Abdallah I ibn Saud

Abdallah I ibn Saud

Abdallah I ibn Saud ( Arabic عبد الله بن سعود, DMG ʿAbd Allāh ibn Saʿūd ) (d. December 17, 1818 in Istanbul ), from the Saud dynasty , was Imam of the Wahhabis from 1814 to 1818.

Abdallah succeeded his father Saud I ibn Abd al-Aziz (1803-1814) in 1814 . After leading the Wahhabis in the Ottoman-Saudi war under his father's government , he assumed power in a difficult situation for the Saud dynasty . The Egyptians had already occupied Medina and Mecca in 1812 and 1813 and were preparing for a campaign in the Najd .

However, the Egyptian troops (20,000 men) had major supply problems that could only be resolved after Muhammad Ali Pasha took command in Arabia . In January 1815 Muhammad Ali succeeded in inflicting a heavy defeat on the Wahhabis under Faisal between Turaba and Kulakh. The conquest of ad-Dirʿīya could initially be prevented because Muhammad Ali was distracted by unrest among the Mamluks in Egypt and concluded a peace treaty with Abdallah I.

In 1817, however, Muhammad Ali had the war continued through his stepson Ibrahim Pascha , who already succeeded in May over Abdallah I. This failure of Abdallah led to the defection of several Bedouin tribes , who now allied with the Egyptians. In March 1818 the Egyptian troops under Ibrahim ad-Dirʿīya reached and after very fierce fighting forced the surrender of the city on September 10, 1818. Abdallah I ibn Saud was captured by the Egyptians and extradited to the Ottomans . On December 17, 1818, he was executed in Istanbul . Much of the Saud clan was deported to Cairo by Ibrahim .

Although the Saud empire in central Arabia had been smashed with the conquest of ad-Dirʿīya by the Egyptians, the teaching of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab had become so solidified among the Bedouins that it survived the Sauds' defeat against the Egyptians. And so Turki as-Saud (1820–1834) was supposed to re-establish the Saud empire in the Najd .

literature

• Jörg-Dieter Brandes: … with saber and Koran, Saudi Arabia or the rise of the Saud royal family and the Wahabites. Thorbecke, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-7995-0094-4 .