Item: i77011

Authentic Coin of:

Saudi Arabia under Su’ūd – King: 9 November 1953 – 2 November 1964
1954 (AH 1374) Silver 1/2 Riyal 27mm (5.83 grams) 0.250 Silver (0.0611 oz. ASW)
Reference: KM# 38
 ملك المملكة العربية السعودية سعود بن عبد العزيز آل سعود ,  Ornate lettering, circle of dots.
نصف ريال عربي سعودي ضرب في المكرّمة مكة ١٣٧٤ ١/٢  , Ornate lettering, circle of dots.

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Saud bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (/sɑːˈuːd/; Arabic: سعود بن عبد العزيز آل سعود‎ Su’ūd ibn ‘Abd al-‘Azīz Āl Su’ūd; 15 January 1902 – 23 February 1969) was King of Saudi Arabia from 1953 to 1964. After a period of internal tension in Saudi Arabia, he was forced from the throne and replaced by his brother Faisal.

King Saud’s family members worried about Saud’s profligacy and his inability to meet the challenge of Nasser’s Egypt. Corruption and backwardness weakened the regime. Radio Cairo’s anti-Saudi broadcasting was finding a receptive audience.

King Saud and Prince Faisal continued their power struggle until 1962, when Prince Faisal formed a cabinet in the absence of the King, who had gone abroad for medical treatment. Prince Faisal allied with Prince Fahd and Prince Sultan. Prince Faisal’s new government excluded the sons of Saud. He promised a ten-point reform that included the drafting of a basic law, the abolition of slavery and the establishment of a judicial council.

Upon his return, King Saud rejected Prince Faisal’s new arrangement and threatened to mobilize the Royal Guard against his brother. In response, Prince Faisal demanded King Saud make him regent and turn over all royal powers to him. In this, he had the crucial backing of the ulema (elite Islamic scholars), including a fatwa (edict) issued by the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, a relative of Prince Faisal on his mother’s side, calling on King Saud to accede to his brother’s demands.

King Saud refused, prompting Faisal to order the National Guard to surround Saud’s palace. In March 1964 Saud finally relented and named Faisal regent with full executive powers, effectively reducing himself to a figurehead. In November, the ulema, cabinet and senior members of the family forced Saud to abdicate altogether, and Faisal became king in his own right

King Saud was forced into exile in Geneva, Switzerland, and then on to other European cities. In 1966, Saud was invited by Nasser to live in Egypt; another report claims that King Saud went to Egypt under refuge granted by Nasser and stayed there from 1965 to 1967. King Saud was also allowed to broadcast on Radio Cairo. Some of his sons, such as Prince Khalid, Prince Badr, Prince Sultan and Prince Mansur, joined him and supported his attempt to regain the throne. However, after the June 1967 Arab-Israel War, he lost the support of Egypt and settled in Greece until his death in 1969.

King Saud died at the age of 67 on 23 February 1969 in Athens. His remains were returned to Saudi Arabia and the funeral ceremony took place at the Great Mosque in Mecca. He was buried next to his father’s and grandfathers’ graves at Al Oud cemetery in Riyadh.

During his reign, King Saud was the recipient of many honours and these included the Orders of Various other nations. In the formal portraits of King Saud in ceremonial uniform he is wearing the breast stars of the following Orders.

Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a sovereign Arab state in Western Asia constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula. With a land area of approximately 2,150,000 km² (830,000 sq mi), Saudi Arabia is geographically the fifth-largest state in Asia and second-largest state in the Arab world after Algeria. Saudi Arabia is bordered by Jordan and Iraq to the north, Kuwait to the northeast, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates to the east, Oman to the southeast and Yemen to the south. It is separated from Israel and Egypt by the Gulf of Aqaba. It is the only nation with both a Red Sea coast and a Persian Gulf coast and most of its terrain consists of arid desert droughts and mountains.

The area of modern-day Saudi Arabia formerly consisted of four distinct regions: Hejaz, Najd and parts of Eastern Arabia (Al-Ahsa) and Southern Arabia (‘Asir). The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded in 1932 by Ibn Saud. He united the four regions into a single state through a series of conquests beginning in 1902 with the capture of Riyadh, the ancestral home of his family, the House of Saud. Saudi Arabia has since been an absolute monarchy, effectively a hereditary dictatorship governed along Islamic lines. The ultraconservative Wahhabi religious movement within Sunni Islam has been called “the predominant feature of Saudi culture”, with its global spread largely financed by the oil and gas trade. Saudi Arabia is sometimes called “the Land of the Two Holy Mosques” in reference to Al-Masjid al-Haram (in Mecca) and Al-Masjid an-Nabawi (in Medina), the two holiest places in Islam. As of 2013, the state had a total population of 28.7 million, of which 20 million were Saudi nationals and 8 million were foreigners. As of 2017, the population is 33 million. The state’s official language is Arabic.

Petroleum was discovered on 3 March 1938 and followed up by several other finds in the Eastern Province. Saudi Arabia has since become the world’s largest oil producer and exporter, controlling the world’s second largest oil reserves and the sixth largest gas reserves. The kingdom is categorized as a World Bank high-income economy with a high Human Development Index and is the only Arab country to be part of the G-20 major economies. However, the economy of Saudi Arabia is the least diversified in the Gulf Cooperation Council, lacking any significant service or production sector (apart from the extraction of resources). The state has attracted criticism for its treatment of women and use of capital punishment. Saudi Arabia is a monarchical autocracy, has the fourth highest military expenditure in the world and SIPRI found that Saudi Arabia was the world’s second largest arms importer in 2010-2014. Saudi Arabia is considered a regional and middle power. In addition to the GCC, it is an active member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and OPEC.