Item: i111298

Authentic Coin of:

Saudi Arabia under  Saud bin Abdulaziz Al Saud – King: 9 November  1953 – 2 November 1964
1955 (AH 1374) Silver  Half-Riyal 24mm (5.81 grams) 0.917 Silver (0.1725 oz. ASW)
Reference: KM# 38, Schön# 26 
ملك المملكة العربية السعودية سعود بن عبد العزيز  آل سعود , Inscription within beaded circle,  crossed swords below within design flanked by palm trees.
نصف ريال عربي سعودي ضرب في المكرّمة مكة ١٣٧٤ ١/٢, Inscription within beaded circle, legend above,  value below within design flanked by palm trees.

Script: Arabic You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity. 

  Saud bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (15 January 1902 – 23 February 1969) was the King of Saudi Arabia from 9 November 1953 to 2 November 1964. Prior to his ascension, he served as the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia from 11 May 1933 to 9 November 1953. He was the second son of King Abdulaziz, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, and the first of Abdulaziz’s six sons who were kings. (Five more sons of Abdulaziz have since ruled the country: King Faisal, King Khalid, King Fahd, King Abdullah, and King Salman.)

Saud was the second son of King Abdulaziz and Wadha bint Muhammad Al Orair. The death of Saud’s elder brother, Prince Turki, in 1919 poised Saud to become his father’s successor; King Abdulaziz appointed him as crown prince in 1933. Saud served as a commander in Abdulaziz’s conquests that led to the founding of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932, and he represented his father in neighbouring countries. He played a role in the financial reforms of Saudi Arabia, preparing the first state budget in 1948 and establishing the Saudi Central Bank in 1952. Saud also oversaw the country’s infrastructural development.

Upon his father’s death in 1953, Saud ascended to the throne and reorganized the government. He established the convention that the king of Saudi Arabia presides over the Council of Ministers. Saud sought to maintain friendly relations with the United States, whilst also supporting other Arab countries in their conflicts against Israel. Under his reign, Saudi Arabia joined the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961. However, Saud’s inability to counter the Saudi national debt brought him into a power struggle with his half-brother, Crown Prince Faisal, culminating in the forced abdication of Saud and the proclamation of Faisal as king. Saud went into exile and made an attempt, supported by some of his sons, to take back the throne, but this was unsuccessful. He died in Athens, Greece, in 1969.

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.