Arab Monarchies: What they’re up to and How they’re Doing
Gilgamesh–an early Sumerian king (around 2,800-2,500 BC) and one of many monarchs to arise over millennia in the Middle East
By: John Mason/Arab America Contributing Writer
Monarchies are almost as old as time. The idea of a royal personage arising to rule in the name of a deity is ageless. Arab monarchs rule in the name of God and call on their religious connections to legitimize their rule. These are their ties through kinship to the Prophet Mohamed or to their custodial role in controlling the holy sites of Islam. Saudi Arabia, the Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Morocco, are the major countries ruled by some form of a monarch or other.
Roots of Kingship
Kings and queens have existed in history for millennia. They were present in pre-literate societies around the world, in Polynesia, Africa, and Asia. Anthropologists have studied these kingships, finding that they range in type of rule from despotic to benign. One of the first recorded monarchs arose in Sumeria, sometime between 2,800-2,500 BCE. Monarch in this context refers to both kings and queens. Their rule ranged from absolute, through shared leadership with councils, to consultative. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt ruled absolutely and were not just linked to a god or gods, they were themselves, gods. They were also women pharaohs, such as Hatshepsut or Nefertiti. The history of kings and queens is often enveloped in myth and fiction. A contemporary version of a queen is Elizabeth, who consults the representatives of the parliamentary democracy of the United Kingdom. Democracy and monarchical rule work quite well together in that context—not so well in most of the Arab countries where a king presides.
Arab Monarchs
Saudi Arabia
The King of Saudi Arabia is the most powerful of all the Arab kings. A short list of his powers as the country’s absolute ruler is head of state; head of government; custodian of the holy mosques of Mecca and Medina; and head of the Saudi royal family or the house of Saud, the country’s founding dynasty. The founder of the house of Saud was Mohamed bin Saud, who founded the Emirate of Diriyah in 1744. It eventually evolved into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Authoritarian rule combined with the partially theocratic rule has made for a very conservative, closed society. The present king is Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud. He had initially chosen his nephew as the crown prince but replaced him by his own son, Mohamed bin Salman.
Mohamed bin Salman has several distinct, powerful roles. He is the First Deputy Prime Minister, President of the Council for Economic and Development, and Minister of Defense. These portfolios give him significant powers in ruling the State, especially because his father, the King, purportedly suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. Bin Salman is reported to be under the influence of the crown prince of the neighboring United Arab Emirate of Abu Dhabi.
Mohamed bin Salman-MBS (r.) with his father, Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud
Bin Salman has introduced some reforms to the otherwise highly conservative nation, including the right of women to drive, curbing the powers of the religious police, opening the economy, opening movie theaters to the public, and a greater role for women in the workforce. Just after he took power, however, bin Salman put almost two hundred members of the royal family, government ministers, and other businessmen under house arrest in the Riyadh Ritz Carlton. He accused them of disloyalty or corruption or both. Once they pledged their allegiance to him, including, for some, paying enormous fines, bin Salman released them.
More recently, bin Salman has become embroiled in the disappearance and murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi journalist. Khashoggi was mildly critical of the crown prince, both through his articles in the Washington Post and Arabic-language newspapers. The fact that Khashoggi had resident status in the U.S. complicates the relationship between the two countries.
Princess Ameerah Al-Taweel, one of many of Saudi princesses
Princesses in Saudi Arabia are the daughters or wives of male members of the House of Saud. They have played various roles in society, depending on how much freedom they have been able to exercise. Some princesses have exhibited a high degree of freedom and thus played important roles as fashion leaders, magazine editors, entrepreneurs, educators, and philanthropists.
Emirates
The United Arab Emirates is a series of seven small emirates (land of a prince) located on the Arabian Peninsula on the southeast Persian Gulf. Founded recently, in 1971, the Emirates were once known as the Trucial States, so named for the 19th-century treaty with Great Britain. The UAE is described as a federal absolute monarchy, headed by a single monarch, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi. Each of the member states is headed by its own ruler, under the leadership of Sheikh Khalifa. In an agreed practice, the ruler of Abu Dhabi has deemed the president or head of state of the UAE, while the leader of the emirate Dubai is the Prime Minister.
Jordan
Before Jordan became the Hashemite Kingdom in 1946, it was called the Emirate of Transjordan in 1921. The Hashemites have provided kings to the present countries of Syria and Iraq under the French-British rule in the early 1900s. The name for this kingdom derives from Hashim ibn Abd Manaf, an ancestor of the Prophet Mohamed. King Abdullah was named the first monarch of Jordan, in 1921. The present King, Abdullah II, was named to succeed his father, Hussein, in 1999. He is defined as a constitutional monarchy because there are more freedoms in Jordan than in the absolute monarchies. Abdullah II has been especially responsive to domestic unrest. During the so-called Arab Spring, when protests and wars broke out in certain other Arab countries, Abdullah quickly met protestors’ demands for more public freedom and a greater role in electing their representatives.
King Abdullah II of Jordan
Morocco
Morocco was founded as an independent dynasty, dating to the 8th century A.D. Over the centuries, the country was governed by powerful rulers. They were so powerful that by the 17th century, they were able to ward off the Ottomans from taking over the country, the only North African country to do so. The present kingdom dates to 1631, founded by the Alaouite dynasty, which claims a direct lineage to the Prophet.
King Mohamed VI succeeded his father, Hasan II in 1999. Seen as more liberal than his father, Mohamed set forth several reforms to modernize Morocco. These included human rights, freeing political prisoners, free elections, and improving women’s rights. Post-Arab Spring 2011, Mohamed has not had such easy sailing in the face of the population’s drive for more freedoms and rights.
Moroccan King, Mohamed VI
How They’re Doing?
Two distinct measures are available to get a handle on how well the Arab kingdoms are doing on scales of free speech and transparency of government. For freedom of speech, the ratings of the three monarchies from a total of 167 countries are:
Morocco: 101
Jordan: 117
Saudi: 159
For transparency of government, which is mostly a measure of the level of corruption, ratings from a total of 180 countries are:
Saudi: 57
Jordan: 59
Morocco: 81
These three monarchies are rated poorly on freedom of speech, but considerably better on the transparency of government (or degree of corruption).
Where monarchies have persisted in the west, they have done so only by dint of tradition and through their coexistence with parliamentary democracies (e.g., the UK and Spain). Arab kingdoms are in a sense captives of their long history of authoritarian rule. To break out of that condition would mean capitulating to the people, thus giving up their rule. Many of the democracies of the world have emerged in just that way, through the overthrow of kings and other authoritarian figures.
Despite this somewhat grim picture of monarchies in the Arab world, democracies do exist in the Arab Middle East. On various measures of freedom, transparency, and representativeness, certain governments in the region qualify. Tunisia and Lebanon come close to fulfilling some of the definitions of what it means to be a democracy. None is close to perfect, by no means, but given the messiness of their political environments, perhaps this is the most we can expect.
(Sources: Michael Ruby, 2018; History of Saudi Arabia, 2018; “Mideast Capital,” UAE; Transparency International, 2018; Democracy Index, 2017; Wikipedia, 2017; J. Mason, 2018)
John Mason, an anthropologist specializing in Arab culture and its diverse populations, is the author of recently-published LEFT-HANDED IN AN ISLAMIC WORLD: An Anthropologist’s Journey into the Middle East, 2017, New Academia Publishing.