The king, who suffered the first of several strokes in 1995, was overweight and diabetic, and long suffered from maladies including arthritis, gall bladder problems and a blood clot in his eye. He used a cane or a wheelchair. His brother, Prince Abdullah, the crown prince, ultimately assumed many executive responsibilities. Fahd's reign, which in effect began with the long illness of his predecessor, Khalid, was characterized by immense change and the balancing of opposing forces. He oversaw the exploitation of the kingdom's oil wealth and the expansion of its private sector. He sent a generation of Saudis to be educated in the West. And he let hundreds of thousands of American troops be based in Saudi Arabia during the first war against Iraq despite heated criticism from other Arab countries. His influence in global politics included helping President Ronald Reagan's administration orchestrate and finance its illegal operation to sell arms to Iran while aiding Nicaraguan rebels in the 1980s. He gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Palestinians fighting Israel and established religious schools, some of which have been described as breeding grounds for terrorists, throughout the Islamic world. The power and prestige of controlling the world's biggest pool of oil, a quarter of the planet's reserves, spoke for itself. But depressed petroleum prices during much of Fahd's reign, which began in 1982, created economic pressures unthinkable during the high-flying 1970s. As the Saudi population surged and employment opportunities dwindled, the kingdom's per capita income sank to a third of what it had been at Fahd's coronation. The king, nonetheless, used his country's ability to pump more oil almost at will as a damper on oil prices, so as not to damage the world economy. But he understandably worried when prices fell too low to pay the kingdom's bills, and in 1986 he fired his oil minister, Ahmed Zaki Yamani, for allowing crude prices to fall to $10 a barrel from $30. In 1986, Fahd boldly declared his other source of power by naming himself Custodian of the Two Holy Places, a reference to the Saudi cities of Mecca and Medina, Islam's most sacred sites. But it was exactly this religious role that was most challenged during the latter part of his reign, when Islamic conservatives derided the royal family as corrupt and attacked the government's closeness to the United States as near satanic. It was thus of high significance that in December 2003, an edict in Fahd's name ordered religious scholars to marshal doctrinal arguments to fight Islamic terrorists. In 1994, the king stripped Osama bin Laden of his citizenship because of his activities against the royal family. The king's other antiterrorist actions, many probably actually performed by Prince Abdullah, included removing more than 2,000 radical preachers from their mosques. Other than the principality of Liechtenstein, Saudi Arabia is the only country named after a family. Fahd's Saud family has ruled since 1932 when his father, King Abdel Aziz ibn Saud, formed the family's third kingdom on the Arabian Peninsula. Beginning in the mid-18th century, the Sauds had claimed religious authority as legitimacy for their rule. This derived from their alliance with the Wahhabi sect of Muslims, led by the al-Sheikh family. In return for the endorsement from the ultrastrict Wahhabis, the Sauds act as their protectors and enforcers. But the resultant stability had a price. Fahd could pursue modernization initiatives, like educating more women, only to the extent that it did not provoke his critical religious base. Moreover, he owed clerics the policies that they truly liked. These included the development of universities that taught little beyond Islamic doctrine and ended up producing thousands of theology students. The conservatives applauded his support of Muslims fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, but the policy ended up fostering the development of a radical current close to bin Laden's positions. The challenge for the king was to create modern farms and skyscrapers in the desert, while still allowing Wahhabi enforcers to wander in public places with sticks to enforce Islamic law in matters like women's dress. Even as Saudi Arabia became a regional superpower on the strength of billions of dollars in arms purchases from the United States, conservatives criticized this dependency. Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department, the British Foreign Office and human rights monitors persistently criticized Saudi Arabia's treatment of non-Muslims, women and prisoners. Where once there were only Bedouin, the legendary desert wanderers, Fahd had to balance powerful constituencies, including a new technocratic middle class, an estimated 5,000 princes, a legion of foreign workers and some Bedouin. It sometimes added up to contradictory policies: Fahd was a champion of educating women from the time he was named the kingdom's first education minister in 1953, but only in his last years, under considerable Western pressure, did he make serious efforts to get them jobs. In 1992, Fahd instituted reforms in government, creating a consultative council to advise royalty, decentralizing some powers and widening the pool of candidates eligible to become king. But his powers remained absolute, and he took pains to emphasize that the reforms were in no way a move toward Western-style democracy. He made no attempt to hide his status as one of the world's richest men. Even when following the Arab passion of visiting the desert, he made the trip in a fleet of 18-wheel Mercedes trucks. Fahd was born in Riyadh in 1923, according to his official Web site, www.kingfahdbinabdulaziz.com. His mother, Hassa bint Ahmed al-Sudairi, was the most favored of his father's many wives and came from the powerful Sudairi clan. His father married at least three Sudairi women, including Hassa, as well as 14 women from other clans, and consolidated his kingdom through such intertribal marriages. Fahd attended what was called the palace school with other princes and studied Islamic history and religion, traditional politics, the Arabic language and desert lore. As a teenager, he would wait outside his father's office so he could slip inside when advisers were summoned.