The First and Second Saudi States as Reflected in Russian Journals of the Time

Dr. Mikhail Rodionov

The purpose of this chapter is to highlight the process of the creation of the Saudi Kingdom as it was reflected in the Russian press of the time. The chosen historical framework comprises 158 years of dramatic struggle for an Arabian state, starting with the alliance between Sheikh Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab and Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud in 1744/5,1 and continuing up to the recapture of Riyadh in 1902, marking the start of a new wave of Saudi territorial expansion in the Arabian peninsula.

Various newspapers and magazines, official and private, national and local, have been perused for this purpose in the libraries of St Petersburg. Among them are:

§ the section of the Russian National Library (formerly the Publitchnaya Biblioteka, or Public Library) named after Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, with its unique collections of periodicals;

§ the Russian Geographical Society Library and Archives, with its travellers’ accounts, memoranda, journals, and diaries;

§ the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkammer) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, its stocks, library, and archives;

§ and in particular the Russian Academy of Sciences Library (RASL), Asian and African Section, headed by Dr Galina Pompyan, which has been extremely helpful during my research. At present the Asian and African section of RASL is carrying out a project of registration of all the data concerning the Arabs and Arabia in eighteenth-century Russian periodicals.

Being a mirror of public opinion, these newspapers and magazines not only reflected but also distorted public mentality, shaped popular images and reformulated general beliefs.

The image of the Saudi state-makers as seen through Russian periodicals went through a transformation that can be divided into three stages:

I

In the eighteenth century information on current events in Arabia was scarce and mostly second-hand, i.e. taken from foreign, and usually European, sources. The interest in the Near East, however, was continuous. Thus, Primechaniya (‘The Commentary’), a special supplement, edited by the Academy of Sciences, of the newspaper Sanktpeterburgskiye Vedomosti (‘The St Petersburg Gazette’), in its issue of 6 September 1729 gave a detailed description of a Makkah-bound caravan, with a brief account of the geographical and political characteristics of the Arabian Peninsula.2

The Russo-Turkish war of 1735–9, as well as the subsequent campaigns of 1768–74 and 1787–91 and others, aroused public interest in Middle Eastern affairs. At the beginning of this period a book by Count L. de Marsili, L’Etat militaire de l’Empire Ottomans progr’s et sa d’cadence (The Hague, 1732) was translated into Russian by a famous Russian poet and professor of eloquence, Vasiliy Trediakovsky.3

The precise and meticulous description of Arabia by the Danish traveller C. Niebuhr in his book Beschreibung von Arabien: Aus eigenem Beobachtungen und im Lande selbst gesammelter Nachrichten (Copenhagen, 1772) was well known in Russia,4 and lengthy extracts from it were translated and commented upon in the Russian press.5 Situated as he was in al-Hasa, C. Niebuhr was well informed about Saudi activities in the area.6

The work of C.-F. Volney, Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte pendant les Annes 1783, 1784 et 1785 was published in a Russian translation as early as 1791–3.7 This book likewise, in its turn, gave an idea of the Saudi movement to a Russian-reading audience. At the same time, Volney’s conclusions on tyranny as a source of indolence had become very popular among Russian readers, who compared Ottoman manners and customs with those of Russia. In the drawing-rooms of the upper and middle classes discussions were evoked on the national character of the Turks, which was considered dull and servile, in contrast to that of the Arabs, which was seen as vivacious and freedom-loving. Public opinion ascribed a noble and ardent nature to the sons of the Arabian desert, the Bedouin.

The expression of such views was fostered by Russian diplomats’ accounts, private letters, and official reports. In November 1781Yakov Bulgakov, Russian chargé d’affaires in Constantinople, reported on ‘Confusions in Arabia’: ‘The Medina elders have driven out of the town all the authorities appointed by the Ottoman Porte, and having elected leaders of their own have broken out in revolt.’8 One of the earliest Russian sources on the Saudi/Wahhabi movement was Mikhail Kutuzov, Ambassador Extraordinary to the Ottoman Empire, who twice reported to Catherine II about anti-Ottoman riots in Arabia (20 December 1793; March 1794).9

II

In the early nineteenth century, when the first Saudi state reached its height, Russian publications about Arabia became more frequent. The little town of Dir’iya, an oasis in the Nejd, had become the centre of a religious and political movement to unify Arabia, and had gained control of new territories, a career culminating triumphant entries into the sacred cities of Islam, Makkah (1803) and Madinah (1805). The entire world had discovered that the house of al-Saud had become the ruling house of Arabia.

