In 1975, Saudi Arabia was shocked when King Faisal was murdered by his own nephew with three gunshots as he was about to greet him.
“I will never forget that day: I absorbed all of my father’s pain.”
“Imagine: a human being, standing next to his mentor, his master, his friend and someone shoots, there, so close,” Dr. Mai Yamani told the BBC.
Yamani remembered the day March 25, 1975. On that date, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia (1906-1975) received three point-blank shotsin quick succession, as he greeted and welcomed his nephew.
Mai Yamani’s father, Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani (1930-2021), was a minister loyal to the monarch for 15 years and was by his side during the incident.
King Faisal was the third ruler of the desert kingdom and the third son of its founder. He was urgently transported to the hospital, but died shortly after.
Mai Yamani was 18 years old at the time. And, a few kilometers away, he was waiting for his father. “I was sitting in my father’s apartment, surrounded by his books,” she recalls. “He came in with a very strange and painful expression on the face. He went directly to the dining room, let out a scream and only managed to say one word: ‘Calamity!’”
That wasn’t normal behavior from your father. The sheikh had a reputation for being very calm, speak in a very low voice. He then told him what had happened.
“At 10 am, an oil delegation from Kuwait would meet with King Faisal at the palace,” he says, “and my father, who was Minister of Oil, went to provide the king with the necessary information.”
“This prince, ironically with the same name [príncipe Faisal Ibu Musaed, 1944-1975]entered with the Kuwaiti Oil Minister and the king opened his arms to hug his nephew, who took a small pistol from his pocket and it went off.”
“Three shots to the head.”
One of the king’s bodyguards struck the prince with his sword, still sheathed.
Reports were that Sheikh Yamani ordered the guards not to kill the prince. But other information from the time says that the attacker told the police that the sheikh was so close to the king that he he also believed he had killed him.
But that wasn’t what happened. King Faisal was still alive and Sheikh Yamani accompanied him to the hospital. There, the king died, despite the doctors’ efforts to save him.
“After that, everything was silent,” recalls Mai Yamani. “The streets of Riyadh were empty.”
The king of the desert
Faisal became king of Saudi Arabia in 1964. The kingdom was a desert the size of western Europe. And, as its ruler, he proposed to modernize the countryone of the most backward in the Middle East.
Faisal was one of the eldest sons of Abdulaziz al-Saud (c.1877-1953) and had fought in his father’s campaign to unite the Arabian Peninsula, which led to the founding of the kingdom that bears his name, Saudi Arabia, 30 years earlier.
Later, Faisal became prime minister under the command of his older brother, Saud (1902-1969), who became king on his father’s death. Upon assuming the throne, Faisal was already known for being an astute, pious, hardworking and reforming politician. He was a man accustomed to trading in the capitals of other countries around the world and a ruler who wanted to use newfound oil wealth of the country to bring to Saudi Arabia the advantages of modern state education, health services and a judicial system.
But King Faisal’s reforms did not always please the more conservative elements of the austere school of Islam, to which his family was allied.
In the mid-1960s, King Faisal opened the first television station from Saudi Arabia. On that occasion, there was an armed attack on the building, led by the man’s brother who would later murder him.
But at the time, Faisal had already made and would continue to make significant contributions, even in hitherto untouched fields such as women’s education. In 1956, when he was still crown prince, the king opened the first regular state school for girls, under the patronage of his wife Iffat (1916-2000).
“Queen Iffat started education for girls in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and I am proud to say that I was one of the first nine students at her school, which was called Dar Al Hanan, the School of Tenderness“, counts Mai Yamani.
“King Faisal convinced the religious sector that by educating women they would become better mothers.”
A powerful kingdom
Mai Yamani’s father began working for King Faisal in 1960. This was unusual because, although he was a lawyer and highly educated, he was a commoner and not part of the Saudi royal family. But King Faisal had read some articles written by Yamani, which caught his attention.
“My father opened his first law firm and soon began writing very provocative articles, calling for democracy and good governance”, he recalls. “Then, Faisal, who was the crown prince and was looking for a legal advisor, asked, ‘Who is this man?‘”
Later, King Faisal would appoint Sheikh Yamani, as he became known, his Minister of Petroleum. Together, king and subject devised a policy that, for the first time, provided the kingdom with the full control of its immense oil assets and transformed it into a respected power in the Arab world and on the international scene.
In 1973, after the war between Israel and its Arab neighbors, Saudi Arabia (at the time, the world’s largest oil producer) led the campaign to use oil for the first time, as a political weapon.
Oil supplies to countries that supported Israel were reduced, causing world oil prices soar. And Sheikh Yamani was tasked with conveying the message.
“What we want is the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces of the occupied Arab territories and then you will have oil at the same level as in September 1973,” he explained to the BBC at the time.
The huge increase in oil prices brought a shift in the global balance of power between developing countries, as they were called at the time, producers and industrialized nations.
This shift in the balance of power was recognized in 1974 (the year before his death), when King Faisal was declared “Man of the Year” by Time magazine.
After the murder
Prince Faisal Ibu Musaed was captured immediately after the attack on his uncle. He was interrogated and psychiatrists believed he was suffering from a “mental imbalance“. It was reported that the prince was calm, before and after the murder.
After the assassination, the capital of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh, remained completely closed for three days of mourning.
King Khalid (1913-1982), brother of the murdered king, took his place by agreement of the Saudi royal family. And Prince Faisal Ibu Musaed was later found guilty of the king’s murder.
In June 1975, it was beheaded in a public square in Riyadhaccording to the traditional method of execution in Saudi Arabia, based on Islamic law.
“We don’t know what the true motive for the king’s murder was, other than the fact that the killer was a disturbed man.” Prince Musaed was declared officially insane, according to an “agreement issued by the royal cabinet”.
He took to his grave the reasons that led him to kill his uncle, but there was speculation that he Tried to avenge his older brother’s deathKhalid, in a confrontation with security forces in 1966.
Conspiracy theories also emerged, but a subsequent investigation declared that Prince Faisal Ibu Musaed acted alone.
Sheikh Yamani remained as Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Petroleum for another 11 years, until 1986.
Mai Yamani went to university in the United States and became the first Saudi woman to obtain a PhD at the University of Oxfordnot UK.
She wrote several books about Arab identity and also worked as a consultant for banks, such as Goldman Sachs, and oil companies, such as Shell.
