The Arabian Peninsula entered the 20th Century as one of the least developed areas of the classical world. The interior inhabited by nomad tribes was practically untouched by the ‘march of history’, but even the settled areas of the Hejaz, and the Gulf coast between Bahrain and Kuwait, were relatively backward. Although the precursors to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are conventionally termed ‘states’, they had no state structures. Only Bahrain and, to a certain degree, Kuwait had developed such structures; the rest of the peninsula was ruled by tribal structures and kinship ties.
The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw some timid attempts at modernization as a result of the reform movement in the Ottoman Empire (the Tanzimat) and the Arab world (al Nahda). The first modern school of the peninsula was established in Mecca in 1911, paid for by a wealthy merchant from Jeddah. The Ottomans even built a railway to Medina (the Hejaz railway), which only operated a few years before the outbreak of WW1. Although this was ostensibly to facilitate the Hajj, the train was also used for moving troops and military supplies, thus becoming a target for anti-Ottoman forces. This has led to a famous scene of the movie ‘Lawrence of Arabia’.
Hejaz Railway – El ‘Ula station, Saudi Arabia
During World War I, both the Hashemite rulers of the Hejaz and King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud were promised future independence by the British, if they would side with England against the Ottomans. The exploits of Lawrence of Arabia in the Hejaz are well known; not so the activities of his colleague in Riyadh, Captain Shakespear, who concluded a treaty of mutual support with Ibn Saud. The Saudi ruler, who unified the Peninsula between 1902 and 1932, at that time needed British support to defeat the Al Rashids from Ha’il, who received Ottoman support.
After the Ottoman were routed from the Arabian Peninsula, Sharif Hussein of Mecca, the Hashemite king, proclaimed the independent Kingdom of the Hejaz (1916-1925). When the Saudis captured Mecca, thus putting an end to seven centuries of Hashemite rule, the two sons of Sharif Hussein were made sovereigns of Iraq (King Faisal) and Jordan (King Abdullah) by English intercession. The Hashemite dynasty survives until today in Jordan. Continue reading about Saudi Arabia.
After the departure of the Ottomans in 1918, the Zaidi Imam Yahya from the Yemeni highlands asserted his control over North Yemen and established the Mutawakkilite Kingdom. Under his and his son Ahmad’s rule, Northern Yemen remained in a quasi medieval state, isolated from world politics and micro-managed by the King. The Army and merchant class finally managed to wrestle power from the Zaidi imam in 1962, establishing the Yemen Arab Republic, which was supported by Nasser’s Egypt. Nasser sent troops to battle the royalists supported by Saudi Arabia and Britain, and the war lasted until 1968.
Britain remained in control of Aden and the adjoining southern and eastern Yemeni areas until 1967, when Marxist tribal guerillas drove the British out and established the People’s Republic of South Yemen, renamed People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen two years later. A Marxist state was formed with support from the USSR and other Soviet Bloc countries, but it was eventually undermined by conflict between the tribes that underpinned it. North and South Yemen as they are commonly known (although West and East Yemen would be more appropriate), remained on relatively good terms until 1990, when they decided to merge into the Republic of Yemen.
Bahrain was considerably more developed as a political entity and as a relatively open society than the rest of the region. A first ‘American Mission’ hospital was established there (by the Dutch) in 1903, and the first boys’ school in 1919 (followed by the first girls’ school in 1928). Although Bahrain maintained a degree of prosperity due to its traders, its agriculture and the pearl industry, the economic status of the island and the region changed when oil was discovered in 1932. This came just in time as the Gulf’s main source of income – the pearl industry, on which fishing communities in Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar were thriving – collapsed when the Japanese started cultivating pearls artificially. Continue reading about Bahrain.
Kuwait was severely affected by the collapse of the pearl trade, on which half of the population was dependent. The city-state experienced a decade of poverty and emigration until oil was discovered in 1936. Continue reading about Kuwait.
Qatar entered a protectorate treaty with Britain in 1916, thus joining the Trucial Coast system. Oil was discovered on Qatar’s west coast in the late 1930s, but extraction only started in 1949. In the intervening years, Qatar, like Kuwait and Bahrain, suffered from economic depression and the collapse of the pearling industry. Continue reading about Qatar.
Like Qatar, the United Arab Emirates played a marginal role in the region until their independence in 1970, which was preceded by the discovery of massive oil reserves in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. Continue reading about the UAE.
Oman, by contrast, was an influential regional player, and it excited the colonial ambitions of several European nations, such as the French and the Germans. The British however asserted their predominance when they concluded an agreement with the Sultan of Oman in 1908 that effectively made the sultanate a British protectorate. In return, the British helped the Sultan against his rivals, the Imam of Nizwa who ruled the interior and the oft rebelling tribes of Dhofar, the province bordering South Yemen. Continue reading about Oman.