Power and Anxiety in the Kingdom

Drawing on the kingdom's own administrative records, Nadav Samin reveals how the Wahhabi clergy helped build and govern the Saudi state-shaping its laws, institutions, and public culture in the shadow of the royal court. Power and Anxiety in the Kingdom is the first true archival history of modern Saudia Arabia, and the first to track the Wahhabi clergy's path in shaping the modern Saudi state from 1924 to the Bin Salman era. Nadav Samin uses the kingdom's official state records to open an unparalleled window into the inner workings of power and policy in one of the world's most influential and opaque nations. As trusted advisors to the court, the clergy shaped the kingdom's new legal institutions and public culture more than any other interest group. From a position of immense power, authority, and comfort during the first two decades of the monarchy, the Wahhābī clergy lost their exclusive influence in the post-war court, a loss that had global ramifications. Muhammad Bin Salman's dramatic reshaping of Saudi Arabia's religious culture, Samin concludes, was the final step in a long decline that has unfolded across three-quarters of a century. Drawing extensively on Saudi government documents and other records collected around the world, Power and Anxiety in the Kingdom reconstructs the clergy's deliberations, aspirations, and disputes as they were registered and understood by Saudi officialdom at the time