25
wo
n.  In retaliation, he had been ambushed by five members of the
rival gang.  The solitary fighter had not survived the encounter.
Though the dignitary has sired a small squadron of male children by
his many wives, he is now down to one last son.  His male children
have all been gambled...and lost.
What would have happened if those gambles had paid off?  The
victorious sons would have become heroes of the desert, exalted
leaders with many wives, much wealth, and the respect and envy of
their fellows.  For example, Ibn Sa'ud--founder of Saudi Arabia and its
king until his death in 1953--started as a desert raider.  He had an
abnormal tendency to emerge from his battles victorious.  The result:
through a long series of conquests, Ibn Sa'ud consolidated a territory
that, thanks to oil, became wealthy.  He indulged in the luxury of
naming his new kingdom after himself.  The leaders of America,
England and every other Arab state bowed to his power.  Presidents of
banks and C.E.O.s of massive corporations hungered for his favor.
Superpowers fell over each other in a scramble to sell him weapons.
Ibn Sa'ud's sexual payoff was equally impressive.  He sired 45
"official" sons by 22 mothers.  He fathered at least an equal number of
daughters by a bewildering variety of women that included
concubines, slave girls and "wives of the night."  As of 1981, roughly
500 royal children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren could trace
their origin back to the activity of Ibn Sa'ud's loins.39
Gambling with the lives of men is not limited to the children of
Islam.  In early societies everywhere from Africa and Asia to Europe
and South America, the soldier marching off to war could easily
pole-vault from farmer to aristocrat, expanding the territory of his tribe
in the process.  The Vikings who were ordinary plowmen back home
packed their spears and swords in a boat, rowed off over the horizon,
and became the rulers of Moscow, Sicily and Normandy.  Their
descendants would someday call themselves czars and kings.  The
Mongols' property once consisted of a few ponies and the right to
graze across Asia's most barren and frigid steppes.  Then in the
thirteenth century they set off, nearly starving on their compact horses,
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