The Historical Geography of Saudi Arabia – Part 1

The Middle Eastern Theater of the Great War opened with the British capture of Basra, which was vital to securing oil supplies for their forces. After that, the war was stuck at a stalemate for years, with the primary British interest pulling in the Arab forces to fight with them against the Turks. This was a difficult task—the Turks were, afterall, Muslim brethren of the Arabs—but the recent favoring of Turkish nationals over the recent decades of the Ottoman Empire made many Arabs sore with Ottoman rule.

William Shakespear, who had first met Ibn Saud in 1910, looked to secure Saudi support for the British, but any long-term relationship between the two countries was damaged significantly when Shakespear was killed by Rashidi forces in the Battle of Jarrab. From then on, most British policymakers—including T.E. Lawrence and Lord Curzon—advocated the “Hussein Policy” of alliance with Hussein bin Ali, the Sheikh of Mecca. Although the British entered into the Treaty of Darin with Ibn Saud in December 1915 by which they recognized his sovereignty and paid him to continue his war against the Ottoman-allied Al Rashid, Ibn Saud’s reluctance to quickly move against the Rashidis, and the lack of Ibn Saud’s ability to directly attack Ottoman interests, put Hussein at the forefront of the “Arab Revolt.” After Hussein was successful in capturing Meccah, Jeddah and Taif in quick succession, the majority view inside the British camp was overwhelmingly in his favor. The Saudi-Rashidi theater became, as some might call it, a sideshow of a sideshow of a sideshow (A Lawrence of Arabia reference, for those of you who don’t get it.)

In 1917, the tide turned decisively in the favor of the British. In February, after years of battling in the region, the British decisively capture Kut in Iraq. , the forces of the Arab Revolt, led by Auda ibu Tayi and T. E. Lawrence, captured Aqaba, while a British offensive recaptured Suez. Finally, after a big push towards Jerusalem, the Ottoman forces surrended on December 9, 1917, and the war in the Middle East was over, although it took another 10 months for an armistice to be signed.

The two big events from the battle of Jerusalem until the end of the war were telling as to what the next decade would bring. First, we saw the first real battle between Saudi and Husseini forces in a skirmish at Al Khurmah; and the independence of northern Yemen as an independent Shia state.

Today, the Latin alphabet is the international standard for phonetic writing. But this is a modern phenomenon. For centuries, Arabic was the central language to science and trade, and consequently, the use of its script was dominant worldwide well into the 19th century. Yet the 17th-19th centuries saw a slow decline in the use of Arabic, and a critical loss over ten years from the late 1920s to mid-1930s in the former Ottoman and new Soviet territories as Latin letters, and to a lesser degree Cyrillic, became the script of choice.

Colonialism and independence realized the decline of Arabic in Africa in many languages. Swahili, a major African language up the African east coast, has used the Latin alphabet since the 19th century, despite heavy influence from the Arabic language, along with Malagasy in Madagascar. Songhay, Yoruba and other West African languages were, in some regions, written in Arabic, although all are now written in the Latin alphabet. Nearer Arabia, Harari in Ethiopia, Berber in northern Africa, and Nubian in the Sudan area no longer use Arabic script. Even Afrikaans was written in Arabic by some people for part of the 19th century.

During the Arabic rule of Spain, Mozarabic, Aragonese, Portuguese, and Spanish were written in Arabic. During Ottoman rule of Eastern Europe, several languaegs—Greek, Bosnian, Romanian and Albanian—were written in Arabic script. Elsewhere in Europe, Tatars used Arabic to write Polish and Belarussian. But the decline of the Ottoman Empire saw the rapid abandonment of the Arabic script, and Turkey’s voluntary abandonment of Arabic script in 1928 saw the end of the Arabic script in Europe. Even the Kurds abandoned Arabic for a Latin alphabet in 1932.

The Russian Revolution and Soviet rule saw the switch from Arabic to the back-and-forth use of the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, depending on the mood fo the Bolsheviks at any particular time. Russia’s central Asian languages such as Bashkir, Tatar, Chaghatai, and Chechen sporadically used Arabic but now all use Cyrillic. The languages of the Central Asian republics—Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and Tajik—are the same, having abandoned Arabic in the 1930s. The same is true for Azeri in the Caucasus. Uyghur in western China is the only Turkic language that still uses the Arabic script, and it remains an official language in that part of China.

