"ملف 61/11 IV (D 77) مسائل متنوعة خاصة بالحجاز ونجد" [ظ‎‎٤‎٣] (٣٦٦/٩٦)

Then his Nejdis said : " Let us have our national dancing too, and the Iving
assented. When he saw it he was so carried away that he himself joined in.
It was a brave sight, said Mr. Philby, to see how the others clustered round until
the King was the centre of a thousand men or so, each with his sword in the air.
Sword-play, the firing of guns and pistols and the beating of drums are a feature
of all these dances.
6. The Mecca 44 Umm-al-Qura" of the 27th February records the
performance at Mecca in an article headed : " The Speech of the Sword. It
makes no mention of anything having happened on the first day of the festival,
but says that on the second the King held a review of his Bedouin troops, in
which the princes joined; and that the King threw off his cloak, drew his sword
and played with it too, " remembering the old days of his fights." The writer
describes this sword-play as a voiceless speech, because every glance and gesture
of the King meant many things.
7. The King himself mentioned in my hearing at one of the functions in
Jedda that the Nejdi war-dance was a revival, the custom having been in
abeyance for over fifteen years. Mr. Philby s version of the Mecca demonstrations
ignores the fact that there had been an organised dance at Wadi Fatma on
the 9th January, but he too says that these things are the revival of an old
practice, and he puts the period of discontinuance at about twenty yea^^ This
brings me to my reason for describing at such length in an official ^pypatch
what so far reads merely like a record of the picturesque.
8. Ibn Saud started the organisation of the Akhwan colonies round about
1912. They were clearly designed to provide easily mobilisable fighting forces,
fanned by zeal by the present Wahhabi doctrine. The rebels of 1929 turned a
portion of this instrument against the King. It is difficult to judge how far the
revolt permanently in^paired the value of the Akhwan as a military machine, but
one of the complaints of the rebels was that the King had ceased to be a good
Wahhabi. This is true to the extent that, as he has risen, he has had to make
many compromises with modern progress and some with less rigid forms of Islam.
One sees in his toleration and encouragement of the recent manifestations an
indication of his desire to ride on a looser rein a section of his subjects who like
things repugnant to the true Wahhabi of the old school—the music of the drum, for
instance. Although this new liberty has been allowed to both Nejdis and Hejazis,
it is significant that the easing of the safety valve has taken place in Mecca and
Jedda, places with no real appetite for Wahhabism in any form. The King
would appear to be reinsuring with the less puritanical elements. His personal
participation and that of the princes in the dancing have enabled him to appear
as a monarch wlho not only likes to see his people have a bit of fun, but
is democratic enough to join in it.
9. Townsmen count for little in this country, and it would be a mistake
to attach a greater political significance to the matter than I have done in the
preceding paragraph. The spectacle of the dancing crowd outside my house
on the 3rd March conjured up the atmosphere of expansiveness characteristic
of the cheerfuller phases of European revolutions which have ended in the
downfall of Kings; but I should be slow to suggest that Ibn Saud's complaisance
denotes, in an Arabian setting, any consciousness of a serious weakening in his
position.
10. I am sending copies of this despatch to the High Commissioner at
Bagdad, Cairo, the Honourable the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, and
to the Secretary to Government of India in the Foreign and Political Department.
I have, &c.
ANDREW RYAN.