- [Man] The history of the Saudi state and the Saudi dynasty
really becomes interesting in 1744, in the town of Diriyah,
which is very close to the modern city of Riyadh.
In the region of the Arabian peninsula known as the Nejd,
and the Nejd is an important term to know
if you're studying Saudi Arabia because this central region
of the Arabian peninsula is really the stronghold
of the House of Saud.
But Diriyah was a successful town in the early 18th century,
but the Emir of Diriyah, Muhammad bin Saud,
forges an alliance with a religious leader,
Muhammad bin Abdul-Wahhab,
and that alliance is a very strong one.
Muhammad bin Saud's son marries Muhammad bin Abdul-Wahhab's
daughter to really seal that alliance.
And the Wahhabis could be viewed as a fundamentalist sect
of Sunni Islam.
And with that purist religious fervor,
this alliance is very successful.
Over the next several decades, you have
the Emirate of Diriyah continuing to grow,
first conquering much of the Nejd and Eastern Arabia,
and then as we go into the early 19th centuries,
we go into the early 1800's, conquers Western Saudi Arabia
and much of the territory you would now associate
with the modern Saudi state.
Now of note, is that they conquered the Western portion
of the Arabian peninsula, known as the Hejaz.
And the reason why this is significant,
you have to remember the context.
At this time, the Ottoman Empire,
with Constantinople as its capital, was nominally
in control of most of the Middle East, including Egypt
and the Arabian peninsula.
But all of a sudden, you have this emirate
that starts off in Diriyah, and now is able to conquer
a big chunk of the Arabian peninsula,
including two of the holiest places in all of Islam.
On top of that, the Emir of Diriyah
and the Wahhabi religious leaders say that
the ruler of the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan,
Mustafa the Fourth, is not the valid leader of Islam,
that he is not the true caliph of Islam.
On top of that, in 1802 an estimated 12,000 Wahhabis
go to Karbala and sack the city.
They destroy the shrine of Husayn, who's a revered figure
amongst Shia muslims, and they kill an estimated
up to four or five thousand people,
and Karbala is also under Ottoman control,
so the Ottomans are not happy about this.
You have a fundamentalist sect of Islam in the Wahhabis
controlling most of the Arabian peninsula, including
the holiest sites in all of Islam.
They're saying that the Ottoman rulers, the Sultan,
is not the true caliph of Islam, and on top of that,
they're causing internal strife within the Ottoman Empire
with the Shias by sacking Karbala.
To make things even more complicated for the Ottomans,
in Egypt, you have another leader who's trying to exercise
his autonomy in Muhammad Ali.
And so, the
Ottomans have a plan.
Why don't we get Muhammad Ali to send some of his troops
to focus on the Emirate of Diriyah?
And so they order Muhammad Ali to take on
the Emirate of Diriyah and this is what becomes
the Ottoman-Wahhabi War.
Now by the time the war is in full swing,
the Sultan in Constantinople is Mahmud the Second.
Muhammad Ali sends his sons, who are eventually successful,
in taking back Mecca and Medina, and then they lay siege
to the town of Diriyah, and they are eventually able
to take it in 1818.
They send the leaders of the House of Saud, and the Wahhabis
to Constantinople, including the current emir at the time,
Abdullah bin Saud, and just to get a sense of
the family tree up to this point, this is Abdullah,
who is the last emir of the Emirate of Diriyah,
who gets captured by the Egyptian forces
on behalf of the Ottomans.
You can see he's the great grandson of Muhammad bin Saud.
Bin Saud means Muhammad, son of Saud, so the whole dynasty
is named after Saud, who is the previous Emir of Diriyah,
but Muhammad bin Saud is the one who really formed
that alliance with the Wahhabis, which enabled
the Emerate of Diriyah to become a major power
in the Arabian peninsula, eventually taking over most
of the peninsula.
Abdullah was sentenced to death in Constantinople
but before he was beheaded, he was forced to listen
to lute music, because according to the Wahhabis,
that was considered sacrilege, while the Ottomans had
no problem with it, so they were really trying to rub it in.
That before you die, you're going to have to do something
that you, the Wahhabis view as sacrilege.
But I will leave you there, as we will see,
the Emirate of Diriyah is the first of three major
Saudi states that will each control
most of the Arabian peninsula.
In the next video, we're going to see the Saudi state
come back with the Emirate of Nejd, and in blue here,
you see the rulers of the Emirate of Nejd.
And then, after that, we will talk about
the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,
whose rulers you see here in green,
and we'll go into a lot more depth than that.
But you can see, that they all are descendant
from Muhammad bin Saud.