Emirate of Jabal Shammar

The Emirate of Jabal Shammar, the Rashidi emirate, was the northern Arabian state that contested the peninsula with the Saudis, lasting from 1836 to 1921. The Shammar tribe was already a power in Najd when its Rashidi chiefs made Ha'il their capital, the Mountain of Shammar giving the state its name. From Ha'il's mud-brick palace the Rashidis ruled parts of what are now Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Jordan, taxing pilgrim caravans and playing Ottomans against Saudis with desert skill. For two generations the peninsula hung in balance: Rashidi Ha'il against Saudi Riyadh, cousins in blood and enemies in ambition, each calling on Baghdad or Istanbul as fortune turned. The First World War broke the balance. The Rashidis backed the Ottomans, the Saudis backed the British, and when Ottoman guns fell silent, Ibn Saud marched north and took Ha'il in 1921. The emirate dissolved into the expanding Saudi realm, and the mountain of Shammar gives its name now to a province, not a throne.