Acknowledgments
Writing this book would have been impossible without the various invaluable contributions of many people to whom I am deeply grateful. My heartfelt thanks go to Ulrike Freitag, whose steadfast support and relentless help and inspiration formed the solid foundation for this book. Besides her professional guidance as an extremely versed researcher of the Middle East in general and of Saudi Arabia in particular, her spirited passion for the history of the Arabian Peninsula and her hands-on attitude were a great inspiration and fueled my own research. Nelida Fuccaro, the great connoisseur of the modern history of the Arab Gulf, was the second reader of my dissertation. Her council, criticism, creative approach of the field and her humor have countless times helped to carry me over the more frustrating and difficult aspects of doing research in this fascinating and at times challenging part of the world. I owe very much to my wonderful colleagues at the ZMO, whose thoughtful insights and criticism have never failed to improve my work. I particularly want to thank Nora Lafi, Nushin Atmaca, Khaled Adham, Jeanine DaÄyeli, Dietrich Retz, Peter Wien, Steffen Wippel, Abdoulaye Sounaye and Jeanne Féaux de la Croix for their collegial support and friendship. I would like to thank Silke Nagel, Svenja Becherer, Michael Schutz, Thomas Ripper, Ursula Benzin and Alisher Karabaev for making possible almost everything that was necessary to conduct this project â from helping with the arrangement of research trips and with publishing parts of my research to retrieving digital data and moving piles of books from and to the ZMO library. A special thanks goes to Patrick Winkelhorst who brilliantly completed the dire task of organizing hundreds of archival documents.
I am very grateful for the assistance that I have received by the researchers and staff at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh during two field research trips in 2012 and 2013. I express my deepest gratitude to Saʿad Sowayan and Ahmad al-Shanbary for their council, introspective and help. I am also very grateful to Jafar al-Shayyeb and Abdulrasul al-Gheryafi for inviting me to Qatif and turning my visit into an extremely illuminating and memorable experience. There are no words to express my gratitude to the many amazing people in Riyadh, the Eastern Province and the United States who have welcomed a foreign doctoral student in their offices and homes, who have not tired of tapping into their personal networks and who have entrusted me with their personal memories and perspectives. I am especially grateful to A.M. who took a personal interest in my research, opened otherwise closed doors and lent me mobility. I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to Jim Mandaville, who not only agreed to a telephone interview but read and commented on my work, copied countless maps and helped me to interpret them, answered e-mails and encouraged me to go on. I want to thank the staff at the archives and university libraries in the United States, the United Kingdom and in Saudi Arabia, whose work was essential for my research. Another special thanks goes to Nienke Brienen-Moolenaar from De Gruyter Brill who skillfully guided me through the process of publication as well as to the anonymous reviewers for their extremely helpful recommendations.
Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my family and friends who have never wavered in their faithful care and encouragement. I thank the wonderful Ola Ghrawi, Nahida Soued and Rahaf Shami who helped me with interpreting my Arabic sources as well as Jenny Orantek and Wolfgang Welscher who have been extremely generous with their support during the last stages of writing this book. I especially thank my parents for being there whenever they were needed. And I thank my wonderful husband Amer Ghrawi, without whose encouragement I would never have embarked on this journey and who has since been my most steadfast ally.