Fahd of Saudi Arabia

Born sometime between 1920 and 1923, Fahd bin Abdulaziz was the eighth son of the kingdom's founder and the eldest of the Sudairi Seven, a powerful bloc of brothers by the same mother. He climbed through the ministries - Education from 1953 to 1962 under King Saud, then Interior until 1975 - before becoming crown prince when his half-brother Khalid took the throne following King Faisal's assassination in 1975. Fahd was already the de facto leader during Khalid's reign, the ailing king a figure more than a force. When Khalid died in 1982, Fahd formally ascended and introduced the Basic Law in 1992, the closest thing to a constitution the kingdom had seen. A stroke in 1995 left him debilitated, and for the last ten years of his life Crown Prince Abdullah governed as regent. Fahd died in August 2005, his 23-year reign the longest in Saudi history, though much of it belonged to other hands.