Description

An implausible ally to Ibn Saud appeared when the French destroyed Hashimite Syria, before he launched a definitive war for the conquest of Hejaz, destroying the enemy kingdom. The holy cities of Islam were not saved from the horrors of war when drunken Russian mercenary pilots bombed them from the air on the pay of the Hashimites, the old allies of Lawrence.

The excessively aggressive and independent fundamentalist Ikhwan sect, despite being the iron fist of Saud during his wars, later became a problem that the King had to deal with, when they brought Saudi Arabia to the verge of war with the British Empire due to their constant raids against the Bedouins of Iraq and TransJordan. Glubb Pasha had to learn how to deal with them using aviation and armed cars, adapting British tactics to the hard reality imposed by the Bedouins in the desert. Ibn Saud would be forced to suppress his Ikhwan in the subsequent civil war, where the rebel cavalry was butchered by the machine gun fire of an embryonic modern Arab army in the battle of Sibillah in 1929 and subsequent campaigns. Ibn Saud would end his wars of unification when he invaded Yemen to conquer the last remains of the Kingdom of Asir, in 1934, forging an enmity that persists to the present day.

Swords of Saud Volume 2: The Wars for Arabian Unification: Taking Mecca and the Civil War, 1921-1934 provides an essential military history of the origins of the modern state of Saudi Arabia for the military enthusiast and the professional seeking a deeper understanding of the history of this region. This volume is illustrated throughout with original photographs and the @War series' signature colour artworks and profiles.