Return of Al-Saud and the establishment of Saudi Arabia

Still in exile with his family in Kuwait in the late 1890s, the young ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman Saud nurtured his ambition to recover the patrimony of his fathers. In 1901 he made an unsuccessful bid to recapture Riyad. On 14 January 1902 ‘Abd al-‘Aziz along with a handful of men made a daring dawn assault on the Masmak Fort in Riyad, and the rule of the House of Saud was restored.

By 1906, having driven rival al-Rashid’s forces out of the Najd region, the Ottomans recognised ‘Abd al-‘Aziz as their client in Najd. His next major acquisition was al-Ahsa, which he took from the Ottomans in 1913, and which brought him control of the Arabian Gulf coast and what would later become Saudi Arabia’s vast oil reserves. He avoided involvement in the Arab Revolt, having acknowledged Ottoman suzerainty in 1914; instead, he continued his struggle with al-Rashid in northern Arabia. Turning his attention to the southwest in 1920, ‘Abd al-‘Aziz seized ‘Asir, the region between the Hijaz and Yemen; the following year he finally defeated al-Rashid’s forces and annexed the whole of northern Arabia.

By the Treaty of Jeddah, signed on 20 May 1927, the United Kingdom recognised the independence of ‘Abd al-‘Aziz’s realm (then known as the Kingdom of Hijaz and Najd), following conquest of the Hijaz.

In 1933, the two kingdoms of the Hijaz and Najd were united as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Boundaries with Transjordan, Iraq and Kuwait were established by a series of treaties negotiated in the 1920s, with two “neutral zones” created, one with Iraq, and the other with Kuwait. The country’s southern boundary with Yemen was partially defined by the 1934 Treaty of Ta’if, which ended a brief border war between the two states.