THE DEATH OF A DESERT MONARCH

Even though it was the anniversary of the birth of the Prophet Mohammed, and thus an Islamic holiday, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia had a busy schedule. At 10 o'clock last Tuesday morning, he had an audience with the Oil Minister of neighboring Kuwait, Abdel Muttaleb al Kazimi, at the royal palace in Riyadh. Outside the King's office, Kazimi was greeted by Prince Faisal ibn Musaed, 26, a nephew of the King's and one of the 3,000-odd princes of the House of Saud. While Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister, Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, briefed the King on the audience, Kazimi and Prince Faisal, apparently a former classmate of Kazimi's, waited outside. When Yamani returned to usher Kazimi inside, the prince tagged along.

The King welcomed Kazimi, then turned to greet his nephew. At that moment the prince drew a revolver from his robe and shot the King twice in the head. He fired a third time, missed and threw the gun away. Faisal crumpled to the floor. Bodyguards wielding gold swords and submachine guns seized the prince. The King was rushed to a nearby hospital; shortly after noon an announcer on Radio Riyadh, his voice sobbing with emotion, said that Faisal was dead. Soon after, Radio Riyadh reported that the royal family had chosen Crown Prince Khalid ibn Abdul Aziz to succeed his brother and that Interior Minister Prince Fahd had been named Crown Prince (see box following page).

Not since the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser nearly five years ago had the Arab world been so deeply shaken by the loss of a political leader. Across the Middle East, radio stations broke into their regular programs to replay the emotion-choked voice of the Riyadh announcer. Panic and hysteria swept through the dusty streets of the capital as the news spread. Fierce Bedouin tribesmen wept openly; army and police units moved into strategic positions throughout the city. Within hours, every Arab government had proclaimed extended periods of mourning. Egypt's President Anwar Sadat, who had received extensive aid and political support from the Saudi King, called Faisal "a tireless fighter for the Arab cause." Tunisia's aging President Habib Bourguiba, who described Faisal as a friend of 30 years and "a force for stability and moderation," broke off a meeting with Libya's Strongman Muammar Gaddafi to head for Riyadh and join a procession of foreign leaders flying in for Faisal's funeral.

U.S. officials, who viewed the pro-American, anti-Communist Faisal as a strong moderating influence in the Middle East, were shocked by the news of his death. In Washington, President Ford described him as "a close friend of the United States" whose "wisdom and stature earned the respect of the entire world." Ford dispatched Vice President Nelson Rockefeller to Riyadh to convey his condolences to the royal family. Secretary of State Kissinger, who had conferred with Faisal only six days earlier in Riyadh, spoke of the King's "extraordinary personality" and of his unique influence on "both the moderates and the radical elements in the Arab world."

In Israel, which had regarded Faisal as an anti-Jewish zealot who financed Arab wars and terrorism, there was neither joy nor mourning but a noticeable sense of relief at the unexpected death of a powerful enemy. "A Jew-hating Arab king," declared the Tel Aviv religious daily Hatzofeh, "has been removed from the stage." Most Israelis obviously hoped that the change in Saudi leadership would create a period of instability for the Arab states, thereby causing them to become more preoccupied with their own problems and less concerned with Israel for a while.

After a remarkable reign, Faisal died at a time when his prestige throughout the Arab world was at a peak. In the past, many Arab radicals had savagely attacked him as a reactionary, tyrannical ruler of a feudal desert kingdom. But all that changed after Faisal dramatically imposed the oil embargo in October 1973. The Cairo daily al Gumhouriya, once a vehicle for anti-Faisal propaganda campaigns, observed last week: "The Arab nation can never forget his heroic stand during the October war, or that he launched the oil battle in support of the fighters in Sinai and the Golan, or the moral and material aid that he gave without limit to the front-line states." Recalling that Faisal's most abiding wish--to pray at the Dome of the Rock in an East Jerusalem under Arab jurisdiction--had not been fulfilled, the newspaper added: "He gave much toward achieving [the dream] that all Moslems can pray in Jerusalem when peace returns."

In the first hours after Faisal's assassination, there was confusion and uncertainty as to precisely what had happened in Riyadh. The official Saudi announcement had described the assassin, Prince Faisal ibn Musaed, as "mentally deranged." Inevitably there were rumors at the outset that the murder might have been part of a conspiracy to overthrow the House of Saud and with it one of the world's last remaining absolute monarchies. Only six years ago, Faisal had uncovered a plot by a number of his own air force officers; the conspiracy was apparently so widespread that some 60 officers were arrested, and the entire Saudi air force was grounded for a time. But last week's apprehension quickly waned after the announcement of the succession.

On the available evidence, the assassination seemed almost certainly to have been the act of one man. At week's end Prince Faisal was being held in a Riyadh prison; if he is judged mentally competent, he will probably be executed by decapitation, according to Saudi tradition. Reports from California and Colorado, where the prince had been a university student, described him as a quiet, likable, notably unstudious young man who had once been arrested in Boulder for selling LSD and hashish. To his blonde former girl friend, sometime Movie Actress (Bite of the Co bra) Christine Surma, 26, an ambitious young woman who also bills herself "the country's only female auctioneer," the prince was a "perfect gentleman" who was proud of his family and his country. "If he's crazy," she declared, "he's become so since he left the U.S."

