Sultan of Brunei: King of luxury

I knew all along that Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah did not give interviews but did not object to journalists visiting his small country. Brunei is a Southeast Asian country consisting of two unconnected parts with the total area of 5,765 square kilometers and with hardly four hundred thousand people of whom many are foreigners from Indonesia and the Philippines.
The country’s armed forces are made up of Nepalese Gurkha battalion consisting of 1,500 personnel. United Kingdom military personnel are also stationed there under a defense agreement signed between the two countries.
So my attempts to seek an interview were not successful although the sultan was a frequent visitor to the Kingdom to perform Umrah. But there was a chance that presented itself when I attended the opening of a grand mosque in Malaysia a few years ago. The mosque was so big and beautiful that it could accommodate thousands of worshippers inside the main building and outside it. Heads of state were invited to attend the opening in addition to sultans of the Malaysian states and their king. Sultan Hassanal was also invited.
Following the grand opening and the speeches and the largest number of Rolls Royce cars I have ever seen in one place, I saw Sultan Hassanali emerging together with Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, architect of the present-day Malaysia and a close friend of the sultan. That was the chance I had been waiting for, so I went forward not caring for the protective ring of soldiers and other security guards. He saw me and smiled and I extended my hand introducing myself. At first the name did not ring a bell and would not have but because he was a frequent visitor to Jeddah I mentioned the name of this newspaper which he must have been reading every day he was in Jeddah. He did and smiled once again and stopped his companions to talk to me with great gentleness and obvious delight since I also mentioned to him that I hailed from Aden, another British protectorate, like his country used to be .We chatted for a while and I told him that I wished to visit his country now that I was in the neighborhood and he welcomed me telling me to approach the nearest consulate or embassy to arrange the visit.
We took photographs and parted while Mahathir Mohamad was watching smilingly since we were friends and I had interviewed him twice before in his capital, not far from the mosque. Unfortunately, my circumstances at the time did not allow me to fulfill my wish although I continued to follow the fortunes of the sultanate in the news and the world press, especially in the British newspapers, which were not altogether friendly to him and his brother Jefri.
The man owned a lot of property in the UK including the famous Dorchester, an exclusive hotel in Hyde Park which only a few could afford to stay in, in addition to his other holdings on account of his relationships with Britain, his enormous wealth and his education at Sandhurst, the famous military college where many ex-colonial boys used to study by recommendation of their British mentors. So some went there from Aden, Jordan, the UAE, India, Pakistan, Malaysia and others in the empire as well as from countries outside it because of the college’s solid military education and training.
Brunei is now a sovereign monarchy under the firm rule of the sultanate and at first gained some reputation on account of the foreign press claims of the sultan’s wealth. According to the reports in1980s, the sultan had over $25,000 million plus a regular income from oil exports amounting to l70,000 barrels a day. Not much by world standards but the country is as small as a locality in Mumbai or Cairo. Very little is known about the treasury’s income from investments in other countries.
Sometime in the 1980s, Sultan Hassanali built what is said to be the largest palace in the world consisting of 1,770 rooms and halls plus one of the largest luxury car garage in the world. The British press highlighted the luxury of both palace and garage in colored feature pages that exceeded anything that existed in the empire. Nothing in India for example would come close to the royal palace of the capital Bandar Seri Begawan.
The population is predominantly Muslim, their language is Malay and English is widely spoken like in many other ex-colonies of the British Empire. It was only in 1984 that the country gained its independence from Britain.

— Farouk Luqman is an eminent journalist based in Jeddah.