In June 1935, the Saudi Crown Prince Saud visited Leiden and Snouck acted as host. He continued to be interested in developments in the Arabian Peninsula and trained successive Dutch consuls who were deployed to Jeddah. Snouck was a great admirer of the Saudi king Ibn Saud, whom he called ‘a first-rank political genius’. He commented on developments in the Middle East, opposing Zionism, in the newspaper De Telegraaf. What right did the Jews have to the land that their ancestors had once forcibly conquered and from which they were expelled in Roman times? According to Snouck, the Zionist project was nothing more than an attempt to take possession of a land belonging to Christian and Muslim Arabs with the help of gradually increasing immigration.
Snouck and Ibn Saoed in Leiden, 1935, inv.nr. Or. 8952 L 5