page_title: Ibn Saud
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Ibn Saud / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: Photo of King Faisal I of Syria with King Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia in the mid-1920s.
context_page_description: Abdulaziz ibn Abdul Rahman ibn Faisal ibn Turki ibn Abdullah ibn Muhammad Al Saud, known in the West as Ibn Saud, was the first monarch and founder of Saudi Arabia, the "third Saudi state". He was ruler of the whole Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from 23 September 1932 to 9 November 1953 but ruled parts of it as early as 1902.
  He reconquered his family's ancestral home city of Riyadh in 1902, starting three decades of conquests that made him the ruler of nearly all of central and north Arabia. He consolidated his control over the Najd in 1922, then conquered the Hejaz in 1925. He extended his dominions into what later became the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932. As King, he presided over the discovery of petroleum in Saudi Arabia in 1938 and the beginning of large-scale oil production after World War II. He fathered many children, including 45 sons, and all of the subsequent kings of Saudi Arabia through at least the year 2020.
context_section_description: In accordance with the customs of his people, Ibn Saud headed a polygamous household comprising several wives and concubines. According to some sources, he had twenty-two consorts. Mohammed Leopold Weiss reported in 1929 that one of his spouses poisoned him in 1924 which caused poor sight of one eye. He later forgave her, but at the same time divorced her. On the other hand, many of his marriages were contracted in order to cement alliances with other clans, during the period when the Saudi state was founded and stabilized. He was the father of almost a hundred children, including forty-five sons. 
  Ibn Saud was a tall man standing between 1.93 m (6 ft 4 in) and 1.98 m (6 ft 6 in).
caption: Ibn Saud (right) and Iraqi King Faisal I (left) in 1931
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