How Abdul Aziz al-Saud became King of Saudi Arabia

The sultan of Najd, Abdelaziz al-Saud bowed his head before the British High Commissioner in Percy Cox’s Iraq. His voice quavered, and then he started begging with humiliation: “Your grace are my father and you are my mother. I can never forget the debt I owe you. You made me and you held my hand, you elevated me and lifted me. I am prepared, at your beckoning, to give up for you now half of my kingdom…no, by Allah, I will give up all of my kingdom, if your grace commands me!”

This is all that Sultan Abdelaziz al-Saud could say in response to the reprimands from a British officer during their meeting at al-Aqeer conference, which began on November 21, 1922, and in which the borders between the Sultanate of Najd, the Kingdom of Iraq, and the Sheikhdom of Kuwait were drawn. The British reprimand came after Ibn Saud objected to General Cox’s decision to slice off parts of the Samwah desert and attach it to Iraqi territory, ignoring Ibn Saud’s claims to the areas. 

The minutes of that meeting are contained in official documents drafted by the British political officer in Bahrain at the time Colonel Harold Richard Patrick Dickson (H.R.P. Dickson), which he dispatched to the British Foreign Office in London on October 26, 1922. 

Four decades later, Dickson wrote his memoirs about the years in which he served as his government’s envoy in Arabian Gulf countries, published in London in the 1951 book Kuwait and Her Neighbours. The book retells the incident at al-Aqeer in details, as Dickson was present there in his capacity as Percy Cox’s aide and interpreter. Dickson wrote, 

“On the sixth day Sir Percy … lost all patience over what he called the childish attitude of Ibn Saud in his tribal boundary idea [between Iraq and Najd]. It was astonishing to see the Sultan of Najd being reprimanded like a naughty schoolboy by H. M. High Commissioner, and being told sharply that he, Sir Perry Cox, would himself decide on the type and general line of the frontier. This ended the impasse. Ibn Saud almost broke down and pathetically remarked that Sir Percy was his father and brother, who had made him and raised him from nothing to the position he held, and that he would surrender half his kingdom, nay the whole, if Sir Percy ordered…Sir Percy took a red pencil and very carefully drew in on the map of Arabia a boundary line from the Persian Gulf to Jabal Anaizan, close to the Transjordan frontier.” ^[1]

Dickson continues,

“Ibn Saud asked to see Sir Perry Cox alone. Sir Percy took me with him. Ibn Saud was by himself, standing in the centre of his great reception tent. He seemed terribly upset. My friend; he moaned, 'you have deprived me of half my kingdom. Better take it all and let me go into retirement.' Still standing, this great strong man, magnificent in his grief, suddenly burst into sobs.” ^[2]