"دليل الخليج. مجلد I. القسم التاريخي. الأجزاء Iأ و Iب. ج.ج. لوريمر ١٩١٥" [‎١‎٠‎٦‎٣] (١٧٨٢/١٢١٨)

1063
of ills fatii
personal courage came lo be entertained. For several years after his
father s assassination he wore a secret coat of mail j during' his visits
to Makkah he caused himself to be surrounded by extraordinary
precautions ; at Dara^iyah he seldom left his house except on Fridays ; and
throughout his reign a private interview with him was difficult to obtain.
He showed some distrust of his brothers, and he allowed no power to his
sons except the eldest, 'Abdullah; but he made much use of his sons
in his military enterprises.
The position of Sa'ud was never that of an absolute or arbitrary General ad-
monarch ; it was rather that of a great Arab Shaikh, ruling by influence,
whose subordinate allies and subjects possessed a large degree of local h5bi Amir -
freedom, and even rights, that he could not with safety invade. The author
ity of the Amir was superior to all others but, only because he was recognised
as the visible embodiment of the Wahhabi principle; and the people,V
for this reason, submitted voluntarily to his guidance. The Amir was
careful to maintain, so far as possible, the hereditary power of families
devoted to the Wahhabi cause, but of those which were not loyal he
destroyed the intiuence by removing their chiefs to Dara'iyah and
substituting strangers in their place at home. In most cases new appoint
ments to positions of authority were made by local election, the result
of which the Amir merely confirmed. The Wahhabi dominions were
divided into districts of which the principal, in the time of Sa^ud, were
'Aridh-c?m-Hasa, Qasim, Jabal Shammar, the Haramain {i.e., Makkah
and Madmah), Hijaz (in the Bedouin acceptation of the hilly country to
the south of Taif), and Yaman : Bahrain, Qatar and 'Oman hardly, perhaps,
formed regular districts. The executive government in each division,
except in 'Aridh-fw^-Hasa which contained the capital and was kept
by Sa'ud in his own hands, was carried on by officials, generally no
doubt—as in the case of the Sharif Ghalib of Makkah—influential ^
hereditary chiefs ; and the principal duties of these executive governors
were, besides political vigilance in their charges, to attend to the
collection of the revenue and to furnish such military contingents as the
central government might require. In matters of law and justice,
however, the authorities were not the executive governors but Qadhis,
carefully selected and sent down to the divisions from Dara'iyah; and
from these, as from the governors, an appeal seems to have lain in all cases
to the Amir. In time of peace the Amir relied largely on the advice of
the family of the founder of Wahhabism, known as the Aulad-ash-
Shaikhwho seem to have formed in fact a sort of standing but
informal council of state.
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