"ملف 61/11 V (D 95) مسائل متنوعة خاصة بالحجاز ونجد" [و‎‎٢‎١‎٥] (٥٣٠/٤٤٦)

1933]
IBN SA'tJD AND THE FUTURE OF ARABIA
521
attribute the numberless occasions on which he has succeeded
with incalculable odds against him, merely to blind chance, and
Ibn Sa'ud is fundamentally a simple-minded man. These
mental processes of the King did not take place in a day, but it
has been obvious since 1930 that his mind has turned more to
religion. That he is turning more to religious and spiritual
matters is clear from the way in which he is emphasising the
puritanical restrictions of the Wahhabis. For example, on
January 8th, 1931, there was an Accession Day Celebration to
celebrate his coming to the throne, and after it the Ulema of
Nejd protested against the worldliness of the affair; Ibn Sa'ud
publicly confessed that they were right and he was wrong, and
neither last year nor this year has there been such a celebration.
Again, smoking is entirely forbidden amongst the King's entourage
and at any function which he attends. There have been numerous
police raids in Mecca, Medina and Jedda, with the object of
seizing liquor, and punishments ferocious to European eyes have
been meted out to offenders. Not long ago a wretched Hadhrami
stole a piece of the black stone from the Ka'ba in Mecca, because
he thought that it would be lucky, but he discovered that any
luck coming his way would have to be in Paradise, as his head
was chopped off. A Hejazi who murdered his father and mother
and then appealed to the King for clemency on the ground that
he was an orphan, was executed at the same time. In his
speeches Ibn Sa'ud has been particularly severe on backsliders.
At the last Pilgrimage banquet oration he said, " I fear Christians
once but I fear so-called Moslems three thousand times." This
gave great offence to Mohammedans elsewhere, notably to the
representatives of Persia and Afghanistan. Ibn Sa'ud has been
definitely very much more strict on the observation of all the
Wahhabi tenets recently. One more small example is that no
music of any description is allowed in the Hejaz. Many Hejazi
had brought in gramophones, so there was a police raid in which
every single gramophone needle was seized; there is now not
one to be had in the whole of the Hejaz except in the foreign
missions.
I will now tell you a little of the inner history of the Ibn
Rifada affair. There was no paper in England, and I did not
see even a vernacular paper outside Arabia, which got anywhere
near the truth about the plot. It was exceedingly interesting
and showed again that Ibn Sa'ud is definitely a very great man
for getting himself out of difficulties. On June 14th last year
a complaint was received from Ibn Sa'ud that certain rebel