Saudi citizens declared on Sunday loyalty to their new ruler, King Salman, as global leaders poured in to the world’s largest oil exporter to offer condolences on King Abdullah’s death.
Regional governors received pledges on behalf of King Salman and his declared successors, Crown Prince Muqrin and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the official Saudi Press Agency reported on Sunday, without saying where it got the information.
The Royal Court declared a public holiday on Sunday. The Saudi stock exchange and central bank are closed. Restaurants in the capital, Riyadh, were packed with Saudi parents and their children, a contrast from the somber mood that prevailed Friday after the announcement of the 90-year-old Abdullah’s death.
World leaders began paying respects on Saturday, and President Barack Obama cancelled a trip to India’s Taj Mahal to fly to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 27. Islamic scholars, tribal leaders and officials offered their loyalty on Friday in the capital.
Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has taken the helm of the biggest Arab economy amid political turmoil in the Middle East and tumbling oil prices.
Before his half-brother’s funeral on Friday, he moved swiftly to dispel concerns about the succession process with the appointment of Muqrin, a half brother, as crown prince and Mohammed bin Nayef, interior minister, as the second-in-line to the throne. If that line of succession holds, Prince Mohammed will one day become the first Saudi ruler who isn’t a son of the kingdom’s founder. King Abdulaziz, known as Ibn Saud, died in 1953 and all six subsequent kings, including Salman, have been his children.
Smooth Transition:
Salman’s quick appointments “really tamped down all the talk about a possible struggle over succession,” said Fahad Nazer, a political analyst at JTG Inc., a consultancy based in Vienna, Virginia. His son, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was named defense minister and head of the royal court.
The kingdom’s top religious scholar, Sheikh Abdulaziz Al Al-Sheikh, praised the “peaceful transfer of power” as a “great achievement,” according to the Saudi Press Agency.
“Ours is a true and sincere pledge of allegiance to which we are committed to pay our leaders” as long as “they are doing what pleases God,” he said.
The kingdom’s austere form of Islam dates to a 1744 pact between the Al Saud family and Sheikh Mohammed Ibn Abdul Wahhab, a religious scholar who denounced the practices of the era’s Muslims as impure. Religious scholars today maintain a dominant role in the country’s social customs, courts and education system.