Saudi Centennial Observance

Among a number of observances in the U.S. national capital in connection with the year-long centennial observances of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was an Arabic-language symposium April 26 jointly sponsored by the information office of the Saudi Arabian Embassy and the Okaz Organization for Press and Publications of Jeddah, publisher of two of the Kingdom’s largest daily newspapers, the Arabic-language Okaz and the English-language Saudi Gazette.

The symposium marked the 100th anniversary, according to the Islamic Hijrah calendar, of the recapture of Riyadh by King Abdulaziz Abdulrahman Al Saud in 1902. The event was the first step of King Abdulaziz’s successful 32-year campaign to reunify the Kingdom. Before a capacity audience of Arab and Arab-American diplomats, journalists and academics, symposium participants discussed the historic events and economic and political decisions that made possible not only the political unification of the Kingdom but also its remarkable development in less than two generations of the human resources and physical infrastructure that have turned Saudi Arabia into an economic powerhouse for the entire Middle East.

Participants included Dr. Abdullah bin Obeid, secretary-general of the the World Muslim League; four members of Saudi Arabia’s consultative council: Dr. Abdul-aziz Al-Fayez, Dr. Saleh Al Malek, Dr. Abdulaziz Daghastani, and Abdullah Yahia al-Muallami; Dr. Ahmed Al-Yousef of the Saudi Gazette newspaper; Dr. Hashim Abdo Hashim, Waleed Kattan, and Dr. Mohammed Saati, all of Okaz organization; Dr. Ahmed Saifaddeen of Imam Muhammad bin Saud University in Riyadh; and Dr. Sadaka Y. Fadel and Dr. Wahed Hashim of King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah.

—Richard H. Curtiss