The university built by an oil company
When Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud succeeded to the throne of Saudi Arabia in August 2005, he set about realizing a dream that he had nurtured for over 30 years. His vision was to build a world-class graduatelevel university in the Kingdom that would capture the glory of Islam’s Golden Age of Science and bring the world’s best scientists and technologists in contact with Saudi citizens.
After months of being embroiled in endless committees, the King’s project seemed to be going nowhere. Then the legendary Saudi Minister of Oil, Ali Al-Naimi, suggested to the King that the giant Saudi oil mining company, Saudi Aramco, should take charge of the project. After all, they had project-managed the building of massive oil refineries and other complex installations, so why couldn’t they build a university? After a few moments, the King, who was a man of few words, said “okay”, and within a few weeks the multi-billion dollar project was on its way.
Since the 1960s, more than a dozen universities have been built in the Kingdom but they all focused on the general educational needs of Saudis, or, like the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, on the training of engineers in specific fields. They were also strictly segregated by gender in accordance with local custom. The King wanted something totally different, a university open to people from around the world based on merit alone that would become a ‘beacon of lasting peace, hope and reconciliation’. He wanted a modern Bayt Al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) like the famous learning institution in Baghdad that had thrived from the 8th to the 11th century. He also wanted a museum to be established within the university that celebrated the contributions of Muslim scholars to science and technology. A budget of $86 million was allocated and the Museum of Science and Technology in Islam (MOSTI) was created in time for the official opening of the university.
Building a university was a massive undertaking, even for Saudi Aramco, and recruiting the best staff and equipping it with the latest apparatus for cutting-edge research was a new challenge for an oil company. In truth, they had never done anything like it before, yet, within four years they created the King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST), which is a thriving institution today.
My role in the creation of the museum was to develop the contents for the interactive displays. In April 2017, I was invited back to KAUST to give a lecture, ‘Quest for Perfection: The Contribution of Islamic Scientists to the Golden Age of Islam’. It was a wonderful experience of meeting old friends, witnessing the spectacular growth of the university, and sharing my views on Islamic contributions to science. It was also a formidable challenge for an Eastern Cape boytjie, but I accepted it in the spirit of Aramco. I even gave a talk to over 100 scientists in the Red Sea Research Centre on Grahamstown’s favourite fish, the coelacanth.
I met Ali Al-Naimi once, at the official opening of the museum. He was a diminutive man, about 160 cm, but you could sense the energy and drive bottled up inside him. He literally grew out of the desert, the child of nomadic Bedouins, who started his education at the age of nine and didn’t wear shoes until he was 10.
From the age of four he was a shepherd tending the family’s herd of goats in the harsh Empty Quarter, and his first job in Saudi Aramco was as an underage office boy. He went on to became the first Saudi CEO of the giant oil company and then the Kingdom’s highly influential oil minister for a record 21 years. He epitomised the Saudi Aramco ‘do anything’ nature. • Mike Bruton is a retired scientist and a busy writer; mikefish
esbruton@gmail.com