Abdullah ibn Suleiman al-Hamdan

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Abdullah Suleiman (full name: Abdullah ibn Suleiman al-Hamdan ; * around 1885 in Unaizah ; † in the 20th century) was a Saudi entrepreneur, advisor to King Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud and finance minister.

Life

Abdullah Suleiman belonged to the tribe of Al-Qassim and came from a family of merchants and farmers from the city of Unaizah in Wādī ar Rumah (also called Paris des Najd ). The city has been ruled by the Al-Sulaim family since 1818. It came to power when Yahya bin Sulaim killed the Ottoman governor Abdullah al-Jamei in 1822. Since then, the Al-Sulaym dynasty has ruled the city on the basis of a written contract with the Saudi royal family. Some of the most famous families in Saudi Arabia are from Unaizah, including the family of Ahmed Abdullah Al-Juffali.

Abdullah Suleiman went to Bombay as a young man and got to know the international grain trade there. He then moved to Bahrain and founded his own, albeit not very successful, company. In search of a more stable income base, he became the assistant to his eldest brother Mohammed, who was finance minister ("Wasir al-Maliah") at the court of King Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, the founder of the empire of Saudi Arabia. There he showed a great talent for administrative tasks and other financial affairs of the state treasury. When the brother died in 1932, the king appointed him as his successor.

Political career

Abdullah Suleiman was described by contemporaries as a clear-thinking, intelligent, enthusiastic man. King Abd al-Aziz trusted him fully. Although he held the title of finance minister, he rose to be advisor to the king, with the exception of foreign and defense policy. In the early days of the new state and the Depression of the 1930s, the young country's treasury was in a metal box under his bed. The receipts were kept there until the king decided on their expenses. If the king spent 100 rials, Abdullah Suleiman paid the amount. When money was tight, he made himself scarce.

In 1926 Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud conquered the Hejaz with the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Abdullah Suleiman, who from now on settled in Jedda although the king continued to reside in Riyadh, now showed his great organizational talent. He was able to make courageous decisions immediately. He succeeded in noiselessly combining the much more extensive financial management of the Hejaz with that of the Nedj .

Abdullah Suleiman signed on May 29, 1933 in the new Khuzam Palace in Jedda with Lloyd N. Hamilton, the lawyer and , after three and a half months of tough negotiations in which the Saudis insisted on payment in gold rather than US dollars in view of the global economic crisis Standard Oil Company of California lease experts , the historic concession agreement. With this agreement, the age of oil begins in Saudi Arabia.

On February 14, 1945, Abdullah Suleiman and William Alfred Eddy accompanied King Abd al-Aziz to his meeting with US President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the destroyer USS Quincy (CA-71) in the Suez Canal on the Great Bitter Sea .

With perseverance and long and clever maneuvering, Abdullah Suleiman brought almost the entire state administration under his control. When the income from oil began to flow after the Second World War , he carefully introduced new administrative structures. He delegated part of his comprehensive responsibility, but without ever giving up the reins, thereby laying the foundations for the ministerial administration through which the country is still governed today. He became one of the richest men in Saudi Arabia, owned hotels, shipping lines, cold stores, gas stations and lands. His sons were involved in the administration of his empire early on.

In 1951 he started a not unjustified but ultimately unsuccessful dispute with the Arabian-American Oil Company (ARAMCO) about their personnel policy and the working conditions of Saudi employees. He demanded that the aging and sick king dismiss all American specialists and the management, but the king refused. In the fall of 1953 traveled Abdullah Suleiman the Ruhr region , visited the Krupp steel works and was able to finish in Essen Villa Huegel with Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach together. When King Abd al-Aziz died in Taif on November 9th, 1953 , Abdullah Suleiman lost his mentor and sponsor.

In January 1954, the new King Saud ibn Abd al-Aziz (King from 1953 to 1964) and Aristotle Onassis signed an agreement that allowed the Greek tanker millionaire - in contradiction to the ARAMCO concession - to use their own tankers under the Saudi flag of Saudi oil. The driving forces behind the agreement were the brothers Mohammed and Ali Alireza and Abdullah Suleiman. They wanted to reduce US influence in the Saudi oil business, but here too they had their own advantage in mind. When formulating the text of the treaty, Abdullah Suleiman was advised by Hjalmar Schacht , who was Minister of Economics and Reichsbank President under Adolf Hitler and who now advised developing countries. King Saud ibn Abd al-Aziz initially received the agreement and the participation of the finance minister positively. Abdullah Suleiman and the Alireza brothers collected several million US dollars in bribes disguised as an agency fee. Despite the affair, Mohammed Alireza was appointed Minister of Commerce in 1957, and Ali Alireza was later appointed Ambassador to the USA (1975–1979). However, when ARAMCO insisted on its concession and finally an international arbitration tribunal gave its right, King Abdullah Suleiman dismissed him on August 30, 1954 for massive corruption charges. The former slave Mohammed Suroor Sabban was appointed his successor as finance minister .

