Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, the sixth king of Saudi Arabia, died Friday at age 90, state television announced.
A master politician, he gained a reputation as a reformer without changing his country’s power structure and maintained good relations with the United States while striking an independent course in foreign policy.
A royal court statement said the king died at 1 a.m. Friday. His successor was announced as 79-year-old half-brother, Prince Salman, according to the statement carried on the Saudi Press Agency. Salman was Abdullah’s crown prince and had recently taken on some of the ailing king’s responsibilities.
President Barack Obama expressed condolences and offered sympathy to the people of Saudi Arabia.
“As a leader, he was always candid and had the courage of his convictions,” Obama said. “One of those convictions was his steadfast and passionate belief in the importance of the U.S.-Saudi relationship as a force for stability and security in the Middle East and beyond.”
Combining an avuncular style with a reputation for honesty and a shrewd understanding of the media, Abdullah was popular with his subjects, who found him a refreshing corrective to his corrupt and autocratic predecessor, King Fahd.
Abdullah pumped billions of dollars into modernization of the Saudi educational system, opened up the Saudi economy, ushered his country into the World Trade Organization, curbed the authority of the religious police, pardoned some victims of an unforgiving judiciary, met with then-Pope Benedict XVI and espoused interfaith tolerance, cracked down on extremism, reached out to women and offered a plan for Arab peace with Israel.
Yet the cumulative effect of his policies was to reinforce the House of Saud’s absolute power over the country.
His embrace of reform did not extend to politics. Dissenters who went too far were jailed or silenced, though he did reinstitute elections for municipal councils and announced that women could vote and run as candidates in the next round.
Abdullah was born in Riyadh in 1924, one of the dozens of sons of Saudi Arabia’s founder, King Abdul-Aziz Al Saud. He was selected as crown prince in 1982 on the day his half-brother Fahd ascended to the throne.
Fahd suffered a debilitating stroke in 1995. The following January, Abdullah, as crown prince, assumed most of the duties and responsibilities of the monarch, and in effect ran the country as regent until Fahd’s death in 2005.
At the end of his reign, Saudi Arabia was a different country from the one in which he came to power — much more open to economic entrepreneurs, more receptive to public discussion of its many problems, and even courting tourists.
But in another sense, the country was unchanged: All power ultimately lay with the royal family, supported by a compliant religious establishment, and ordinary citizens still were disenfranchised.
Abdullah gained worldwide renown for his sponsorship of a new graduate-level university, named for him, in which classes and laboratory sessions are coeducational, a breach of taboo that heartened liberals across the country.
At the same time, he ordered the construction of an all-female university in Riyadh, perpetuating the gender segregation that has become perhaps the biggest obstacle to economic progress in Saudi Arabia.
It was a typical move for a monarch who always sought to balance a new generation’s desire for change with the conservative establishment’s commitment to Saudi Arabia’s traditional ways.
The country’s Basic Law of Government, promulgated by Fahd in 1992, stipulates that the country is a monarchy and that it is the duty of citizens to obey their king. The government did not waver from that mandate during Abdullah’s years on the throne.
The steps Abdullah took to limit the power of the Muslim religious establishment and to institutionalize the process of royal succession, combined with the government’s campaign against homegrown jihadists who began a campaign of domestic terrorism in 2003, left the House of Saud stronger than it was before he took the throne.
Inside the royal family, Abdullah’s adroit maneuvering largely neutralized the dissatisfaction and resentment of powerful half-brothers who had been his rivals for power.
He opposed the decision by Fahd and Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the powerful defense minister, to invite U.S. troops into Saudi Arabia after the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, for example, but avoided a public breach that could have weakened the family.
Before Abdullah, the greatest threats to the al-Saud regime were domestic: a rising tide of religious extremism supported by al-Qaeda, and a restive citizenry energized by global information networks and unhappy with domestic corruption.
By the time of his death, the only real threat in the short- to medium-term was the increasing hostility of Iran, Saudi Arabia’s rival for religious and strategic supremacy in the region.
Abdullah is thought to have had at least seven wives during his long life and has four surviving sons, including Miteb, who succeeded his father as commander of the National Guard. He is also said to have had 15 daughters.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Other Deaths
Wendell Ford, 90, a former U.S. senator and Kentucky governor who endeared himself to voters in a state that once thrived on tobacco and coal, has died.
Ford’s health had declined in the past two weeks, said Mike Ruehling, who had worked for him both as governor and senator. Ford revealed over the summer that he was undergoing chemotherapy treatments for lung cancer. He died about 3 a.m. Thursday at his home in Owensboro, Ky., Ruehling said.
Ford never identified with sweeping issues or great crusades. Instead, constituents knew he would always take time to stop by neighborhood corner stores to “buy a pack of cigarettes and chat a little.”
He also was the primary sponsor of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, known as the “motor-voter” bill, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
John Bayley, 89, an author known for his moving memoir of life with his late wife Iris Murdoch, has died of a heart ailment. His editor, Robert Weil, said Wednesday that Bayley died Jan. 12 at his home on the Canary Islands.
Bayley’s “Elegy for Iris” chronicled his wife’s descent into Alzheimer’s disease and was turned into an Oscar-winning movie starring Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent.
James L. Fowler, 84, a Korean and Vietnam War veteran who dreamed up the event that became the Marine Corps Marathon, the annual race that has drawn tens of thousands of athletes to Washington over nearly four decades, died Tuesday in Alexandria, Va. The cause was congestive heart failure, said his wife, Betsy Fowler.
The Marine Corps Marathon, which first took place in 1976, is one of the largest races of its kind.
Denver Post wire services
