King Faisal was shot three times in a row while he was bending down to kiss his nephew in greeting.

Dr. Yamani’s father, who had served as a loyal minister to King Faisal for fifteen years, was standing by his side to inform him of the developments at that moment.

King Faisal, who was the third ruler of the oil-rich kingdom and the third son of its founder, was taken to hospital, but died a short time later.

On that day, a few miles from the city, 18-year-old Mai Yamani was waiting for her father.

“I was sitting in my father’s apartment, surrounded by his books. He came in, with a strange, pained look on his face. He went straight to the dining room, uttered a scream, and managed to utter one word: Disaster.”

This was not his custom, a man who was known for being very calm and calm in his speech. Then he told his daughter what happened.

“A Kuwaiti oil delegation arrived at 10 a.m. and they were on their way to meet King Faisal at the palace, and my father, in his capacity as Minister of Oil, went to update the king,” she says.

She adds: “That prince, ironically, has the same name, Faisal [بن مساعد]He is the king’s nephew. He joined the delegation with the Kuwaiti Oil Minister, and then Faisal opened his arms to embrace his nephew.

She tells the BBC: “The nephew takes out a small gun from his pocket and shoots the king three times in the head, while my father stands near him.”

According to some reports at the time, the attacker later told police that Yamane was standing so close that he thought he had killed him, too.

Yamani then went to the hospital with King Faisal, where the king’s death was confirmed.

“After that, silence prevailed. The streets of Riyadh were empty, and silence prevailed,” says Yamani.

Faisal took over the rule of Saudi Arabia in 1964, leading “a desert the size of Western Europe” towards a new era. Britain welcomed him as “the new Arab friend” and described his mission as “modernizing one of the most backward countries in the Middle East,” as BBC presenter David Dimbleby said at the time.

But the question was: Can he accomplish this mission without losing his throne?

Faisal was one of King Abdulaziz Al Saud’s eldest sons, and participated in his father’s campaign to unify the Arabian Peninsula, which ended with the founding of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia thirty years ago. After the death of his father, his older brother took power, and Faisal served as Prime Minister during his reign.

When Faisal became king, he enjoyed a distinguished political reputation, and was known for being skillful, pious, diligent, and a reformer open to foreign capitals. He sought to use the country’s newly discovered oil wealth to build modern state institutions and develop the kingdom’s education, health, and judicial system.

But his reforms were not always welcomed by the more conservative elements of the hard-line religious movement allied with the royal family. When he opened the first television station in the Kingdom in the mid-1960s, the building was subjected to an armed attack led by the brother of the man who would later kill him.

Also during his reign, female education was introduced into the formal educational system. Dr. Mai Yamani says: “Queen Iffat, King Faisal’s second wife, started a girls’ education project in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.” She adds: “I am proud that I was one of the first nine female students in her school, and King Faisal convinced the religious establishment that educating women makes them better mothers. The school was called Dar Al Hanan.”

Yamani began working for King Faisal in 1960. This was unusual, because he was a commoner, highly educated and a lawyer, but not part of the Saudi royal family.

King Faisal read some articles he wrote, which caught his attention.

Al-Yamani said: “My father opened the first law firm, and then he began writing the most provocative articles, demanding democracy and good governance. He signed them in the name of a person called Abu Mai, because I was his eldest daughter. Faisal, who was the crown prince at the time, said: ‘Who is this man?’ Because he was looking for a legal advisor.”

Later, King Faisal appointed Ahmed Zaki, or “Sheikh Yamani” as he later became known, as Minister of Oil.

Yamani, in cooperation with the king, developed a policy that gave Saudi Arabia for the first time full control over its huge oil assets and made it a force to be reckoned with in the Arab world and on the international scene.

In 1973, after war broke out between Israel and its Arab neighbors, Saudi Arabia, then the world’s largest oil producer, led a campaign to use oil as a political weapon for the first time.

Oil supplies to countries supporting Israel were reduced, leading to a sharp rise in global oil prices. Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani was entrusted with delivering the message, and he said: “What we want is the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the occupied Arab territories, and then the oil level will return to what it was in September 1973.”

Yamani stressed that the significant rise in oil prices will lead to a change in the global balance of power between developing oil-producing countries and advanced industrial countries. This transformation was truly embodied when Time magazine chose King Faisal as Person of the Year in 1974, that is, one year before his assassination.

Dr. Mai Yamani says: “We do not know the real reason behind the king’s assassination, except that the killer was a disturbed man. I was eighteen years old at the time, and I felt my father’s pain, and I still remember him to this day.”

Sheikh Yamani remained Minister of Oil in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for eleven years after the incident, until 1986. As for Dr. Yamani, she continued her university studies in the United States, and became the first Saudi woman to obtain a doctorate from the University of Oxford.

Yamani wrote a number of books on Arab identity, and also worked as a consultant for banks such as Goldman Sachs and major oil companies such as Shell.

This script is based on an episode of the programme “History of witnesses” Which is broadcast by the BBC World Service in English.