In distant East Asia, Malay in Malaysia and Indonesia used Arabic script until Dutch and British influence gradually replaced that script starting in the 17th century. Some Filipino languages also abandoned the use of Arabic at this time. And finally, the Hui Muslim people used to write the Chinese and Dungan languages in Arabi script in a script called Xiao’erjing.

In addition to the obvious factors—imperialism, colonialism, and the Soviet hegemony—another factor was the printing press. Because there are several forms of each Arabic letter depending on where it appears in the sentence, material produced in the Arabic script could not be easily reproduced with a printing press.

In our previous discussions on what language to learn, Arabic has generally been rated as a second or third tier language in order of importance. A century ago, when the real-life Curzon, Younghusband, Chirol and Munro-Ferguson travelled the globe, it surely would have been a first tier language, if for nothing else than for the dominance of its script from southern Africa to western China. Those days, however, are long gone.

- Prelude: The Historical Geography of Saudi Arabia –

Most summaries you read about modern Arabian history focus on the Trucial States, the Arab Revolt, Pan-Arabian nationalism, and the modern political instability. Saudi Arabia is never mentioned until the discovery of oil, and Ibn Saud’s dramatic seizure of power that begins with his capture of Riyadh in 1902, and his slow consolidation of power in Arabia, is generally ignored or glossed over.

This is disappointing, or at least, it’s a shame for those of us who are students of geopolitics. Because the more I read about Saudi Arabia, the more I am fascinated by the shrewd and crafty geopolitical genius of Ibn Saud—how he survived and prospered through the heydays of the early 20th century and regularly bargained with much more powerful international players from a position of strength. This series is the first of four parts that will show you the modern geography of Saudi Arabia—following on my previous explanation of the first and second Saudi states.

You can see an animated gif of this transition here.

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From Fastcompany.com comes this introduction to the zoomable paper map. Each quarter of the map can be unfolded, revealing zoomed-in detail.

One key fault line in the Arab world is the divide between countries ruled by hereditary monarchs —the Emirs, Sultans, and Kings of the region—and those countries that overthrew monarchs or won independence and established republican governments. This is a major factor that divides the government, law, culture and society in the countries of the Arab world.

When Iraq—a socialist republic that overthrew its Hashemite king in the late 1950s—invaded the Persian Gulf Emirate of Kuwait, one justification was the “liberation” of the country from a tyranical monarch. Not surprisingly, the reaction by Arab governments to this invasion was closely linked to its system of government. Consider the following map, together with the map above:

The divide is clearest in the Arabian Peninsula—all the monarchies of the GCC backed fellow charter state Kuwait, while Yemen, which had overthrown its monarch in North Yemen in the 1960s and which had a contentious relationship with the Saudis, backed Saddam. The Palestinian Liberation Organization also voiced support for Saddam (which drastically hurt their international political standing for several years). Libya spoke out against any Arab military action against Iraq, Sudan quietly voiced support for Saddam, while Morocco’s King sent troops to join the coalition forces. Looking at the first map, and seeing the conflict as a republican v.s. monarch war, the allegiances thus far look relatively predictable.

It is only in Egypt, Jordan and Syria that this model is reversed. US ally Egypt and pro-Iranian Syria backed the US coalition. Jordan’s King Hussein decided to voice support for Saddam, either because of general public opinion or because of his refusal to ally with the Saudis against another Arab country, and its US relationship suffered as a result. Meanwhile, Algeria, which was in the process of violent democratic reforms, saw its political elite divided on the subject and never took any official position, while Tunisia, a monarchy republic of the Mediterranean, wanted to stay out of the conflict. (Lebanon barely had a foreign policy at the time and trying to escape its violent civil strife and ipso-facto control by Syria was just coming to an end at this time.)

