A report on Saudi Arabia and House of Saud

In 1744, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab formed a pact with a local leader, Muhammad bin Saud, a politico-religious alliance that continued for the next 150 years, culminating politically with the proclamation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.

With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, the Al-Saud dynasty, and with it Wahhabism, spread to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

Najd (نَجْدٌ, ), or the Nejd, forms the geographic center of Saudi Arabia, accounting for about a third of the country's modern population and, since the Emirate of Diriyah, acting as the base for all unification campaigns by the House of Saud to bring Arabia under a single polity and under the Salafi jurisprudence.

Despite his teachings being rejected and opposed by many of the most notable Sunni Muslim scholars of the period, including his own father and brother, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab charted a religio-political pact with Muhammad bin Saud to help him to establish the Emirate of Diriyah, the first Saudi state, and began a dynastic alliance and power-sharing arrangement between their families which continues to the present day in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

This agreement became a "mutual support pact" and power-sharing arrangement between the Aal Saud family, and the Aal ash-Sheikh and followers of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, which had remained in place for nearly 300 years, providing the ideological impetus to Saudi expansion.

Mecca, officially Makkah al-Mukarramah (مكة المكرمة, ) and commonly shortened to Makkah (مكة, ), is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the holiest city in Islam.

The Provincial Governor of the province from 16 May 2007 is Prince Khalid bin Faisal Al Saud.

Geographically, the Arabian Peninsula includes Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Yemen, as well as the southern portions of Iraq and Jordan.

The emergence of what was to become the Saudi royal family, known as the Al Saud, began in Najd in central Arabia in 1744, when Muhammad bin Saud, founder of the dynasty, joined forces with the religious leader Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabi movement, a strict puritanical form of Sunni Islam.

Riyadh (الرياض, lit.: 'The Gardens' Najdi pronunciation: ), formerly known as Hajr al-Yamamah, is the capital and largest city of Saudi Arabia.

This fortress was built around 1865 under the reign of Mohammed ibn Abdullah ibn Rasheed (1289-1315 AH), the ruler of Ha'il to the north, who had wrested control of the city from the rival clan of Al Saud.

Although the primary purpose of the mosque is to serve as a place of prayer, it is also important to the Muslim community as a place to meet and study with the Masjid an-Nabawi ("Prophetic Mosque") in Medina, Saudi Arabia, having also served as a shelter for the poor.

He formed an alliance with the Saud family, which, by the 1920s, completed their conquest of the area that would become Saudi Arabia.

The House of Saud and its allies quickly rose to become the dominant power in Arabia by first conquering Najd, and then expanding their influence over the eastern coast from Kuwait down to the northern borders of Oman.

They founded a Second Saudi State that lasted until 1891, and later a third state, Saudi Arabia, which the Al Saud continue to rule up to the present day.

Most of the Shīʿa sacred places and heritage sites in Saudi Arabia have been destroyed by the Al Saud-Wahhabi armies of the Ikhwan, the most notable being the tombs of the Imams located in the Al-Baqi' cemetery in 1925.

Saudi Arabia hosts a number of distinct Shīʿa communities, including the Twelver Baharna in the Eastern Province and Nakhawila of Medina, and the Ismāʿīlī Sulaymani and Zaydī Shīʿas of Najran.

It rejects any kind of opposition against the secular governance, thus endorsed by the authoritarian governments of Egypt and Saudi Arabia during the 90s.

Wahhabis have traditionally given their allegiance to the House of Saud, and this has made them apolitical in Saudi Arabia.