meeting where all Arab chiefs would be presented. Husain ibn ’Ali claimed that the situation was ultimately simple, and that the Porte had two alternatives. Either the Arab lands could continue as they were at present, as a group of separate political entities operating under local administrative independence with their own rulers functioning as local valis in each province. Or a system could be devised whereby a single Arab group inside the realm would be presided over by an elected leader, much like the non-Muslim Ottoman subject groups such as the Armenians were currently organised. In either case the Arabs would still be under the suzerainty of the Halîfe-i Müslimîn.[2]

1: As some might not recall an update from 2017...
2: This is an OTL proposal that Abdulaziz Al-Saud made to the vali of Basra. The sudden restart of Ottoman parliamentarism in 1905 grants the ever-ambitious Hashemite Husain ibn ’Ali a golden opportunity to re-invent himself as an Ottoman Arab political leader just when he is about to enter office as the new Sharif.

 

[LordCalner]

Yay! A new update!

 

[athgtq16129]

Is there a world map of this TL so far?

 

[Karelian]

Is there a world map of this TL so far?

No, but it would be relatively easy to make one - only major changes from TTL so far are the number of open cities in China and the de facto Russian occupation of northern Manchuria:

 

[Karelian]

When the European railroad engineers and imperialists began to view the Ottoman Asiatic territories and plot new railroad routes on their maps, the logical end station was at the northern coast of the Persian Gulf.

While modernity was thus approaching rapidly, on the surface this coastal region still seemed to live like it had always done.
On the Arabian side of the Gulf, pearling and fishing had formed the key livelihood of the population since times immemorial.
By 1900 practically the entire male populations of Qatar, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Ajmer and other smaller coastal emirates worked in a millennia-old pearl fishing business.

The hard work at sea started at the "ghaus al-barid", the cold diving season, in April. During that time, deep banks were still so cold that the fishermen had to restrict their diving only to the banks in the shallow areas. Only during summer, during the "ghaus al-kabir" summer-time diving period from June to September could they reliably reach the larger pearl banks situated in deeper waters. During these hectic months nearly every male living on the coastline participated in some capacity such as diving, assisting in diving, opening shells, buying pearls or providing supplies.

Their toil brough high-quality pearl-shells to Bombay, and from there to the markets of North America and Europe. The industry brought a meagre living to most fishermen, but some merchants obtained massive fortunes. The growing pearl trade established new contacts and spread new ideas. And with wealth obtained through trade, Arab merchants gained local influence. And with their influence, they were able to sponsor various philanthropic activities that would later on have widespread influence in the entire Arabian peninsula: new schools.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

It seems that Europe is going to look the Persian Gulf with new and greedy eyes.

 

[Karelian]

It seems that Europe is going to look the Persian Gulf with new and greedy eyes.

So far everything regarding the Gulf, except the Bagdad Railway project, is from OTL.
Africa was already largely divided and "Asiatic Turkey" was initially viewed as a historically interesting backwater with next to no valuable resources.
At the same time the local situation was rapidly changing due the Saudi resurgence, which is still starting to gain momentum in TTL despite the dead of Abdul Aziz.
All in all, the TTL Middle East at the turn of the century is - sadly - a spot where imperialism, religion and conflicting geopolitical interests meet.

 

[SultanArda]

At the same time the local situation was rapidly changing due the Saudi resurgence, which is still starting to gain momentum in TTL despite the dead of Abdul Aziz.
All in all, the TTL Middle East at the turn of the century is - sadly - a spot where imperialism, religion and conflicting geopolitical interests meet.

Is the death of Abdul Aziz good thing or bad thing for the Saudis?
I am really curious about it.

 

[Karelian]

Is the death of Abdul Aziz good thing or bad thing for the Saudis?
I am really curious about it.

The early 1900s House of Saud was like a typical mid-game Crusader Kings 3 dynasty.
They were simultaneously their own worst enemies and best allies in TTL, and are right now in a similar strategic position than Abdul Aziz was at this point.
What is clear that in OTL Abdul Aziz made some calls that other Saudi leaders might not have done in an identical manner.

 

[Karelian]

Ali al Muhmud, a wealthy and philanthropic pearl merchant in Sharjah, was one of the first merchants to sponsor a new school with religious teaching.
Others soon followed suit: the Taimiyyah school in Hirah, Ahmadiyyah school in Dubai and the b. Khalaf school in Abu Dhabi had all been established by 1903.

Soon all major settlements of the Gulf hosted new schools. These institutions were well-positioned to spread reformist thought to a region that had insofar been a remote pearl trading backwater informally ruled by the ever-present patrols of the Royal Navy.

The British presence had largely crushed the formerly persistent piracy problem, finally securing the traditional trade routes further eastwards. Now Bombay was the place where the rich Arab pearl merchants of the different Gulf States gathered after the pearling season to show their wealth and spent their winters in luxury.

It was here where they were first exposed to modern European ideas, inventions and the local Muslim responses to the cultural and imperial challenge poised by the West.
After Nizam of Hyderabad had funded a new printing press for publishing traditional Arabic books, the new availability of classical texts made libraries a luxury item and a point of pride among the merchants.

This expansion of the availability of Arabic literature also gave room for the Ahl-i-Hadith movement in India. From Bombay this subcontinental reformism spread further westwards, influencing and shaping the nascent Arab Salafi trend.

The daily newspapers from Cairo further expanded new political awareness within the educated groups of the Gulf area, especially after a maritime service between Dubai and Bombay started in 1902. Soon reformist thinkers had found local sponsors and could expand their liberal religious ideas through new schools.

Modern steamships, the printing press and newspapers enabled the reformers to spread their vision to the wider Arab religious and cultural life within the Ottoman world. As the ideas from Bombay spread to the Gulf, they met both the rising tide of Wahhabi extremism and the well-established Sufi orders.

 

[Belka DNW]

So we have the liberal-progressive coastal cities against the conservative interior?

 

[SultanArda]

So we have the liberal-progressive coastal cities against the conservative interior?

I don't think that we can say they are liberal-conservative. I think modernist can be a better term to use them for.
Also, I don't think it is that complete of a fight... for some parts of the interior. I know that Jabal Shammar did not give much thought to modernism, good or bad. Still, Sauds are complicated and the rivalry you mentioned happening completely depends on whether Abdul Aziz is fully on the side of Wahhabism, or is just using it to gain popularity.

 

[Karelian]

So we have the liberal-progressive coastal cities against the conservative interior?

Also, I don't think it is that complete of a fight... for some parts of the interior. I know that Jabal Shammar did not give much thought to modernism, good or bad.

The inner Arabian peninsula is a different world.

Still, Sauds are complicated and the rivalry you mentioned happening completely depends on whether Abdul Aziz is fully on the side of Wahhabism, or is just using it to gain popularity.

Abdul Aziz ibn Saud is dead in TTL, so he is no longer taking any sides.

I don't think that we can say they are liberal-conservative. I think modernist can be a better term to use them for.

I'll cover their viewpoints more clearly later on, but you are correct in labelling them as modernists.

 

[SultanArda]

Abdul Aziz ibn Saud is dead in TTL, so he is no longer taking any sides.

Oh, I mistaken him with the alive step-brother, Muhammed, I think?
Sorry for my mistake

 

[Karelian]

Oh, I mistaken him with the alive step-brother, Muhammed, I think?
Sorry for my mistake

No worries, I get the various Saudis and other Arab leaders all mixed up constantly as well.

 

[Arkius]

I'm new. Could someone, please tel me what "OTL" means? Also, "OTTL".