Before 1337 AH, some of King Abdulaziz’s earliest unofficial agents were Al-Oqilat men. British documents mention, for example, Fawzan Al-Sabiq, Al-Rabdi, Mansour Al-Rumaih, Hamoud Al-Barak, and Al-Osaimi. From 1340 AH, the first formally appointed representatives of King Abdulaziz in the Levant and Egypt also included Al-Oqilat men—notably the scholar and historian Sheikh Fawzan Al-Sabiq in Egypt, who held the rank of representative extraordinary.
Delegates attending the preparatory meeting for the Alexandria Protocol, which led to the establishment of the Arab League in 1945. The photograph was taken in Alexandria in September 1944. Front row, from right to left: Sheikh Fawzan Al-Sabiq, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Egypt; an unidentified person; Hussein Sirri Pasha, several times Prime Minister of Egypt; possibly Prince Saud or Prince Khalid bin Abdulaziz; Mohammed Mahmoud Pasha, Prime Minister of Egypt; Prince Faisal bin Abdulaziz, then Saudi Foreign Minister and later King; Saif Al-Islam Al-Hussein, son of Yemen’s Imam Yahya bin Hamid Al-Din; Prince Mohammed Abdul Moneim, a member of Egypt’s Regency Council after the 1952 coup; and the British Ambassador in Cairo, Sir Miles Lampson, Lord Killearn. (Why was a British ambassador attending a meeting of Arab officials? Read—and do not ask!)
From left: Mohammed Ali Al-Tahir and Sheikh Fawzan Al-Sabiq, King Abdulaziz’s representative in Egypt, bidding farewell to Fouad Hamza—adviser to King Abdulaziz bin Saud—at Cairo railway station in 1933.
Seated from right to left: Sheikh Fawzan Al-Sabiq, King Abdulaziz’s representative in Egypt; Ahmed Hilmi Pasha, Prime Minister of the All-Palestine Government; Mohammed Ali Al-Tahir; and the prominent Lebanese Druze and Arab-Islamic nationalist Prince Shakib Arslan.
A tea reception hosted by Mohammed Ali Al-Tahir at Cairo’s Continental Hotel in 1933 to honor the Lebanese-born Saudi minister Fouad Hamza. According to the numbers shown in the photograph, from right to left: (1) Hassan Bey Al-Dars; (2) Sheikh Abdullatif Draz; (3) Sheikh Ali Sorour Al-Zankalouni; (4) Abdel Qader Bey Al-Kilani; (X) Minister Fouad Hamza; (5) Sheikh Fawzan Al-Sabiq, “Representative of the Kingdom of Hejaz and the Sultanate of Najd and Its Dependencies in Egypt”; (6) Ahmed Shafiq Pasha; (7) Sheikh Ibrahim Atfayyesh; (8) Dr. Ahmed Bey Essa; and (9) Khalil Bey Mutran, Sheikh of the Poets.
Photograph: The 1933 Saudi–Jordanian Treaty of Friendship in Cairo. In December 1933, the Saudi Kingdom and the Emirate of Transjordan—the present-day Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan—signed a treaty of friendship and good neighborliness. The photograph was taken after signed copies were exchanged. From right: Mr. Rida, secretary of the Saudi Agency in Egypt; Sheikh Fawzan Al-Sabiq, the Saudi representative; Fouad Pasha Al-Khatib, delegate of Prince Abdullah bin Al-Hussein, Emir of Amman; and Mr. Kirkbride, Deputy British Resident in Amman. Also shown is the Al-Oqilat writer Sheikh Sulaiman Al-Mushaiqih, King Abdulaziz’s representative in the Levant.
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