Abdul-Aziz Ibn Abdulrahman Al Faisal Al Saud, creator of Saudi Arabia, was in his last years one of the richest men on earth. Born in 1880 into the ruling dynasty of Riyadh when it was still an obscure little mud-walled town in the middle of the desert, Ibn Saud grew up in an Arabia which was part of the Ottoman Empire, largely both hidden from and ignorant of the outside world and torn by tribal quarrels. He came to dominate it by shrewdness, audacity and the huge force and charm of his personality. His family were driven into exile in Kuwait when he was ten, but in 1902 he returned to storm Riyadh under his green battle-flag with a mere sixty or so desert Bedouin mounted on camels.
