David Commins: evaluation

Transcript context

…How is it they do it? What gets sent where to do what? I would say it was accomplished almost inch by inch. It took 30 years for the first Saudi principality, I would call it, in their original home, Diriyah, which is now an outskirt of Riyadh. It took them 30 years to conquer Riyadh. Thirty years. It was, I would say, more a matter of persistence and willpower than resources or strategy. Now, there is one thesis out there, which really doesn’t have tremendous amount of evidence to support it, that the spread of firearms has something to do with the success of Saudi expansion. I think that’s an interesting hypothesis, but the evidence for that is pretty thin. I really think it was a matter of persistence, and then the ability of the Wahhabi mission to gain a following to form, if you would, a Wahhabi party in different towns in Nejd, and to support the Saudis when they were able to get the upper hand over a local ruling family. I attribute the success of Saudi power to persistence and leadership and having that religious commonality. Some people just did buy into this teaching. How much is there ever a de facto Ottoman rule over parts of Saudi?…

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