Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud (1880-1953) was an Arab political leader who founded the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. During his rule, from 1932 to 1953, much of the Arabian peninsula developed from a group of desert sheikhdoms to a politically unified kingdom with new wealth from oil fields.

Ibn Saud was born in Riyadh in the central Arabian principality of Nejd. He escaped with his father, Abd al-Rahman, to exile in Kuwait in 1891, when the rival Rashidi family seized Saudi lands. In 1902 the young Ibn Saud with a small number of warriors recaptured Riyadh in a daring raid.

Although the modern history of Arabia dates from the Saudi reoccupation of Riyadh, there was much history and tradition in the young sheikh's policy. Ibn Saud revived the family alliance with the Wahhabis, an 18th-century puritanical reform movement within Islam which had spread over central Arabia. Skillfully combining the Wahhabi religious zeal with...