On the eve of the capture of Makkah, the Russian magazine Vestnik Evropy (‘The Herald of Europe’) had published a short article ‘On the Wahhabis’. It was predicted there that ‘Arabia was destined to be the cradle of revolutions in Asia. A new local prophet [Ibn] ‘Abd al-Wahhab has already gathered a numerous army and approaches Mecca.’10 Alexey Vasiliev, the author of the best Russian research on the first Saudi state in Arabia,11 considered this to be the earliest direct information on this subject in Russian periodicals.12 (It goes without saying, of course, that in speaking about a ‘new local prophet’ the journalist of the time used this expression not in the literal but in a metaphorical sense, presenting to his audience an important new historical figure.)

Two years later, when Makkah was captured by Saudi troops, a vast essay on current events in Arabia appeared in Zhurnal Razlichnykh Predmetov Slovestnosti (‘The Journal on Various Subjects of Literature’).13 A legend was narrated there about an omen that predicted Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s birth and his outstanding destiny:

There is an ancient tradition among them that this Sulaiman, a poor Arab of a little tribe of the Nejd [?– MR], had a dream that a flame had gone out of his body and, spreading far away across the fields destroyed in its path tents in the desert and houses in towns. Frightened by the dream, Sulaiman demanded an explanation from the sheikhs of his tribe; the latter called it a good omen, and declared to him that his son would become a founder of a new faith, to which the desert Arabs would be converted and, in turn, would subdue to it the town-dwellers. This dream has actually come true, though not in the person of ‘Abd al-Wahhab, the son of Sulaiman, but in his grandson, Sheikh Muhammad.14

Although this fantastic story is not supported by any Saudi source, it was popular enough in Russia to be reprinted in a local periodical as late as in 1819.15

The next fourteen years of the nineteenth century were marked by the incessant efforts of the Saudi warriors to expand their territory far to the north into Syria and Iraq and to Yemen and Hadramaut to the south. But after 1811 Saudi influence was gradually curtailed, until their troops were finally defeated by the armies of Egypt. In 1818 Dir’iya fell into ruin, and the rule of the al-Saud family continued only in the interior of Arabia. A year later the Russian magazine Vestnik Evropy, already once mentioned above, published another article on religious and political events in Arabia.16 This was signed with the two letters N.J., and had much in common with a text that had already appeared in Zhurnal Razlichnykh Predmetov Slovestnosti in 1805. A. Vasiliev has suggested that this source had some connection with the Histoire des Wahabis,17 published by L. Corancez, the French consul in Aleppo, five years after the first Russian publication. This article by N.J. deserves to be examined at greater length.

Its initial sentences are strikingly erroneous: ‘The Wahhabi sect originated in Yemen [?–MR], the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula, the native country of Mahomet. These awesome Arabs18 have existed not much longer than half a century’ (p. 217). The rest of the account is not free of mistakes and blunders, either. Thus, speaking of Sheikh Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, his principle of tawhid (the unity of God), and his condemnation of bid’a (doctrinal innovation), it asserts that ‘this Muhammad has begun with attempts to introduce the correct translation [?] of the Koran’ (p. 219). We need not pick quarrels with this anonymous nineteenth-century journalist, who was not an expert in Arabian affairs, and need not point out that the Wahhabi movement was born, not in Yemen, but in Nejd, and so forth. None the less, an understanding of the mechanisms that bring about cultural mistakes is sometimes helpful if one wishes to comprehend the origins of popular attitudes and misconceptions. And thus the origin of the absurd reference to ‘the correct translation of the Koran’ can be explained by a simple confusion of two distinct meanings of the French verb interpréter, which means both ‘to translate’ and ‘to comment upon, interpret’ (cf. for the last meaning the Arabic tafsir).

Most of the text, however, provided Russian readers with more positive information. It remarks that the tribes of the Nejd ‘are principally renowned for their horses, which are considered the most beautiful all the Orient over’ (p. 219). The history of the al-Saud and their domain is dealt with in some detail. The division of the temporal and the spiritual functions between Amir Muhammad b. Saud and Sheikh Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Wahhab respectively is reported, and it is added moreover that the terms of this alliance have been observed ever since (p. 220).

