Ibn Saud

Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud was the son of an exiled emir, driven from Riyadh in 1890. He took the city back in 1902 and began a long campaign of consolidation - Najd by 1921, the Hejaz by 1925, always with the backing of Islamic revivalists whose beliefs he enforced by ordering the demolition of shrines and cemeteries. On 23 September 1932 his domains became the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with him as its first king. Six years later prospectors struck oil, and after World War II production began in scale. He fathered at least 45 sons; every Saudi king since has been one of them. He died in 1953, twenty-one years into a reign that redrew the region.