ABDULLAH bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was the King of Saudi Arabia and Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques from 2005 to 2015. He ascended to the throne on 1 August 2005 upon the death of his half-brother, King Fahd. Abdullah, like Fahd, was one of the many sons of Ibn Saud, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia. Abdullah held important political posts throughout most of his adult life. After King Fahd suffered a serious stroke in 1995, Abdullah became the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia until ascending the throne a decade later.
King Abdullah died aged 90 on Friday, weeks after being admitted to hospital with a lung infection, and he was buried later that day. US President Barack Obama paid tribute to Abdullah as a leader who “was always candid and had the courage of his convictions”. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Riyadh after Friday prayers. King Salman, 79, pledged continuity after his accession to the throne. He also moved swiftly to appoint heirs and ministers, including one prince from the ruling dynasty’s third generation.
In Saudi terms, King Abdullah was a reformer, making princes pay their phone bills and giving women their first ever seats in the high-level consultative council. In 2005, King Abdullah implemented a government scholarship program to send young Saudi men and women to study abroad. He realized a top-to-bottom restructuring of the country’s courts to introduce, among other things, review of judicial decisions and more professional training for Shari’a judges. He developed a new investment promotion agency to overhaul the once-convoluted process of starting a business in Saudi Arabia. He created a regulatory body for capital markets.
In August 2013, the Saudi Cabinet approved a law making domestic violence a criminal offence for the first time. The law criminalizes psychological and sexual abuse, as well as physical abuse. It also includes a provision obliging employees to report instances of abuse in the workplace to their employer – a historic first for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia. In November 2007, King Abdullah visited Pope Benedict XVI. He is the first Saudi monarch to visit the Pope to promote interfaith dialogue.
.UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praised Abdullah’s work “to promote dialogue among the world’s faiths”. However, human rights groups said Saudi Arabia’s human rights record had been dismal under Abdullah and urged Salman to do more to protect freedom of speech and women’s rights. So the King can best be described as both a reformer and as an accommodator of the cultural values which embodies Saudi Arabia. We can hope that the new king will follow in his reformist footsteps – going where no king had gone before.