The account goes on:

Dir’iya [Dreyeh in the text– MR] has become the capital of a new state. This town lies to the south-west of Basra at twelve days’ distance, divided from the latter by the desert. In Dir’iya Ibn Saud [i.e. Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud–MR] started to put into practice the plan for his conquests. He provided his army with dromedaries instead of horses. Each dromedary carries two warriors on its back.19 In order to have twenty days’ field rations, portions were cut down; men and animals were trained beforehand to survive on meagre sustenance. Thus a large army was able to cross deserts without effort and to make sudden surprise attacks on the enemy.

Ibn Saud [i.e. Imam Muhammad–MR.] had been overtaken by death at the peak of his triumph, at a time when he had conquered many Arabian tribes; but ‘Abd al-‘Aziz was his successor, and brought his undertakings to completion. The Wahhabis were soon making sudden appearances everywhere. The messengers of ‘Abd al-‘Aziz used to visit the elders of every tribe, carrying the Koran,20 a sword, and a letter from their master, couched in the following terms:

‘‘Abd al-‘Aziz salutes the Arabs of such-and-such a tribe. Your duty is to believe the Book that I sent you. Do not be pagans in the likeness of the Turks, who give associates to God. Believe, and you will be spared: otherwise, I declare war to the death upon you.’

And the tribes had submitted one by one. The Bedouin accepted the law of the reformer, and the whole of the vast desert between the Red Sea and the Persian [i.e. the Arabian–MR] Gulf, from Arabia Felix up to Aleppo and Damascus, within a short time was occupied by the single people of the Wahhabis alone (pp. 220–1).

The account relates that one-tenth of their new subjects’ property was taken for the treasury of the Saudi state, and one man in every ten was recruited to their army (p. 222):21 this rather less than ideally accurate statement clearly implicitly reflects an implementation of the normal Islamic practice of the zakat obligations. The political and military history of the state is surveyed – the Porte’s concern vis-à-vis the successive victories of Amir ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, the military measures and precautions against the Saudis taken by the Pasha of Baghdad, the Saudi incursion to Karbala (the booty was delivered to Dir’iya on 200 camels, and the raiders had sustained no losses), and the bitter Persian reaction to it (pp. 222–4). The figures and dates given in the article remind one not only of certain passages in the work of the French Consul in Aleppo, L. Corancez, but also, and sometimes rather, of the writings of J. Rousseau, the French Consul in Baghdad.22 In our account, however, the pillaging of Karbala is dated to 20 April 1802 (p. 224), the correctness of which date can be proved by the evidence of the Russian diplomatic archives, which give the same data as the Ibn Bishr chronicle (Dhu-l-Qa’dah 1216/III, 1802),23 whereas Rousseau, together with some other European sources, incorrectly dates this event to 1801.24

Much attention is paid to Saud, the elder son of Amir ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, his role in the annexation of Ta’if and Makkah, his conflict with the Sharif of Makkah Ghalib (misprinted in the article as Ralib) and relations with ‘Abd-Allah, the Pasha of Damascus. Saud is reported to have entered the sacred city at the very beginning of Ramadan (1217 H/25 December 1802) (p. 227), instead of 4 Muharram 1218 H/26 April 1803. The article tells of the unsuccessful sieges of Jeddah and Madinah by the Saudi troops, the murder of Amir ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, and the inheritance of power by his famous son, Saud (pp. 303–5). The story of the Saudi raids on the eastern coast of Arabia relates that their little boats had been intercepting practically all the important Indian vessels on their way to Basra and Bushehr, Bandar Abbas, and other Iranian harbours. The initiative of the British Consul in Baghdad, who tried to come to an understanding with the Saudis about security of navigation in the Gulf, turned out to be fruitless (p. 305).

Madinah opened its gates to Saudi troops in 1804. Every year, at the season of pilgrimage, the Pashas of Baghdad and Damascus had been trying to gain control over the two sacred cities and their communications, but in vain:

At the end of 1807 Egypt, Syria, and the Province of Baghdad had reached a crisis. Arabia belonged to Saud, with its vast desert by which it was divided from the rest of Asia in the north, and with the whole of the region of Nejd stretching away to the south. One of the main reasons for the spread of the Wahhabi movement was that Saud had first taken over the leadership of the caravans of pilgrims, and had then forbidden Muslims to visit Mecca and had allowed free access to the sepulchre of Muhammad [sic! –MR] only to the Wahhabis. One last hope was left to the Turks – to cajole Saud with gifts’ (p. 310).