Some reports suggested that the prince had become interested in radical Arab politics while studying abroad. Acquaintances noted that his brother Prince Khalid had been killed by Saudi police nine years ago while leading a demonstration of religious zealots against a television station in Riyadh.* There were also stories that the prince was angry with King Faisal because he had been refused permission to live abroad on account of his dissolute ways. Inevitably, radical newspapers in some Arab capitals implied that the prince had been a tool of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agen cy. In light of Washington's well-documented concern for keep ing King Faisal's friendship, the accusation seemed absurd.

Barely 24 hours after King Faisal's death, his successor was installed as Saudi Arabia's fourth monarch. In a large, incense-filled hall in Riyadh's royal palace, princes and Cabinet ministers, religious leaders and Bedouin chiefs gathered for the ceremony of mubaya 'a to kiss King Khalid 's face and shoul der and swear allegiance to him. Soldiers and bodyguards in red-and-white kaffiyehs held back the crowd; at one point, the new King thrust himself into the throng to lead forward a blind old man who had come to greet him.

Outside the Cabinet building, where Faisal had spent so many long workdays dealing with affairs of state and receiving his subjects, white tents were set up to shelter the dignitaries who had come to attend the funeral. The rules of Islam's strict Wahhabi sect, to which King Faisal be longed, stipulate that a man's body should be buried as soon as possible after his death; Faisal's funeral, however, was delayed 36 hours in order to await the arrival of foreign delegations.

In accordance with Wahhabi tradition, Faisal's body was washed with soap and hot water, wrapped in a seamless white sheet, and covered by a dark brown shroud. The corpse lay in state briefly at the al Id al Kabir Mosque, which was sur rounded by more than 100,000 mourning Saudis. "Where goes our knight?" some cried. "Where goes our protector against confusion and poverty?" During the fatiha, the introductory in vocation, and again during the prayer for the dead, Arab dignitaries prostrated themselves on the ground. At length, the King's body was transported, with six of Faisal's brothers serving as pallbearers, to a graveyard on the outskirts of Riyadh where commoners as well as royalty are buried. The body was laid to rest in an unmarked grave not far from that of Faisal's fa ther, Ibn Saud, founder of the kingdom.

King Khalid's first official statements were aimed at as suring the Saudis and the rest of the world that nothing was about to change. "King Faisal," he said, "laid the foundations for a good policy to develop Saudi Arabia and its relations with other countries. I will complete his mission and continue with his policies." Khalid, a quiet man who has never cared much about public affairs, will rely heavily on Crown Prince Fahd; though Khalid took the title of Premier, he named Fahd First Deputy Premier and also allowed him to retain his previous powerful post of Minister of Interior.

Under Khalid and Fahd, Saudi Arabia will certainly main tain its strong commitment to the Arab cause against Israel.

On the other hand, Fahd may be more willing than Faisal to accept the existence of Israel as a permanent state in the Middle East, provided that the Israelis relinquish all the territory they seized during the Six-Day War and that they reach an accommodation with the Palestinians.

Saudi Arabia's policy toward the U.S. and its oil diplomacy are not expected to change, at least for the present. The outgoing, expansive Prince Fahd, whose views are much better known than those of King Khalid, favors economic cooperation with the U.S. and represents his country on a joint U.S.-Saudi commission set up last year to plan economic and technical cooperation. Fahd also serves as acting chairman of the Saudis' Petroleum Council, which drafts oil and oil-revenue policy for the King's consideration. (In this capacity he is said to have developed a cordial dislike for able Oil Minister Yamani.) For several months, the Saudis have been negotiating a complete takeover of Aramco, the giant petroleum-producing company, of which they now own 60%. Fahd has acknowledged the un favorable impact of high oil prices on Western economies. Nonetheless, Saudi Arabia is not likely to break OPEC solidarity.

A few weeks ago, Prince Fahd promised flatly that the price of Saudi oil would drop if a peace settlement could be achieved in the Middle East. A settlement, he told members of the TIME news tour (TIME, Feb. 10), would "enable us to work seriously on real problems instead of killing ourselves. The price of oil would then come down, just as the prices of other commodities would come down." He advocated closer relationships between the industrial and oil-producing nations and insisted that the last thing the Saudi government wanted to do was cause a further increase in the price of oil "that would threaten the economies of our friends in the U.S. or Europe."

Internally, Khalid and Fahd will continue the ambitious development Saudi Arabia has set for the next decade based on its oil revenues ($28.9 billion last year). Industrialization will inevitably add to the pressures on the regime to relax Faisal's insistence upon conformity to Islamic laws. So will the presence of up to 2 million foreign workers and dependents in a country whose own population is only 5.7 million.

In his most eloquent moments, Prince Fahd speaks of turn ing Saudi Arabia into the Middle East's most advanced wel fare state. Like the late King, he feels the country should be run in a paternalistic and authoritarian style -- and that political evolution should be deliberately paced. "Our approach is ex actly opposite to that of Atatuerk of Turkey," Fahd told friends recently. "Atatuerk imposed changes on his people from the top. We try to act as a catalyst, giving the people a glimpse of change and letting them decide to accept it."

* Strict Islamic law forbids the representation of a human image in any form.

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