Ikhwan

The Ikhwan (Arabic: الإخوان‎‎‎, (The) Brethren), also Akhwan, was the first Saudi army made up of traditionally nomadic tribesmen which formed a significant military force of the ruler Ibn Saud and played an important role in establishing him as ruler of most of the Arabian Peninsula in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Ikhwan become later the Saudi Arabian National Guard.

The Ikhwan first appeared around 1902. They were the product of clergy who aimed to break up the Bedouin tribes and settle them around the wells and oases of the sedentary Arab populations, mainly those of the Najd, on the grounds that nomadic life was incompatible with the strict conformity of their interpretation of Islam. The newly Islamicized Bedouin would be converted from nomad raiders to soldiers for Islam. The cleric/teachers of the Ikhwan were dedicated to their idea of the purification and the unification of Islam, and some of the newly converted Ikhwan rebelled against their emir Ibn Saud, accusing him of religious laxity. After the conquest of the Hejaz in 1924 brought all of the current Saudi state under Ibn Saud's control, the monarch found himself in conflict with elements of the Ikhwan. He crushed their power at the Battle of Sabilla in 1929, following which the militia was reorganised into the Saudi Arabian National Guard.

According to scholar David Cummins, around 1913, the same time that Ibn Saud regained al-Hasa, there emerged in obscure circumstances a zealous movement known as the Ikhwan (Brethren). Sunni ulama went out to domesticate nomadic tribesmen, to convert them from idolatry to Islam and to make them soldiers for Saudi expansion. The Ikhwan became zealous religious warriors united and motivated by idealism more than allegiance to Ibn Saud. The result was a rebellion by some of the Ikhwan against their creator, who crushed them and in so doing reasserted dynastic power over the religious mission.

The arid, remote region of Najd had been ruled by the House of Saud and religiously dominated by the Islamic revival movement known as (Ikhwan-men-tah-allah) (with some exceptions) since the mid-18th century. Ikhwant-men-tah-allah was a movement of townspeople, and traditionally thought of the beduin nomadic herders as "bearers of religious ignorance, jahiliyyah and thus as raw material for conversion". To remedy this situation, the beduin were gathered in agricultural settlements known as hijra, where they were to be taught farming, crafts or trades and how to be "proper Muslims". There were 52 hujar (plural of hijra) by 1920 and 120 by 1929. Ikhwan were known for wearing white turbans rather than the traditional Arab Kufiya (roped headcloth), and for covering their faces when they encountered Europeans or Arabs from outside Saudi Arabia.

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