King Abdul-Aziz Growing Dependence On Saud in managing Country Affairs (/1938-1953)

On the internal level Prince Saud believed that one of his responsibilities was to tour the country and visit every village and every tribe in order to personally get to know the needs of his people. However, he managed to realize his goal more than once during different stages of his life. Like his father, his trips were always a source of happiness for the remote villages and scattered tribal locations which he visited.
The growing dependence of King Abdul-Aziz on his own son Saud in regulating the country's affairs, led to finalizing a lot of projects during that period. In an interview with Pollard, the British commissioner in Saudi Arabia, on the (19/12/1938) in Riyadh, King Abdul-Aziz mentioned that he had delegated more responsibilities to his son Saud, starting with the leading of the Eid-Al-fitr prayers, and ceremonies instead of him, because he was getting old. He added that, but unfortunately, the Second World War interrupted these intentions.

Upon The end of the war, the world came to the verge of new developments. In this new atmosphere King Abdul-Aziz started to implement his wishes to reinforce the position of Prince Saud in the eyes of his people as his successor and indisputably the second man in the country.
King Abdul-Aziz chose some traditional steps. In (1947), he asked Prince Saud to lead the pilgrimage and deliver the annual speech .After the Pilgrimage ceremony, Prince Saud addressed his people by saying, that his father King Abdul-Aziz is conscious of the demands of the Muslims and people of the region. He also announced that the government is willing to execute an important project, which was a paved road between Jeddah and Al-Medina-Al Munawara. In November of that year, Prince Saud inaugurated a project which drew water from the Valley of Fatima to Jeddah.


By the end of (1950), the expansion of the harbor in Jeddah was completed and ready to receive vessels from around the world which generated several advantages to the commerce, the economy and pilgrims.
In the education field, Al-Sharia'a College was established in Makkah in (1950), to become the nucleus of Umm AI Qura University. The Educators College in (1953) and Sharia'a College were established in Riyadh as a clear evidence of the King and his son's concern and encouragement of education in the Kingdom.
So, during their stay in Hejaz Prince Saud, asked his father's permission to return back to Riyadh after the Pilgrimage season, but the King asked him to stay back in the Hejaz region in order to assess the administrative system and present proposals concerning the reforms needed to strengthen the performance of the government, no matter how much effort or time such a task would require.