Al-Hasa, Ottoman eyalet of

The Ottoman Empire is a world power when Suleyman dies in 1566.

Most of the great cities of Islam—Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, Damascus, Cairo, Tunis, and Baghdad— are under the sultan's crescent flag.

The Porte exercises direct control over Anatolia, the sub-Danubian Balkan provinces, Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia.

Egypt, Mecca, and the North African provinces are governed under special regulations, as are satellite domains in Arabia and the Caucasus, and among the Crimean Tartars.

In addition, the native rulers of Wallachia, Moldavia, Transylvania, and Ragusa (Dubrovnik) are vassals of the sultan.

Whereas the Al Saud are largely successful in handling these two powers in the Persian Gulf, they do not do so well in managing their family affairs.

The killing of Turki in 1834 touches off a long period of fighting.

One of the reasons the Ottomans are unsuccessful is the growing British interest in Arabia.

The British government in India considers the Persian Gulf to be its western flank and thus increasingly becomes concerned about the trade with the Arab tribes on the eastern coast.

The British are also anxious about potentially hostile Ottoman influence in an area so close to India and the planned Suez Canal

As a result, the British come into increasing contact with the Al Saud.

As Wahhabi leaders, the Al Saud can exert some control over some of the tribes on the gulf coast, and they are simultaneously involved with the Ottomans.

During the period from the 1830s to the 1880s, the Al Saud leaders will play off the Ottomans and British against each other.

The Ottomans, however, sometimes try to expand their influence by supporting renegade members of the Al Saud.

When two of Faisal's sons, Abd Allah and Saud, vied to take over the empire from their father, Abd Allah enlists the aid of the Ottoman governor in Iraq, who uses the opportunity to take Al Qatif and Al Hufuf in eastern Arabia.

The Ottomans eventually are driven out, but until the time of Abd al Aziz they will continue to look for a relationship with the Al Saud that they can exploit.

Muhammad Ali and the Egyptians had been severely weakened after the British and French defeated their fleet off the coast of Greece in 1827.

This action had prevented the Egyptians from exerting much influence in Arabia, but it left the Al Saud with the problem of the Ottomans, whose ultimate authority Turki had eventually acknowledged.

Because the challenge to the sultan had helped end the first Al Saud empire in 1818, later rulers choose to accommodate the Ottomans as much as they can.

The Al Saud eventually become of considerable financial importance to the Ottomans because they collect tribute from the rich trading state of Oman and forward much of this to the ashraf in Mecca, who relays it to the sultan.

In return, the Ottomans recognize the Al Saud authority and leave them alone for the most part.

The collection of tribute is another indication of the extensive influence the Al Saud derive because of their Wahhabi connections.

Wahhabi religious ideas have spread through the central part of the Arabian Peninsula; as a result, the Al Saud influence decisions even in areas not under their control, such as succession battles and questions of tribute.

Their influence in the Hijaz, however, remains restricted.

Not only are the Egyptians and Ottomans careful that the region not slip away again, but Wahhabi ideas had not found a receptive audience in western Arabia.

Accordingly, the family will be unable to gain a foothold in the Hijaz during the nineteenth century.

Turki bin Abdullah bin Muhammad and his successors rule from Riyadh over a wide area.

They control the region to the north and south of Najd and exert considerable influence along the western coast of the Persian Gulf.

This area is no state but a large sphere of influence that the Al Saud hold together with a combination of treaties and delegated authority.

In the Jabal Shammar to the north, for instance, the Al Saud support the rule of Abd Allah ibn Rashid, with whom Turki maintains a close alliance.

Later, Turki's son will Faisal cement this alliance by marrying his son, Talal, to Abd Allah's daughter, Nura.

Although this family-to-family connection works well, the Al Saud prefer to rely in the east on appointed leaders to rule on their behalf.

In other areas, they are content to establish treaties under the terms of which tribes agree to defend the family's interests or to refrain from attacking the Al Saud when the opportunity arises.

The Al Saud can levy troops for military campaigns from the towns and tribes under their control.

Although these campaigns are mostly police actions against recalcitrant tribes, the rulers describe them as holy wars (jihad), which they conduct according to religious principles.

The tribute that the Al Saud demand from those under their control also is based on Islamic principles.

Towns, for instance, pay taxes at a rate established by Muslim law, and the troops that accompany the Al Saud on raiding expeditions return one-fifth of their booty to the Al Saud treasury according to sharia (Muslim law) requirements.

The Al Saud maintain authority in Arabia by controlling several factors.

First, they can resist, or at least accommodate, Egyptian interference.

After 1824 when the Egyptians no longer can maintain outright military control over Arabia, they turn to political intrigues.

Turki, for instance, is assassinated in 1834 by a member of the Al Saud who recently had returned from Cairo.

When Turki' s son, Faisal, succeeds his father, the Egyptians supported a rival member of the family, Khalid ibn Saud, who with Egyptian assistance controls Najd for the next four years

An Ottoman-Egyptian invasion of Arabia had ended the First Saudi State in 1818.

After a rebuilding period, the House of Saud, in the person of Amir Turki ibn Abdallah ibn Muhammad, had in 1824 returned to power in the Second Saudi State, establishing himself as ruler of Dir'iyyah, which had been largely destroyed and set afire by the invaders.

The town's original inhabitants had left Diriyah after 1818, with the bulk of them moving to Riyadh.

Turki, now the legitimate Imam, has adopted Riyadh as the new capital of the state.

His son Faisal escapes from Egypt in 1828 to rejoin his father and to play a prominent part in the reestablishment of the Wahhabi regime.

Wahhabism, or Wahabism, is a conservative reformist call of Sunni Islam attributed to Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab, an eighteenth century scholar from what is today known as Saudi Arabia, who had advocated a return to the practices of the first three generations of Islamic history.