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LONDON: The Arab world is mourning the dying of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of Nice Britain, an unwavering pal of the area and its folks all through the seven a long time of her reign.
Solely three months in the past, Her Majesty celebrated her platinum jubilee, marking the seventieth anniversary of her accession to the throne.
In June, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wished her “honest felicitations and finest well being and happiness,” as they joined different heads of state from throughout the area in sending messages of congratulations on the event of her jubilee.
Now, they’ve the unhappy job of sending their sincerest condolences to the British royal household and the folks of the UK.
King Abdullah with the Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh durng the go to of the Saudi king. (AFP/File Picture)
For lots of the ruling households all through the Center East, the dying of the Queen marks not solely the passing of a fellow monarch but additionally a pal, and a tragic finish to a historical past of friendship that dates again to the earliest days of her reign.
That reign started on Feb. 6, 1952, the day her father, King George VI, died at Sandringham Home in Norfolk whereas the 25-year-old Elizabeth and her husband, Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, had been in Kenya throughout a tour of Africa.
Having left England as a princess, the king’s daughter flew dwelling in mourning as Queen Elizabeth II. Her coronation passed off in Westminster Abbey on June 2 the next yr, 1953.
Among the many friends on the ceremony had been members of 4 royal households from the Gulf: The rulers, or their representatives, of what had been then the British protectorates of Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar, and Prince Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, representing the 78-year-old King Abdulaziz, Saudi Arabia’s founder and first king, who had solely 5 months left to reside.
The Queen assembly with King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. (AFP/File Images)
The bonds between the British and Saudi monarchies can’t be measured by the frequency of formal events alone, though an examination of the historical past of state visits hosted by Buckingham Palace reveals an illuminating distinction.
In the course of the Queen’s reign there have been no fewer than 4 official visits to Britain by Saudi heads of state — a quantity equaled by solely 4 different nations on this planet, together with the UK’s near-neighbors, France and Germany.
The primary Saudi monarch to journey to London was King Faisal, who was greeted with all of the pomp and ceremony of a full British state welcome at the beginning of his eight-day go to in Might 1967.
Met by Her Majesty, different members of the British royal household and main politicians, together with Prime Minister Harold Wilson, the king rode to Buckingham Palace with the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh in an open, horse-drawn state carriage that trundled by means of London streets lined with cheering crowds.
Throughout a busy schedule, the king discovered time to go to and pray at London’s Islamic Cultural Centre. His son, Prince Bandar, who that yr graduated from the Royal Air Power Faculty Cranwell, in Lincolnshire, deputized for his father throughout a go to to examine English Electrical Lightning fighter jets being readied for cargo to Saudi Arabia.
The prince would later fly these Lightning fighter jets as a pilot within the Royal Saudi Air Power.
King Faisal’s successors adopted in his footsteps with their very own state visits to the UK: King Khalid in 1981, King Fahd in 1987 and King Abdullah in 2007.
Different monarchs from the area additionally paid formal visits to the Queen over time. The primary was King Faisal II, the final king of Iraq, who visited Britain in July 1956. Two years later, he and his spouse and different members of the royal household had been assassinated through the coup d’etat that established Iraq as a republic.
In 1966, Her Majesty hosted King Hussein of Jordan and his British-born spouse, Toni Avril Gardiner, who upon her marriage modified her title to Princess Muna Al-Hussein.
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II with then-Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, and meets with UAE vp and Ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum. (AFP/File Images)
Different state visits adopted from the heads of state of Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Egypt and Kuwait.
The Queen, in the meantime, visited the Center East on a number of events. In February 1979, she flew to the area on the supersonic jet Concorde and visited Riyadh and Dhahran throughout a Gulf tour that additionally took her to Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE and Oman.
In Saudi Arabia she was hosted by King Khalid and loved a collection of occasions together with a desert picnic and a state dinner at Maathar Palace in Riyadh. In return, the Queen and Prince Philip hosted a dinner for the Saudi royal household on board Her Majesty’s Yacht Britannia.
Poignantly, Britannia would return to the Gulf just one extra time, in January 1997 throughout its last tour earlier than the yacht was decommissioned in December that yr.
In 2010, the Queen returned to the area to satisfy Sheikh Khalifa, ruler of the UAE, and Sultan Qaboos of Oman.
Nonetheless, the relationships between the British royal household and its counterparts within the Gulf haven’t been restricted to nice, formal events of state. Evaluation of the common Courtroom Round revealed by Buckingham Palace reveals that members of the royal household met Gulf monarchs or members of their households greater than 200 instances between 2011 and 2021 alone. Forty of those casual conferences had been with members of the Home of Saud.
King Khalid of Saudia Arabia welcomed at Victoria Station by Queen Elizabeth in 1981. (Alamy)
The frequency of those conferences with heads of state from the Center East, equal to virtually one a fortnight, function proof of the sturdy bonds of friendship that existed between Her Majesty and the area.
