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How the First Saudi State Posed Real Threat to the Ottomans, Persian Influence

Photo of British and Ottoman documents uncovered by Dr. Jawaher Al Saudi exclusively for Asharq Al-Awsat.
Photo of British and Ottoman documents uncovered by Dr. Jawaher Al Saudi exclusively for Asharq Al-Awsat.
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How the First Saudi State Posed Real Threat to the Ottomans, Persian Influence

Photo of British and Ottoman documents uncovered by Dr. Jawaher Al Saudi exclusively for Asharq Al-Awsat.
Photo of British and Ottoman documents uncovered by Dr. Jawaher Al Saudi exclusively for Asharq Al-Awsat.

Thousands of foreign documents, uncovered by a Saudi researcher specialized in Saudi history, revealed important aspects that characterized the first central state in the Arabian Peninsula, which was founded by Imam Muhammad bin Saud.

With King Salman’s announcement that February 22 will be known as Founding Day, commemorating Saudi heritage and history, Dr. Princess Jawaher bint Abdul Mohsen bin Abdullah bin Jalawi Al Saud unveiled, in an exclusive interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, information and documents of great historic value, which detailed the rich experience of Saudi princes who ruled over the region 300 years ago, and their ambitious plans to establish an empire.

According to the foreign documents revealed by the princess, Imam Muhammad bin Saud, founder of the first Saudi state and the first Saudi king, acknowledged the importance of imposing a system that would rely on the management of a ruler, who would be capable of making decisive decisions that would provide security and stability for the region.

This is in fact the first requirement on which states and governments are built, and which would only be achieved by unifying the Peninsula’s inhabitants, who were forced by the arid conditions to depend on the natural economy with the absence of a central authority.

The Arabian Peninsula was rife with tribal conflicts and competition between small rival emirates, the researcher told Asharq Al-Awsat, adding that as a result of the changes that had occurred in the region, Imam Muhammad bin Saud had accelerated his efforts to put an end to the feuds and unify the lands.

“Thus, he succeeded in establishing the first nucleus of a young Arab Islamic power that emerged from the heart of the Arabian Peninsula,” Princess Jawaher said.

British archive documents confirmed that Imam Muhammad bin Saud ruled for many years, and after his death in 1179 AH (1765 AD), he left to his sons a stable kingdom, which enjoyed a great reputation and was respected throughout the region.

Imam Abdulaziz bin Muhammad took over the reins of power after the death of his father. He strived to maintain Imam Muhammad’s legacy and sought to change the balance of power in the Arabian Peninsula, posing a real danger to the Ottoman Empire.

He contributed to the expansion of the state under the leadership of his eldest son, Prince Saud. British records confirmed the success of Imam Abdulaziz in tightening his grip on the Arabian Peninsula. During his reign, the region enjoyed stability and security.

In this context, Dr. Jawaher Al Saud quoted Ottoman records, which said that the imam was known for his firmness, strength and determination. The records also mentioned the influx of warnings to the Sublime Porte about his increasing activity, which made the Ottoman Empire stress the need to take urgent and strong measures to curb his power.

For this reason, orders were sent to the governor of Baghdad to take the necessary action and coordinate with other governors and tribes of Kurdistan and Iraq in order to eliminate the danger, at a time when campaigns led by Imam Saud extended to the Levant and Iraq to the borders of Basra.

The British consul in Baghdad, in a report sent to the British ambassador in Istanbul on July 29, 1803, recommended Britain’s support for the Ottoman forces, as he noted that no campaign against Diriyah would succeed in the face of an army of 100,000 fighters carrying swords and willing to die for the sake of their cause…

Moreover, the British consul pointed out in his letter that if the Ottoman Empire insisted on launching this campaign against the Saudis, this would not only lead to the failure of the campaign and the Ottomans to lose their influence over the Arabian Peninsula… but would most likely lead to the overthrow of the current sultan and the defeat of the Ottoman rule.

The researcher stressed that the Ottoman records confirmed that after the multiple defeats of the governor of Baghdad, the rulers of the Ottoman Empire no longer aspired to eliminate the Saudi state, but sought to push away its danger without disregarding the upcoming Saudi tide.