This accusation, widely disseminated in the contemporary European press, has always been contradicted by Arabian tradition, which maintains that under the first Saudi state the pilgrimage to Makkah and Madinah was never forbidden to Muslims.

Nevertheless, the first Saudi state had by now passed its acme. Saudi advances on Damascus and Baghdad were repulsed in 1807–8. Their navy of light boats in the Gulf was shattered by the British in November 1809. And finally in 1815 an Egyptian army equipped with modern weapons invaded Arabia in pursuance of orders from the Sultan. The final passage of the account speaks of ‘the recent success of the Turks’, and ‘the decisive victory gained by Ibrahim Pasha, who in the past year of 1818 has taken prisoner Abdallah, one of the enemy’s commanders’, and of a still more recent victory over the Saudi troops, detailed news of which will be available soon. All this, the last sentence goes, ‘is likely to presage an imminent end ...’ (p. 315).

Needless to say, neither the style nor the data of the account examined here are either accurate or adequate. The article in Vestnik Evropy fails to mention that the Egyptian campaign in Arabia from 1811 to 1818 had been long and hard. Under Tusun Pasha, the youngest son of Muhammad ‘Ali, the Egyptians were defeated by the Amir Saud at Wadi Safra (December 1811), halfway between the port of Yanbu and Madinah. It also passes over in silence the fact that the Ottoman viceroy himself had met with failure when he was besieging Turaba and Qunfudh (late 1814 to early 1814). Amir ‘Abd-Allah b. Saud came to power after his father’s death in 1814. In 1815 he forced Tusun Pasha to conclude a treaty providing for the withdrawal of the Egyptian army from Qasim and their future non-interference in the internal affairs of the Nejd. This situation was changed only in 1816, under the eldest son of Muhammad ‘Ali, Ibrahim Pasha, who brought artillery and modern firepower to bear on it. Step by step he succeeded in the west of Arabia, and finally moved on to Dir’iya. The Saudi capital had to be besieged for six months before it fell (in September 1818). The Egyptians lost about ten thousand men during this final stage of the campaign.

In spite of the forecast just cited, this tragic episode, including the beheading of ‘Abd-Allah b. Saud in Constantinople, did not mark the end of the Saudi struggle for an Arabian kingdom. Incidentally, the Russian Ambassador gave a much more sober estimate of the prospects when he reported from the Ottoman capital in 1818 that ‘the defeat of the Wahhabis cannot be considered decisive’.25 Within a few years of the destruction of Dir’iya popular opposition to the Egyptians compelled them to leave Arabia. The Saudi domain was restored, with its capital now established in Riyadh.

Our picture of nineteenth-century Russian periodicals and the impact on their contemporary readers of the struggle for an Arabian state would be incomplete without a reference to the so-called ‘Russian Arabism’. In the 1820s and 1830s nearly all the popular magazines of Russia were filled with various works, in prose and poetry, written in the Oriental style.

Especially notable in this connection was a genre of poetry inspired by the Qur’an introduced to Russian literature by Russia’s greatest national poet, Alexander Pushkin, who in this regard may be compared with al-Mutanabbi. Using a Russian text of the Book translated from the imperfect French version by A. Du Ryer,26 Pushkin created in 1824 and published in 1826 nine pieces of verse in which he had reproduced with the utmost respect the meanings, images and tones of the Holy Original – pieces drawn from suras 93 Al-Dhuha, 33 Al-Ahzab, 80 ‘Abasa, 2 Al-Baqarah, 21 Al-Anbiya’, 24 Al-Nur, 31 Luqman, 5 Al-Ma’idah, 48 Al-Fath, and 73 Al-Muzammil.27

A year later, in the St Petersburg literary miscellany Severniye tsvety na 1827 god (‘Northern Flowers for 1827’), A. Rotchev published the first of his seven poems on the Qur’an, entitled Imitating Arabic.28 The next two pieces by the same poet appeared in the magazine Moskovskiy Telegraf (‘The Moscow Telegraph’),29 and the remaining four completed his work on the topic of Islam.30 And the readers of Russian periodicals also met the topics and moods of the Qur’an in the pages of the Athenaeum, where the poet L. Yakubovitch reiterated the motifs of sura 91 Al-Shams,31 and in Tsarskoye Selo, where P. Manassein depicted in rhyme the Hell and the Paradise of Islam.32

