Ibn Saud

Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud (عبد العزيز بن عبد الرحمن آل سعود; 15 January 1875 – 9 November 1953), known in the West as Ibn Saud (ابن سعود; Ibn Suʿūd), was an Arab political and religious leader who founded Saudi Arabia – the third Saudi state – and reigned as its first king from 23 September 1932 until his death in 1953. He had ruled parts of the kingdom since 1902, having previously been Emir, Sultan, and King of Nejd, and King of Hejaz. Ibn Saud was the son of Abdul Rahman bin Faisal, Emir of Nejd, and Sara bint Ahmed Al Sudairi. The family were exiled from their residence in the city of Riyadh in 1890. Ibn Saud reconquered Riyadh in 1902, starting three decades of conquests that made him the ruler of nearly all of central and north Arabia. He consolidated his control over the Nejd in 1922, then conquered the Hejaz in 1925. He extended his dominions into what later became the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932. Ibn Saud's victory and his support for Islamic revivalists would greatly bolster pan-Islamism across the Islamic world. Concording with Wahhabi beliefs, he ordered the demolition of some of the holiest sites of Islam, the Al-Baqi Cemetery and the Jannat al-Mu'alla. As King, he presided over the discovery of petroleum in Saudi Arabia in 1938 and the beginning of large-scale oil production after World War II. He fathered many children, including 45 sons, and all of the subsequent kings of Saudi Arabia as of . The Al Saud family had been a power in central Arabia for the previous 130 years. Under the influence and inspiration of Wahhabism, the Saudis had previously attempted to control much of the Arabian Peninsula in the form of the Emirate of Diriyah, the First Saudi State, until its destruction by an Ottoman army in the Ottoman–Wahhabi War in the early nineteenth century. Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman, also known as Ibn Saud, was born on 15 January 1875 in Riyadh. He was the fourth child and third son of Abdul Rahman bin Faisal, one of the last rulers of the Emirate of Nejd, the Second Saudi State, a tribal sheikhdom centered on Riyadh.