ant of the modernizing world around
them. As the world integrated itself to
a new industrial age, the Arabs were
still mired in the traditions of the past.
Then the process of modernization
kicked off in the 19th century with inventions
that ushered in a new dawn.
The steam engine, locomotive, telephone,
telegraph, the internal combustion
engine, rifle, ironclad ships,
medicine, and electricity/light bulb all
fundamentally changed our modes of
thinking, transportation, occupations,
our economies, and improved our
ways of life. Democratic and secular
institutions were formed, the industrial
revolution and the age of science
came introducing a new paradigm to
the way the world thought and worked.
While these colossal shifts reconstructed
the world stage, the bedouin
Arab remained frozen in primitivism.
One would enter the Arabian Peninsula
feeling like they had teleported into
the 7th century or even earlier. It was
a microcosm of the medieval era still
enduring through the 20th century.
Islam had indeed brought changes in
the norms, mores, and worldview of
the Arab, but it did not change the geography
that defined the ethos of the
Arab.
Even after Islamic conquest exposed
the Arab to progressive civilizations
and the downfall of the reigning dynasties
and superpowers of the time
upturned the economic plight of
Arabia, the Arabs were preset to the
harsh nomadic life in the desert and to
the sheep and camels that were their
most prized possessions. Ali al-Naimi
was a bedouin who later became the
first Saudi president of Saudi Arabian
American Oil Company (Saudi Aramco).
In his autobiography, he writes,
“The world I was born into in 1935
had remained all but unchanged for
hundreds of years. The family’s efforts
provided enough to eat, but little
more. The rhythm of seasonal migration
were set by nature, by the endless
search for water and grass for our
camels, sheep and goats. It was a way
of life largely untouched by the mod-
Transformation of the Arabian
Peninsula (part 1)
continued from page 8
ern world. To say we didn’t understand
modern finance and technology would
be an understatement; most of those
in this tribal culture had no knowledge
that such things existed at all. I could
just as easily have been born in the
1830’s, the 1730’s or possibly even the
1630’s and had a very similar barefooted
boyhood to the one I experienced
in the Saudi Arabia of my youth.”7
But then the traditional Bedouin society
that had ruled the desert life of
the Arabian Peninsula for thousands
of years was to forever change. Oil
was discovered in 1938 in the eastern
province of Arabia, which funded the
centralized state founded by Ibn Saud
in the early 1900’s. It established a
combined identity for the Arabs as a
nation, replacing the intertribal system
that cast tribes in a permanent tug
of war against each other. Though, the
centralization of the Peninsula itself
was not powerful enough to exact radical
transformation in a hermetic society
that was unyielding to any change.
The oil revenue changed all that. The
concessionary policies and reforms
funded by petrodollars and introduced
10 July – August 2021 | AL-MADINAH