The picturesque realities of Arabia were presented in a poem by A. Shishkov in a book entitled The Oriental Lute as early as in 1824;33 and a Qasida ‘Al-Faris’ by the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz, dedicated to the Count V. Rzewusky, a traveller in Arabia, was translated into Russian in one year (1829) by four authors, V. Shchastniy, P. Manassein, P. Siyanov, and another anonymous poet.34 In 1827 A. Muraviev included in his verse drama on the Crusades ‘A dervish song’, full of ardent faith, with the refrain Allah karim.35 And A. Veltman, a versatile scholar and littérateur, published in 1829 a poem entitled ‘Muhammad’.36

Likewise D. Oznobishin, an active participant in the literary miscellany Severnaya lira na 1827 god (‘The Nordic Lyre for 1827’), had for two years been studying Arabic with a learned mullah and at Moscow University, where he attended the lectures of A. Boldyrev,the professor of Oriental languages, whose Novaya Arabskaya Chrestomatiya (‘New Arabian Reader’) of 1832 provided a permanent source of material for imitators and interpreters.37 Oznobishin translated Arabic prose and poetry (Abu Nuwas and others), trying, on at least one occasion, to reproduce the metre of the original (the the first line of the Russian version was preceded by the Arabic wa-n-nashru miskun).38 He also made an effort to introduce into Russian poetry the Arabic folk-song form mawwal,39 and he wrote numerous essays on Oriental (and in particular Arabic) poetry and music.40 Another collaborator in Severnaya lira,41 N. Konopliev, taught Arabic at Moscow University and published his translations of Arabic prose in various periodicals, along with his essays on the spirit and richness of the Arabic language and its poetry.42

A significant role in fostering the enthusiasm for Arabia was played by the magazine Aziatskiy Vestnik (‘The Asian Herald’), 1825–7, edited by G. Spassky, who involved in its activities V. Zhukovsky, D. Oznobishin, and I. Botviakov; this last is known as the first translator of a mu’allaqa of Labid.43 Even more important for the common reader was Biblioteka dlia tchteniya (‘The Readers’ Library’), which had been run since 1834 by O. Senkovsky, a prominent scholar with fluent Arabic, an indefatigable traveller, a professor of St Petersburg University, and a prolific man of letters. The magazine highlighted various topics connected with the Near East – fiction, poetry, travel notes and diaries, ethnographic accounts, critical articles, religion, politics, and science.44

When in 1810 V. Zhukovsky composed a poem titled ‘An Arab Weeping by the Grave of his Horse’, this was greeted as an act of artistic innovation and renewal; when in 1840 a run of the mill writer, M. Bibikov, published his poem ‘The Bedouin’,45 it was ignored as an insignificant cliché. Originating from the stimulus of J. W. Goethe’s ‘Western–Eastern Divan’,46 the oriental trend in Russian literature and the Russian periodical press was gradually fading out by the late 1840s. It had succeeded, however, in delineating a noble image of the Arab, a Bedouin knight, noble, romantic and free. Political news from the Arabian Peninsula too was often romanticized.47

III

The third and last period under our examination gave to Russian readers of the time (1845–1902) much more first-hand information on events in Arabia, and there had been a growth in the number of publications on Arabian topics. The struggle of the Saudi house for a unified Arabian state, however, was not the main focus of attention for most authors, since they believed that the Saudis’ political history had ended with the destruction of their capital. They were more interested in the ethnographic details of the area, in the manners and customs of the people.

Practically all Russian travellers sympathized with the Arabs. For example, Biblioteka dlia tchteniya gives just such a friendly account: ‘The Arabs are ardent, kind, and energetic: nothing will stop them, nothing will hamper them, nothing will scare them; failure makes them even more persistent, and great success hardly satisfies their desires ... An Arab looks like a falcon; he is witty, adroit, smart; the only thing he lacks is education.’48

A year earlier, the same magazine published the diaries of V. Dittel, an expert in Arabic and Farsi, who travelled in the Middle East from 1842 to 1845. He too gave a lofty estimate of the Arabs’ nature: ‘Look at the desert Arabs, the Bedouin; they are Muslims too, but they live in accordance with the dictates of their inner and external lives, following in its instruction the Law of Muhammad [i.e. the Shari’ah laws–MR].’49