Dr. Jawaher Al Saud considered that the emergence of Saudi influence over Makkah Al-Mukarramah has resulted in frequent messages between the Ottoman Sultan and his men of state and the governors of the regions to control the ambitions of Imam Abdulaziz.

She added that the governor of Baghdad, Ali Pasha, was aware of the plot to get rid of Imam Abdulaziz and his son Saud. When it was not possible to reach Prince Saud, Imam Abdulaziz was stabbed to death when he was performing the afternoon prayers in 1218 AH - 1803 AD.

The historian explained that the third imam in the first Saudi state, Imam Saud bin Abdulaziz bin Muhammad bin Saud, succeeded in extending his influence in the Arabian Gulf and Oman, which raised British fears of his increasing activity in those areas.

During his reign, the Saudi state reached the peak of its power, and emerged as an Arab supremacy that represented the greatest challenge to the Ottoman presence.

British reports have confirmed that Imam Saud’s ambition was not limited to annexing the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant and Iraq, but to extending his influence outside the Arabian Peninsula towards India.

According to Ottoman records, the Persian Shah has urged the Ottoman Empire to work to eliminate the Saudi tide that had reached the areas of Persian influence in the region, which prompted the Ottomans to send an official envoy with the aim of reassuring the Shah and emphasizing the endeavor to meet his demands.

The researcher concluded by saying that the Ottoman Empire acknowledged the Saudi-Arab danger, and as a result of its failure to limit its growing influence after losing the Two Holy Mosques and its inability to protect Baghdad and the Levant, the Ottoman Sultan issued orders to his successors in Egypt, the Levant and Iraq to move again in an attempt to eliminate the first Saudi state.

Tusun Pasha crossed the sea towards the Arabian Peninsula in 1226 AH - 1811 AD, and his father, Muhammad Ali Pasha, joined him in 1228 AH - 1813 AD. Imam Saud passed away in 1229 AH - 1814 AD in a critical period in the history of the first Saudi state, where the Ottoman forces were besieging Turbah after the surrender of Makkah and Madinah by the collaborators with the Ottoman forces.

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As the UN Turns 80, Its Crucial Humanitarian Aid Work Faces a Clouded Future

Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
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As the UN Turns 80, Its Crucial Humanitarian Aid Work Faces a Clouded Future

Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

At a refugee camp in northern Kenya, Aujene Cimanimpaye waits as a hot lunch of lentils and sorghum is ladled out for her and her nine children — all born while she has received United Nations assistance since fleeing her violence-wracked home in Congo in 2007.

“We cannot go back home because people are still being killed,” the 41-year-old said at the Kakuma camp, where the UN World Food Program and UN refugee agency help support more than 300,000 refugees, The Associated Press said.

Her family moved from Nakivale Refugee Settlement in neighboring Uganda three years ago to Kenya, now home to more than a million refugees from dozens of conflict-hit east African countries.

A few kilometers (miles) away at the Kalobeyei Refugee Settlement, fellow Congolese refugee Bahati Musaba, a mother of five, said that since 2016, “UN agencies have supported my children’s education — we get food and water and even medicine,” as well as cash support from WFP to buy food and other basics.

This year, those cash transfers — and many other UN aid activities — have stopped, threatening to upend or jeopardize millions of lives.

As the UN marks its 80th anniversary this month, its humanitarian agencies are facing one of the greatest crises in their history: The biggest funder — the United States — under the Trump administration and other Western donors have slashed international aid spending. Some want to use the money to build up national defense.

Some UN agencies are increasingly pointing fingers at one another as they battle over a shrinking pool of funding, said a diplomat from a top donor country who spoke on condition of anonymity to comment freely about the funding crisis faced by some UN agencies.

Such pressures, humanitarian groups say, diminish the pivotal role of the UN and its partners in efforts to save millions of lives — by providing tents, food and water to people fleeing unrest in places like Myanmar, Sudan, Syria and Venezuela, or helping stamp out smallpox decades ago.

“It’s the most abrupt upheaval of humanitarian work in the UN in my 40 years as a humanitarian worker, by far,” said Jan Egeland, a former UN humanitarian aid chief who now heads the Norwegian Refugee Council. “And it will make the gap between exploding needs and contributions to aid work even bigger.”

