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KEYS TO THE KINGDOM: CURRENT SCHOLARSHIP ON SAUDI ARABIA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

Fred H. Lawson
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Extract

Among the Arab states of the Middle East and North Africa, Saudi Arabia is at once paradigmatic and exceptional. The kingdom epitomizes what every schoolchild knows about this part of the world—limitless deserts, camel-herding nomads, oil wells, jet-setting princes, reactionary religious authorities, severely restricted gender relations—all in one neat package. At the same time, it takes these features to extremes approximated only by neighboring Abu Dhabi and Qatar, neither one of which has elicited anything like the same degree of journalistic or scholarly scrutiny. It is no wonder that the concept of the rentier state has been applied more persistently and innovatively to Saudi Arabia than anywhere else, including Iran, whose political economy the notion was originally coined to describe.

Type
Review Article
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , November 2011 , pp. 737 - 747
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

NOTES

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4 Halliday, Fred, Arabia without Sultans (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1974)Google Scholar; Lackner, Helen, A House Built on Sand (London: Ithaca Press, 1978)Google Scholar. A minimally revised version of Arabia without Sultans was published in 2002 by Saqi Books of London.

5 Al-Rasheed, Madawi, Politics in an Arabian Oasis: The Rashidi Tribal Dynasty (London: I. B. Tauris, 1991)Google Scholar.

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7 Abdulaziz H. Al-Fahad, “The ‘Imama vs. the ‘Iqal: Hadari-Bedouin Conflict and the Formation of the Saudi State,” Madawi Al-Rasheed, “The Capture of Riyadh Revisited: Shaping Historical Imagination in Saudi Arabia,” and Vitalis, Robert, “Aramco World: Business and Culture on the Arabian Oil Frontier,” in Counter-Narratives: History, Contemporary Society, and Politics in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, ed. Al-Rasheed, Madawi and Vitalis, Robert (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)Google Scholar.

8 Guido Steinberg, “The Wahhabi Ulama and the Saudi State: 1745 to the Present,” Stéphane Lacroix, “Islamo-Liberal Politics in Saudi Arabia,” Madawi Al-Rasheed, “Circles of Power: Royals and Society in Saudi Arabia,” Roel Meijer, “The ‘Cycle of Contention’ and the Limits of Terrorism in Saudi Arabia,” Monica Malik and Tim Niblock, “Saudi Arabia's Economy: The Challenge of Reform,” Steffen Hertog, “Segmented Clientelism: The Political Economy of Saudi Economic Reform Efforts,” and Luciani, Giacomo, “From Private Sector to National Bourgeoisie: Saudi Arabian Business,” in Saudi Arabia in the Balance, ed. Aarts, Paul and Nonneman, Gerd (London: Hurst, 2005)Google Scholar.

9 Vitalis duly acknowledges the pioneering monograph: Yizraeli, Sarah, The Remaking of Saudi Arabia: The Struggle between King Saʿud and Crown Prince Faysal, 1953–1962 (Tel Aviv: Moshe Dayan Center for Middle East and African Studies, 1997)Google Scholar.

10 Niblock relies here on Champion, Daryl, The Paradoxical Kingdom: Saudi Arabia and the Momentum of Reform (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

11 Important reconsiderations of Muhammad bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab's teachings can be found in Natana J. DeLong-Bas, “Wahhabism and the Question of Religious Tolerance,” Khalid S. al-Dakhil, “Wahhabism as an Ideology of State Formation,” and Commins, David, “Contestation and Authority in Wahhabi Polemics,” in Religion and Politics in Saudi Arabia, ed. Ayoob, Mohammed and Kosebalaban, Hasan (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2009)Google Scholar. These essays draw, respectively, on DeLong-Bas, , Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Khalid al-Dakhil, “Social Origins of the Wahhabi Movement” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1998); and Commins, David, The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006)Google Scholar. See also al-Fahad, Abdulaziz H., “From Exclusivism to Accommodation: Doctrinal and Legal Evolution of Wahhabism,” New York University Law Review 79 (May 2004)Google Scholar; Redissi, Hamadi, “The Refutation of Wahhabism in Arabic Sources, 1745–1932,” in Kingdom without Borders: Saudi Arabia's Political, Religious and Media Frontiers, ed. Al-Rasheed, Madawi (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

12 See also F. Gregory Gause III, “Official Wahhabism and the Sanctioning of Saudi–U.S. Relations,” in Ayoob and Kosebalaban, Religion and Politics in Saudi Arabia.

13 These names are familiar thanks to Fandy, Mamoun, Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999)Google Scholar. See also Toby Craig Jones, “Religious Revivalism and Its Challenge to the Saudi Regime,” in Ayoob and Kosebalaban, Religion and Politics in Saudi Arabia; and Al-Rasheed, Madawi, Contesting the Saudi State: Islamic Voices from a New Generation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 See also Lacroix, Stéphane, “Between Islamists and Liberals: Saudi Arabia's New ‘Islamo-Liberal’ Reformists,” Middle East Journal 58 (Summer 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 See also Hegghammer, Thomas and Lacroix, Stéphane, “Rejectionist Islamism in Saudi Arabia: The Story of Juhayman al-ʿUtaybi Revisited,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 39 (2007): 103–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Shiʿi groups lie outside the purview of Lacroix's book, as they do for Alshamsi. See Ibrahim, Fouad, The Shiʿis of Saudi Arabia (London: Saqi Books, 2006)Google Scholar; Louër, Laurence, Transnational Shia Politics: Religious and Political Networks in the Gulf (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; and Matthiesen, Toby, “Hizbullah al-Hijaz: A History of The Most Radical Saudi Shiʿa Opposition Group,” Middle East Journal 64 (Spring 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Hegghammer offers a more comprehensive look at Islamist attacks against the Saʿud, Al in “Jihad, Yes, But Not Revolution: Explaining the Extraversion [sic] of Islamist Violence in Saudi Arabia,” British Journal of Middle East Studies 36 (December 2009)Google Scholar.

18 See also Roel Meijer, “Yusuf al-Uyairi and the Transnationalisation of Saudi Jihadism,” in Al-Rasheed, Kingdom without Borders.

19 On the concurrent involvement of Saudi jihadists in Iraq, see Madawi Al-Rasheed, “The Minaret and the Palace: Obedience at Home and Rebellion Abroad,” in Al-Rasheed, Kingdom without Borders.

20 Jones relies on Guido Steinberg, “Ecology, Knowledge and Trade in Central Arabia (Najd) during the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” in Al-Rasheed and Vitalis, Counter-Narratives.

21 Jones notes al-Fahad, “The ‘Imama vs. the ‘Iqal.”

22 See also Jones, Toby Craig, “Rebellion on the Saudi Periphery: Modernity, Marginalization and the Shiʿa Uprising of 1979,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 38 (2006): 213–33Google Scholar.