These fault lines were completely different during the Iran-Iraq War, when two republics were warring with each other. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE (through Abu Dhabi), and most Arab countries backed Iraq, and it was only Syria, Libya, and Sheikh Maktoum of Dubai that backed Iran. But that was when a secular Sunni Arab state was fighting a Shitte Islamist revolutionary republic. Then, the fault lines were different.

Previously: Ethiopia – Poland – Armenia – Persia – Russia I – Russia II – Russia III – India – Britannia – Sweden – Saudi Arabia

Consider the borders of the emirates of the UAE. Abu Dhabi, the capital of the federation, is a gigantic block from the south stretching up towards the north. It holds more than 85% of the total land of the country. Dubai, the next Emirate to the north of Abu Dhabi, is the second largest and occupies 5% of the land of the UAE. Dubai’s territory is basically unified in a neat block, with the only exception being the Oman border town of Hatta.

The remaining five emirates occupy less than 10% of the land, and their borders are a collosal mess, containing enclaves, narrow bands of territory, and disputed tracks of wasteland that look chaotic. It’s a wonder this messy border situation survived—but has was it created and why does it still exist, almost 40 years after the UAE was founded?

NOTE: This is a dated satellite map, and does not contain the two Palm Islands, The World, and other artificial islands created off the coast of Dubai.

Not surprisingly, the blame reason lies with the British. While the Sheikhdoms were protectorates, the British only visited the ports and had little interest in the desolate interior of the Arabian peninaula. But as the protectorate relationship was scheduled to end, Britain knew the risk of the Emirs fighting over land if the borders were left undefined—Abu Dhabi and Dubai fought a border war in the interior in the 1940s, which the British arbitrated and established a neutral zone, and Sharjah’s hegemony over the north had broken down as new emirates within Sharjah’s original territory rose and fell. To avoid these types of problems, the British sent the Trucial Oman Scouts out in Landrovers and on camels to conduct a detailed map survey and tribal census, during which time they mapped the interior and asked the rulers of each settlement village to which Emir (or Sultan, in the case of Oman) they owed their allegiance. You can read one account of mapping the desert during this time here. They used this survey to draw the borders that became the basis for the UAE borders.

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An enclave is a piece of land which is totally surrounded by a foreign territory. If another country has sovereignty over it, it is also called an exclave of that other country. Thus, they have the same meaning, but differ only in the perspective. Sound odd? They are much more common than most people think.

- Chirol, December 19th, 2005

Years ago, my learned colleague explained the many types of enclaves and exclaves that exist in the world in a five part series that covered Gambia, Belarus, Armenia, Cyprus, Belgium, and many more states, and concluded with an exhaustive explanation of the many different types of enclaves and exclaves. However, despite covering more than a dozen types of enclaves, the series did not cover the peculiar situation that exists in Madha and Nahwa—an enclave inside an enclave.

Madha is a tiny, landlocked circle of Omani territory situated in the eastern part of the United Arab Emirates. In that regard, it is similar to many of the enclaves of the world, and shows up on most maps as such. But what makes it particularly unique is that inside Madha is an enclave of the UAE, belonging to the Emirate of Sharjah, called Nahwa. This enclave is so small that most maps don’t even note it, and you cannot see this border accurately on Google Maps or Nasa Worldwind.

It would be pretty easy for me to take a few hours and drive from Dubai into Madha and into Nahwa, but reading a traveler’s account of the journey, it doesn’t seem like it would be very interesting.

Why do these strange enclaves exist and what’s up with the peculiar border between the UAE and Oman? Why, what an excellent question—and very well put! Believe it or not, the border between the UAE and Oman is just the beginning—the borders of the northern emirates that constitute the UAE are an utter mess, with curious, curved borders, enclaves and exclaves, and some of the most curious borders you can imagine. I’ll be back with the reason for these borders, and the peculiar borders of the seven emirates, in a few days. You will see that Chirol was absolutely correct in saying that enclaves and excalves are more common than you might think.

Some people talk about Saudi Arabia as if it is some political aberration created by Britain and the United States special interests. In fact, the Saudi royal family can trace its origins to the 15th century, and rose to become a major military, religious and political force in the early 18th century, before the United States even existed and when European powers didn’t dare challenge the Ottoman supremacy in the Persian Gulf.

