Inside the Kingdom by Robert Lacey Read Free Book Online

loudly, saying that Al-Khidr [“the Green One,” a shadowy Islamic righter-of-wrongs sometimes confused with the Mahdi] would be arriving with the new century, and that there would be changes. Everyone listened very seriously and nodded their heads. A lot of people, it seemed to me, believed him.”

    Saudi coffins are not wooden boxes: they are more like stretchers—open litters on which the dead are transported to their resting place beneath a shroud. One of the perks of being a Meccan is that your relatives can shuttle your corpse into the holy of holies for a farewell prayer at the very heart of Islam. So twenty or so such “coffins” provided the ideal cover for Juhayman and his followers to smuggle their final consignments of weapons into Mecca’s Grand Mosque in the small hours of November 20, 1979—the first day of Muharram, the first Islamic month of the year 1400. Beneath the shrouds were dozens of firearms: pistols, rifles, Kalashnikovs, and magazines of ammunition.
    Fajr, the predawn prayer, would be called that day at 5:18 A.M.—it is timed to the moment before sunrise when the first glimmer of brightness shows along the horizon—and the “mourners” aroused no special interest as they filed through the ghostly light. The shrouded cargoes were coming and going all the time, and on this particular morning the light was more ghostly than usual. As Juhayman and his followers fanned out quietly with their weapons around the coolness of the Grand Mosque’s massive tiled courtyard, the hilal, the thinnest of crescent moons, could be discerned in the sky above them: new moon, new month, new year, new century—though, as Riyadh’s governor, the sardonic Prince Salman, would later point out, the old century would not be truly complete until the end of 1400, with the new, fifteenth century beginning on the first day of 1401.
    As the first prayer call of A.H. 1400 sounded, the slight, barefoot figure of Juhayman went scampering up the steps to the public address system to jostle aside the imam and commandeer his microphone. Celebratory shots rang out. Men were firing rifles into the air while the Brothers were clustering around Mohammed Al-Qahtani, the Dreamed-of One, shaking his hand and offering him homage.
    “Behold the Mahdi!” they were shouting. “Behold the Right-Guided One!”
    Now was the time for Juhayman’s prepared proclamation to be read out by one of his followers.
    “The Mahdi will bring justice to the earth!” rattled the message from the loudspeakers, providing the small number of confused and sleepy policemen around the Mosque with the first explanation of what was amiss. “Juhayman is the Mahdi’s brother! He calls on you to recognize his brother! Recognize the Mahdi who will cleanse this world of its corruptions!”
    From beneath their robes several dozen more men produced rifles, joined in the shouts and fanned out purposefully toward the Mosque’s twenty-five double gateways. At this cue a couple of hundred men leaped up from among the worshippers. Policemen and a young assistant imam who tried to resist were shot dead. The gunmen reached the gates. The doors were shut, and the shrine revered by Muslims as the holiest place on earth was sealed off. The House of God had been hijacked.

CHAPTER 3

    Siege
    T he extraordinary news that the Grand Mosque had been kidnapped was received in Riyadh with consternation and something approaching panic.
    “I wish they had done that to my palace, not to the Mosque,” exclaimed the pious old King Khaled with horror.
    The sixty-seven-year-old Khaled had come to the throne four years earlier in the aftermath of a family compromise. In terms of seniority, the brother in line after Faisal was Khaled’s forceful elder brother Mohammed. But age has never been the sole criterion for authority in Arabia. The tribe searches for the candidate who can best bring consensus, and the inner councils of the Al-Saud had long been wary of Mohammed as too