‘Brutal’ cuts to humanitarian aid programs UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has asked the heads of UN agencies to find ways to cut 20% of their staffs, and his office in New York has floated sweeping ideas about reform that could vastly reshape the way the United Nations doles out aid.

Humanitarian workers often face dangers and go where many others don’t — to slums to collect data on emerging viruses or drought-stricken areas to deliver water.

The UN says 2024 was the deadliest year for humanitarian personnel on record, mainly due to the war in Gaza. In February, it suspended aid operations in the stronghold of Yemen’s Houthi group, who have detained dozens of UN and other aid workers.

Proponents say UN aid operations have helped millions around the world affected by poverty, illness, conflict, hunger and other troubles.

Critics insist many operations have become bloated, replete with bureaucratic perks and a lack of accountability, and are too distant from in-the-field needs. They say postcolonial Western donations have fostered dependency and corruption, which stifles the ability of countries to develop on their own, while often UN-backed aid programs that should be time-specific instead linger for many years with no end in sight.

In the case of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning WFP and the UN’s refugee and migration agencies, the US has represented at least 40% of their total budgets, and Trump administration cuts to roughly $60 billion in US foreign assistance have hit hard. Each UN agency has been cutting thousands of jobs and revising aid spending.

“It's too brutal what has happened,” said Egeland, alluding to cuts that have jolted the global aid community. “However, it has forced us to make priorities ... what I hope is that we will be able to shift more of our resources to the front lines of humanity and have less people sitting in offices talking about the problem.”

With the UN Security Council's divisions over wars in Ukraine and the Middle East hindering its ability to prevent or end conflict in recent years, humanitarian efforts to vaccinate children against polio or shelter and feed refugees have been a bright spot of UN activity. That's dimming now.

Not just funding cuts cloud the future of UN humanitarian work

Aside from the cuts and dangers faced by humanitarian workers, political conflict has at times overshadowed or impeded their work.

UNRWA, the aid agency for Palestinian refugees, has delivered an array of services to millions — food, education, jobs and much more — in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan as well as in the West Bank and Gaza since its founding in 1948.

Israel claims the agency's schools fan antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiment, which the agency denies. Israel says Hamas siphons off UN aid in Gaza to profit from it, while UN officials insist most aid gets delivered directly to the needy.

“UNRWA is like one of the foundations of your home. If you remove it, everything falls apart,” said Issa Haj Hassan, 38, after a checkup at a small clinic at the Mar Elias Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut.

UNRWA covers his diabetes and blood pressure medication, as well as his wife’s heart medicine. The United States, Israel's top ally, has stopped contributing to UNRWA; it once provided a third of its funding. Earlier this year, Israel banned the aid group, which has strived to continue its work nonetheless.

Ibtisam Salem, a single mother of five in her 50s who shares a small one-room apartment in Beirut with relatives who sleep on the floor, said: “If it wasn’t for UNRWA we would die of starvation. ... They helped build my home, and they give me health care. My children went to their schools.”

Especially when it comes to food and hunger, needs worldwide are growing even as funding to address them shrinks.

“This year, we have estimated around 343 million acutely food insecure people,” said Carl Skau, WFP deputy executive director. “It’s a threefold increase if we compare four years ago. And this year, our funding is dropping 40%. So obviously that’s an equation that doesn’t come together easily.”

Billing itself as the world's largest humanitarian organization, WFP has announced plans to cut about a quarter of its 22,000 staff.

The aid landscape is shifting

One question is how the United Nations remains relevant as an aid provider when global cooperation is on the outs, and national self-interest and self-defense are on the upswing.

The United Nations is not alone: Many of its aid partners are feeling the pinch. Groups like GAVI, which tries to ensure fair distribution of vaccines around the world, and the Global Fund, which spends billions each year to help battle HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, have been hit by Trump administration cuts to the US Agency for International Development.

Some private-sector, government-backed groups also are cropping up, including the divisive Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been providing some food to Palestinians. But violence has erupted as crowds try to reach the distribution sites.

The future of UN aid, experts say, will rest where it belongs — with the world body's 193 member countries.

“We need to take that debate back into our countries, into our capitals, because it is there that you either empower the UN to act and succeed — or you paralyze it,” said Achim Steiner, administrator of the UN Development Program.