Agricultural development in Saudi Arabia

After his release, Abdullah Suleiman became the driving force behind agricultural development in Saudi Arabia. Already responsible for agricultural development as finance minister, he founded the dairy farm in Al-Kharj, 50 km southeast of Riyadh , run by Texans Sam Logan and Bill Inman in 1945 . Today over 80% of the country's dairy products come from Al-Kharj.

Abdullah Sulaiman was also constantly on the lookout for new, productive crops and climatically suitable livestock. In 1955, with the help of German agricultural experts, he opened trial farms in Dammam, in Wadi Fatima and at kilometer 10 on Mekka Street in Dschedda. One of the German employees was Otto Hertling , the former chief planner of the German engineering consultancy GOVENCO (Governmental Engineering Corporation) , who worked in Dschedda / Saudi Arabia before 1953. Hertling and 140 other GOVENCO employees were held captive for seven weeks by King Saud ibn Abd al-Aziz in the summer of 1954 and were finally freed at the end of 1954 through the intervention of the West German Federal Government's special emissary, State Secretary Georg Ripken . The mission then led to the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two states. He was then taken over by Abdullah Suleiman as the team leader of the test farm at “kilometer 6” east of Jedda (on the road to Mecca). The team also includes the German certified farmer Horst Dequin and the Regensburg certified farmer Wilhelm ("Willi") E. Heckenstaller . The former candidate for the office of mayor of Peißenberg worked on the model estate from 1956 to 1959, as did the surveying and construction technician Karl Heinz Lempcke from Itzehoe, who had also come from GOVENCO, and the livestock specialist Paul Mertins from Essen. When the project stalled in 1957, Hertling and Lempcke were withdrawn from Abdullah Suleiman and given the job of building a cement factory.

At the end of his life, always on the lookout for agriculturally suitable innovations, from then on Abdullah Suleiman also repeatedly traveled to Syria and Lebanon in particular . So far nothing has been learned about the exact place and date of death of Abdullah Suleiman.

In the capital Riyadh, Abdullah Bin Sulaiman al-Hamdan Road in the Sulaimaniyah district is named after him.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ahmed Abdullah Al-Juffali . helpcenter.med.sa. Archived from the original on December 2, 2013. Retrieved January 29, 2012.
  2. ^ "My Years in Arabia 1955–1988", by Horst Dequin, Westerhorn 1988
  3. ^ About Saudi Aramco - Company History . aramcoexpats.com. Archived from the original on February 22, 2012. Retrieved January 29, 2012.
  4. ^ "Arabian Days" and "Arabian Jubilee" by St John Philby
  5. ^ "Saudi Arabia" by Karl Twitchell
  6. ^ "Oil in the Middle East" by Stephen Hemsley Longrigg
  7. ^ "The Middle East, Oil, and the Great Powers" by Benjamin Schwadran
  8. ^ Thomas W. Lippman : Arabian Knight, Colonel Bill Eddy USMC and the Rise of American Power in the Middle East . Selwa Press, 2008 and Matthew R. Simmons : Twilight in the desert: the coming Saudi oil shock and the world economy . 2005.
  9. ^ "My years in Arabia 1955–1988", p. 37
  10. ↑ “Arabian Knight”, p. 264 ff.
  11. ↑ “Arabian Knight”, p. 269 ff.
  12. ↑ “My Years in Arabia 1955–1988”, p. 54
  13. ↑ Al-Kharj
  14. ^ Dairy Farms . simbacom.com. Retrieved January 29, 2012.
  15. ↑ cf. also "Journeys and companions: travel reports from half a century", Hartmut von Hentig , Beltz, 2002
  16. ^ Victims of the palace intrigue . Der Spiegel 41/1954, October 6, 1954
  17. ↑ “My Years in Arabia 1955–1988”, pp. 83/84
personal data
SURNAME Hamdan, Abdullah ibn Suleiman al-
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Abdullah Suleiman
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Saudi entrepreneur and finance minister
DATE OF BIRTH around 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Unaizah
DATE OF DEATH 20th century