He also entered into the psychological world of the Arabian poet: ‘This poetry was created by one who was on the alert in all his senses, and gave them all his attention: one who by scent could detect the traces of an animal, blood, the proximity of water. And, after all, how can a European understand him without knowing the nature either of the [Arabian] knight (faris), or of the desert? [...] And further, is it fair to set a low value on this poetry or to dispute its quality just because it does not please the European soul and temperament, and cannot be expressed in our colourless language in anything save a distorting translation?’50

Russian society maintained sporadic but direct contact with Arabia. Thus, a certain Ahmad B. Husain from Makkah had been a lecturer in spoken Arabic in Kazan University from 1852 to 1855, and later, from 1855 to 1858, held the same post at the newly-founded Oriental Department of St Petersburg University.51

In the popular magazine Otechestvenniye zapiski (‘The National Notes’) for 1854 there appeared the travel memoirs of the already mentioned Russian writer A. Rotchev,52 who in his passage from the West to the East Indies had trodden the soil of the Arabian Peninsula, thus becoming himself an eyewitness of the land of the Qur’an that is so extolled in his verse.

At the same time The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society in London published G. A. Wallin’s ‘Narrative of a Journey from Cairo to Medina and Mecca by Suez, Acaba, Tawila, al-Jauf, Jubbe, Hail and Nejd in 1845’.53 A Finnish scholar of Swedish origin, Wallin visited Nejd during the early years of the second Saudi state (1843–1865), and recorded many valuable and precise details of the then political situation in Arabia.54 Although Finland at that time was a part of the Russian Empire, his works were known there only to a narrow group of specialists. The same happened later with the evidence of E. Nolde, a Russian subject of Germanic origin, who visited the camp of the Saudis’ rival, Ibn Rashid, near Riyadh in 1892 and published a German-language version of his memorandum in Brunswick.55

By contrast, the account of the English Jesuit W. G. Palgrave, who in 1862–3 came to Nejd and visited the capital of the second Saudi state, Riyadh, as well as Qasim and al-Hasa, attracted the attention of a significant Russian audience. First appearing in 1864–5, his writings were translated into Russian by the magazine Znaniye (‘Knowledge’) as early as 1875.56 The author was charged at the time with fabricating the account given in his diaries, but most of these accusations were in due course of time retracted.57

The Russian marine zoologist N. N. Miklukho-Maklay engaged in field research during 1866–7 in Morocco and the Red Sea area. The records of his researches appeared in Izvestiya Russkogo Geogragicheskogo Obshchestva in 1869.58 During his journey he wore local dress, spoke some Arabic, and was interested in everyday life. He described the ports of Yanbu and Jeddah:

Jeddah is one of the most original of the oriental towns; one can meet there at one time all the representatives of Islam, with all the peculiarities of their faces, costumes, languages, and customs [...] Within this town one can meet natives of India and Morocco, Istanbul and Sudan, Persia and Algeria. A Tartar from the banks of the Volga is performing his namaz-prayer together with a newly converted Black from the banks of Lake Chad. Recurrent floods of pilgrims coming here from the remotest places on board English, Dutch, and Egyptian ships and steamboats make Jeddah a considerable entrepôt in the Red Sea, where the goods of various countries are exchanged and bring a certain degree of prosperity to its residents. This prosperity stands revealed in the rather big, stone-built, and mostly four-storied buildings of the town, the interior decoration of which clearly proves that in other circumstances their architects might have created monuments rivalling those of the Alhambra.’59

This scientist also noted the natural abilities of the local population. He claimed that Western culture and science would have to be modified in certain essential points in order to be accepted by Orientals.60

Northern Arabia, Jeddah and Aden were visited in 1881 and 1883 by the Russian physician A. Eliseyev, who printed his accounts in periodicals such as Russkoye obozreniye (‘The Russian Review’) and Izvestiya Imperatorskogo Russkogo Geograficheskogo Obshchestva, as well as in a separate publication.61 At the very beginning of his account the author stressed that he witnessed everywhere ‘from Constantinople to the wildest deserts of Arabia Petraea a change for the better in the Muslim attitude to the Russian name’ (Po belu svetu, St Petersburg, 1893–6, Vol. I, 1893, pp. 2–3).

