A recent directive by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz, based on a proposal by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to name the Saudi Electronic University after Prince Musaid bin Abdulrahman comes as Saudi Arabia prepares to celebrate its National Day on Sept. 23.
In a historical coincidence, the 1965 Cabinet decision establishing Sept. 23 as National Day was issued when Prince Musaid was a Cabinet member. Now, his name is being given to the university as the Kingdom marks its anniversary.
The royal directive revives the memory of a major statesman and pioneer of Saudi political and administrative thought who died nearly 40 years ago, in December 1986, and showed little interest in publicizing his life, let alone writing memoirs.
Press archives contain little beyond official reports. Abdulrahman Al-Shubaili, who interviewed him for television and later published the interviews alongside testimonies from his contemporaries, produced what I believe is the only book devoted to Musaid’s life and career.
It is therefore unsurprising that many Saudis today know little about his political and administrative record. Some may first have heard of him when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman praised his foresight in a 2021 television interview, recalling Musaid’s decades-old proposal that the state, rather than the private sector, develop residential communities — an idea opposed by some ministers and officials at the time.
It is fitting that Musaid’s name should be given to a university whose establishment 15 years ago represented a forward-looking vision for education, just as Mohammed bin Salman revived his uncle’s forward-looking vision by establishing Roshn, a Public Investment Fund company.
It is as though the architect of Vision 2030 sought through this tribute to say that those who possess foresight and work tirelessly for their country will ultimately be recognized, even if the time for implementing their vision has not yet come.
Personally, I regard Musaid not merely as a minister and statesman but as one of the state’s thinkers, who contributed during a period of transformation that required restructuring government operations and decision-making.
Mohammed Aba Al-Khail, one of his most prominent aides and his successor at the Finance Ministry, recalled that Musaid viewed public office through principles rooted in Islamic law: a public servant was entrusted with applying general rules intended to achieve justice. He insisted on stating and defending his views clearly, then adhering precisely to whatever decision was ultimately reached, demanding the same discipline from those working with him.
Those who knew him described him as wise, farsighted, intelligent, honest and committed to justice, while shunning outward displays. They also cited his broad culture, extensive experience, realism, and analytical ability.
His education began at Ibn Musaybih’s traditional school before he studied under Riyadh scholars. Mohammed bin Jubair recalled that Musaid studied with several sheikhs, including Mohammed bin Ibrahim, attending their circles as a student or listener.
His intellectual formation extended further. He read widely, discussed ideas with scholars, politicians, intellectuals and historians who visited his library, and hosted intellectual gatherings at his home. His private library, first at his home in Riyadh’s Al-Hillah district and later in Al-Shumaisi, became in 1944 the first private library in Riyadh opened to the public. He stocked it with rare and varied books, periodicals and new publications, while continuing his own education through BBC recordings and educational programs.
This combination of religious study, early exposure to modern publications, intellectual debate and self-education produced a complex intellectual formation combining grounding in Islamic law, broad knowledge and openness to contemporary culture.
Despite his religious background - Aba Al-Khail described him as a jurist capable of independent legal reasoning - I observed in Musaid a combination of forceful argument and strong personality, authority and humility, simplicity and rigor.
I also saw two qualities in his thinking that were uncommon among many statesmen of his era.
The first was a legal sensibility, something I observed while attending some of his gatherings in Taif and listening to his discussions and views. It was also reflected in the organizational imprint he left on the institutions he headed, particularly the Board of Grievances, the General Auditing Bureau and later the Finance Ministry.
The second was a reformist inclination embodied in his ideas on reform, renewing thought and developing society. From an early age, he was concerned with the public good and the nation’s future. Nor was he merely a theorist: he sought to put his ideas into practice throughout his private life and in every public responsibility entrusted to him.
In 1940, while in his twenties, he wrote two essays setting out some of those ideas as part of a planned series titled, Advice to My Brothers in Religion and Kinship. They called for broad reform and social advancement, keeping pace with the times, developing education, teaching the arts and sciences, encouraging publishing, opening public clubs, establishing schools for girls and creating clubs for women.
Such ideas were not welcomed at the time, and he discontinued the series. What stands out is not only what he advocated but when: some of the educational and social changes he proposed in the early 1940s would take decades to materialize.
Al-Shubaili wrote that Musaid approached these subjects with the methodology of historians and sociologists, drawing lessons from the study of causes and influences, and that his enlightened ideas went beyond the era and environment in which they appeared.
Musaid’s political and administrative career began with his attendance at the councils of King Abdulaziz and later King Saud alongside senior advisers, without holding an official position.
He became head of the Board of Grievances in October 1954, assumed responsibility for state auditing in June 1957, and was appointed royal adviser, minister of state and Cabinet member in August that year. He became interior minister in July 1960 and finance and national economy minister in March 1962, serving until he requested to be relieved of his post in August 1975.
Three episodes particularly illustrate his intellectual abilities and political standing.
King Abdulaziz considered appointing him education minister, but Musaid recalled that resistance to educational reform and change prevented the plan from proceeding.
From October to December 1959, he served as acting prime minister while Prince Faisal, later King Faisal, was in Switzerland for medical treatment. I believe Musaid was the only prince to hold the title of acting prime minister.
He also chaired the committee established in 1962 to draft a Basic Law of Governance following the government’s 10-point program. It appears to me that the committee completed a draft, but circumstances were not conducive to its adoption.
This, then, was Prince Musaid, son of Imam Abdulrahman: a bridge between the imam’s generation and the generation of ministries; a minister in an institutional state; a thinker who helped establish principles of government administration that endure today; an early advocate of reform and education; an intellectual who opened his library to the public before public libraries existed; and a scholar deeply versed in Islamic law.
He established the Board of Grievances and auditing institutions before administrative justice and financial oversight became firmly established traditions, and managed the Kingdom’s finances for more than a decade during crucial years in the construction of its modern economy.
Without ever earning a university degree, he was himself a university from which leading statesmen graduated.
