KING ABDULLAH AND HIS 37 WIVES

King Abdullah Ibn Abdulaziz Al-Saud of Saudi Arabia, who has died aged 90, presided over his oil-rich, deeply religious and often divided nation at a time of unprecedented upheaval in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
When he succeeded to the throne, and the equally important office of Title of the Two Holy Mosques, in 2005 he had already been de facto ruler for 10 years. His half-brother King Fahd, whom he eventually succeeded, had suffered a debilitating stroke after years of well-documented high living.

Abdullah Ibn Abdulaziz Al-Saud was born on August 1 1924, the 13th of more than 35 sons of Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia. He received a court education in religion, chivalry and politics, being tutored in Koranic schools and by the ulemas (religious teachers), but supplemented this with his own reading in many different fields. He became known as more personally religious than some men in the family, who pursued greater pleasures abroad than they allowed at home, but was never at the extreme end of the country’s severely Wahhabi religious establishment.

His merits and future leadership role were recognised in 1962, when the then Crown Prince Faisal appointed him head of the National Guard, while naming his half-brother and rival Prince Sultan as minister of defence. Sultan and Fahd were leading members of the so-called Sudairi Seven full brothers, and the balancing act initiated then, between the personally conservative but politically reformist Prince Abdullah, and the politically conservative and pro-American Sudairis, came to dominate Saudi politics over successive decades.
Sultan became Crown Prince to Abdullah on his accession; he died in 2011, and was succeeded in the role by Salman, also a Sudairi.
During his reign he maintained close relations with United States and Britain and bought billions of dollars worth of defense equipment from both states. He also gave women the right to vote and to compete in the Olympics.
In 2011, Forbes estimated his and his immediate family's documentable wealth at US$21 billion, ranking him as one of the richest royals in the world.
As Crown Prince, his conservatism and reputation as a man of principle put him in a much stronger position than either of his predecessors, Kings Khalid and Fahd, to embark on a process of cautious political reform, aimed at moving Saudi Arabia away from traditional religious-tribal loyalties and faith-based obscurantism into the modern age.
He became the first senior Saudi figure to speak publicly of reform and democracy, and to acknowledge the existence of minorities, notably the Shia, in the kingdom. He initiated the kingdom’s first elections which, though limited to local government and excluding women, struck a chord with most Saudis. He was also credited with the purging of more than 3,000 extremist preachers from mosques and Koranic schools, the creation of a human rights commission, and the hosting of a series of public debates on women’s rights.
He also promised Saudi women the vote and the right to stand in future elections to municipal councils, the highest elected bodies in the country; and in 2013 he appointed 30 women to the consultative 150-member Shura Council.
King Abdullah was a handsome and rich prince. All Saudi women wanted him. he ended up officially marrying 37 wives while maintaining concubines,

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