In local and regional Russian periodicals one can read the publications of Russian Muslim travellers on their way to Makkah, such as those of S. Sultanov, who went from Ufa to Madinah and Makkah in 1893;62 Sh. Ishaev, an official of the Russian consulate in Jeddah, who described his pilgrimage from Jeddah to Makkah in 1895;63 and the staff captain of the Russian Army A. Dawletshin, who visited the Hejaz in 1898 on official business.64 All three reported inconvenient and insanitary travel conditions, the self-interest and greed of local guides [dallal], moral corruption in the Sacred Cities under the Turkish wali, and the weakness of Ottoman control. (Lamenting the minimal economic influence of Russia in the area, Ishaev could identify only one popular article of Russian manufacture in the local markets, namely padlocks).65 Events concerning the Saudi state are very sparsely covered by the Russian Muslims; for further details on Muslim pilgrimages from Russia see Chapter 11 by S. Grigoriev.

The last few years at the turn of the twentieth century before 1902, which marks the revival of the Saudi state, were critical for our subject. It was easy to presage the ultimate decline of Ottoman influence in Arabia, but it was nearly impossible for a European public to foresee the events that were forthcoming in the heart of Nejd. Summing up the results of the past hundred years, ambitious, and very popular in Russia, The History of the Nineteenth Century in eight volumes spent less then half a dozen of its pages on events in the Arabian Peninsula in general and on the Saudis in particular,66 their final verdict being: ‘since then [since 1818–MR] the Wahhabi movement, driven back to a few districts of Nejd, has ceased to exist as a political force’.67

The mirror of the Russian periodicals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries thus gave no precise and complete reflection of the historic Saudi struggle for the unification of Arabia. But none the less, through the efforts of these newspapers, magazines and journals, Russian public opinion had been prepared to receive the news of the establishment of the new Saudi Arabian state.

Notes

1 In 1774/5 ‘Abd al-Wahhab settled in Dir’iya, the oasis of Al Saud. Ibn Ghannam gives the date as 1158 H., Ibn Bishr as 1157 H. (A. M. Vasiliev, Puritane Islama? Wahhabism i Pervoye Gosudarstvo Saudidov v Aravii, 1744/45–1816 (‘The Puritans of Islam? The Wahhabi Movement and the First Saudi State in Arabia, 1744/45–1816’), Moscow, 1967, p. 117, n. 105).

2 See B. M. Dantsig, Bliznhiy Vostok v russkoy nauke i literature (‘The Near East in Russian Science and Literature’), Moscow, 1973, p. 61; A. N. Neustroev, Istoricheskoye rozyskaniye o russkih povremennyh izdaniyah i sbornikah za 1703–1802 gg. (‘Historical Research on Russian Periodicals and Special Editions, 1703-1802’), St Petersburg, 1875, pp. 12–40.

3 Voyennoe sostoyanie Ottomanskiya imperii s eya prirashcheniyem i upadkom. Sochineno chrez grafa de Marsili ... (‘The Military State of the Ottoman Empire, its Progress and Decline. Written by the Count of Marsili’), St Petersburg, 1737.

3 Also in French versions: C. Niebuhr, Description de l’Arabie d’après les observations et recherches faits dans le pays même, Copenhagen, 1773; Voyage de M. Niebuhr en Arabie et en d’autres pays d’Orient avec l’extrait de sa description de l’Arabie et des observations de Mr. Forskal, ‘En Suisse’, 1780, Vols I–II.

5 Dantsig, Bliznhiy Vostok, p. 96, n.

6 Niebuhr, Description, pp. 299–300.

7 Puteshestviye Volneya v Siriyu i Egipet, byvsheye v 1783, 1784 i 1785 godah (‘The Voyage of Volney to Syria and Egypt in the years of 1783, 1784, and 1785’), Pts 1–2., Moscow, 1791–3.

8 E. I. Druzhinina, ‘Russkiy diplomat A. M. Obrezkov’ (‘The Russian Diplomat A. M. Obrezkov’), Istoricheskiye Zapiski, 40, 1952: 358.

9 Dantsig, Bliznhiy Vostok, p. 93; M. I. Kutuzov, Dokumenty (‘Documents’), Moscow, 1950, Vol. I, pp. 275–6, 324.

10 Vestnik Evropy, 1803, Pt. IX, p. 68. Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab died in 1206/1792, and Makkah was taken in the spring of 1803 by Saud Ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz.

11 See above, Note 1.

12 Vasiliev, Puritane Islama, p. 14.

13