The First Saudi State was established when Sheikh Mohammed Ibn Abdul Wahab settled in Diriyadh and Prince Mohammed Ibn Saud backed his movement to cleanse the Islamic faith. Initially a mere rabble of radicals in the desert wasteland, the Saud forces soon ousted the Ottomans from the Persian Gulf and went on to capture the Holy Cities of Islam. They were defeated by Egyptian forces, acting on Ottoman orders, who razed the Saudi capital to the ground, executed the Whabbi religious agitators, and exiled the political figures.

The Second Saudi State emerged very shortly thereafter, but only ruled in the eastern half of Arabia. They were challenged and eventually conquered by another Arab Emirate that emerged in the north, but not for long—the Saudi clan roared back in the early 20th century, and during World War I, succeeded in largely unifying the interior of the Arabian Peninsula. It was probably only British influence and power along the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf shore that protected Oman, Qatar, and the other emirates of the Persian Gulf.

The history of this geography can be visualized here:

You can read a pro-Saudi version of this narrative at the Saudi Aramco website.

The role of Saudi Arabia in defeating the Ottomans and expelling them from the Persian Gulf had major implications for the geopolitics of the 19th century and beyond. I’ll be addressing more of this in future, but understanding the role of the Saudi role in ending Ottoman Rule in the Near East is a key prerequisite to reviewing the modern history of the Persian Gulf.

Europe is now united in an ever-expanding union that shares common borders, a single currency, and an increasingly unified political economy. It has been so successful (at least so far) that many regions of the world are trying to copy the system—in East Asia, Africa, and South America. Yet perhaps the most successful version is along the coast of the Persian Gulf, the Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC).

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman.

Formed in 1981 in response to prevent disorder spreading with the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War, for years the GCC operated as a mere council of cooperation. In 1982 it established the Gulf Standards Organization and in 1984 set up the Gulf Investment Corporation.

Beyond that, little happened until the mid-1990s, from which time the countries slowly set things in motion to unify many bureaucratic and administrative agencies and procedures between countries. In 1992, the GCC Patent Office was approved and established. It has quickly become very easy for nationals (although not all residents) of GCC countries to move and work between other GCC countries. In 1999, they set to establish a Custom’s Union (although this is still not finalized). Most recently, as of 2009, a universal driver license is issued in all states of the GCC, a key factor in a region where automobiles are the primary, if not only, form of transnational transit for most people.

The GCC was even scheduled to set up a single currency next year, but that has been delayed due to Oman’s reluctance to join, Qatar’s disagreement with the policy, and the UAE’s frustration that a GCC Central Bank would be in Riyadh, not in Abu Dhabi or Dubai. On that note, one barrier to further unity is the Saudi-centric nature of the GCC —Saudi Arabia has the largest economy in the region and has great influence over its smaller, poorer neighbors, and the GCC headquarters is already in Riyadh. To put a GCC Central Bank in Riyadh would only further institutionalize the de facto dominance of Saudi Arabia in the region and in the council. (If the EU experience is any guide, keeping most institutions of the government in Brussels, in tiny Belgium, is the best way to avoid large countries lording it over smaller countries. Perhaps GCC institutions should be estabilshed in tiny Bahrain?)

A single currency seems a long way off, but open borders are probably just around the corner. While it might seem strange to have open borders in relatively backwards countries, the fact of the matter is that the wide open desert borders mean that anyone who wants to illegally cross over the border can without too much hassle. Opening borders would give that freedom, and convenience, to ordinary people and promote cross-border business. For example, the UAE is separated from Qatar but a stretch of Saudi land. If the borders were open, cars and buses could travel between Abu Dhabi/Dubai and Doha, two major hubs of regional activity, and further promote regional economic growth.

The GCC is not in expansion mode. The only candidate scheduled to join in 2016 is Yemen, to which there has long been suspicion because of its republican, not hereditary, government. There have been friendly moves towards Iraq, but not consideration of it joining. Jordan, despite being a fellow Arab monarchy, is not even on the GCC radar.