One such assembly passed off in March 2018, when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had a non-public viewers and lunch with the queen at Buckingham Palace. Later, he dined with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge at Clarence Home, throughout a go to to the UK that included conferences with the then British Prime Minister Theresa Might and her international secretary, Boris Johnson.
Critical issues, similar to commerce and protection agreements, are sometimes the matters of dialogue throughout such conferences. However good-natured enjoyable, quite than inflexible formality, has been the hallmark of personal gatherings between the royal households, as Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 2003 to 2006, would later recall.
In 2003, for instance, Crown Prince Abdullah, Saudi Arabia’s future king, was a visitor of the Queen at Balmoral Fortress, her property in Scotland. It was the prince’s first go to to Balmoral and, fortunately accepting an invite for a tour of the massive property, he climbed into the passenger seat of a Land Rover, solely to find that his driver and information was none aside from the Queen herself.
In 2010, the Queen returned to the area and met with Sultan Qaboos of Oman. (AFP)
Her Majesty, who served through the Second World Struggle as a military driver, at all times drove herself at Balmoral, the place the locals had been used to seeing her out and about behind the wheel of one in all her beloved Land Rovers. She was additionally recognized for having nice enjoyable, on the expense of her friends, as she hurtled alongside slim nation lanes and throughout the property’s rugged terrain.
In keeping with Sir Sherard’s account, Prince Abdullah took the impromptu curler coaster experience nicely — though at one level, “by means of his interpreter,” the crown prince felt obliged to “implore the Queen to decelerate and focus on the street forward.”
Apart from the commonality of their royal standing, the Queen and the monarchs of the Gulf bonded over their mutual love of horses, a shared curiosity that dated again to no less than 1937 when Elizabeth was an 11-year-old princess.
To mark the event of the coronation of her father that yr, King Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia, introduced King George VI with an Arabian mare. A life-size bronze statue of the horse, Turfa, was unveiled in 2020 on the Arabian Horse Museum in Diriyah. On the time, Richard Oppenheim, then the UK’s deputy ambassador to the Kingdom, instructed how the 2 royal households have at all times shared this frequent curiosity.
Clockwise from Left: Queen Elizabeth with Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah; assembly Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani; with the King Abdullah II and Queen Rania of Jordan. (AFP/File Images)
“The Queen has many horses, and King Salman and the Saudi royal household even have a long-held love of horses,” he stated.
The Queen additionally shared this appreciation of horses with Sheikh Mohammed Al-Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and vice-president of the UAE, who owns the internationally famend Godolphin horse-racing stables and stud in Newmarket, the house of British horse racing.
The 2 had been typically seen collectively at nice occasions on the horse-racing calendar, such because the annual five-day Royal Ascot assembly, considered the jewel within the crown of the British social season. Workforce Godolphin has had a number of winners at Royal Ascot, and the Queen’s horses have gained greater than 70 races there since her coronation.
This yr, 10 of the Queen’s horses ran at Ascot. Nonetheless, struggling more and more with mobility issues, she didn’t attend the occasion. It was the primary time she had missed it in her 70-year reign.
No fewer than 16 British prime ministers served underneath the Queen. When she ascended the throne in 1952, Winston Churchill, the revered wartime chief, was prime minister. His successor, Anthony Eden, appointed by the Queen in 1955, was the primary of 15 who would obtain her official blessing at Buckingham Palace.
Queen Elizabeth – 1926-2022. (Provided/Royal Household)
The Queen broke with this custom solely as soon as, and solely on the very finish of her reign. More and more frail, she was suggested by her docs to not journey to London from her Scottish dwelling, Balmoral, and so it was there, on Tuesday this week, that she met Liz Truss, the newly appointed chief of the Conservative celebration, and requested her to kind a authorities.
It was to be the ultimate formal obligation of her lengthy reign.
In the course of the jubilee weekend in June, flags flew from properties and public buildings throughout the UK and the broader Commonwealth of 150 million folks, 1000’s of avenue events had been held, beacons had been lit throughout the nation and British voices all over the place sang the nationwide anthem.
At this time, because the flags fly at half-mast and the royal baton is handed to the Queen’s eldest son, Charles, the British folks, after 70 years of singing the phrases “God Save The Queen,” should now be taught to as soon as once more sing “God Save The King.”
On her twenty first birthday, in a speech broadcast on the radio from Cape City whereas she was nonetheless Princess Elizabeth, the longer term Queen made a solemn pledge.
“I declare earlier than you all,” she stated, “that my complete life, whether or not it’s lengthy or brief, shall be dedicated to your service.”
Her life, fortunately, was lengthy. Her devotion to her obligation was full.
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