In September 2022, Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Abdullah Al-Mushaiqeh, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the University of the Future in Saudi Arabia, was the guest of the Bahrain Voluntary Work Society in Muharraq, where he was honored and awarded the honorary membership of the association and the International Award for Community Partnership. The guest kindly called me to invite me to the party with the intention of getting acquainted and receiving copies of his books, but force majeure prevented me from answering his generous invitation, so I regretted missing that opportunity to get to know a unique Saudi personality in her talents, qualities, knowledge, preoccupations and imprints. You see him, and you think that he is just a traditional businessman who has been blessed by God with great goodness, so he invested him in a group of projects to support the renaissance of his country, and in a group of charitable activities that seek reward and reward, but Al-Mashaqih is much more than that.
He is a man of many talents and qualities, and his activities and businesses extend throughout his vast country. In addition, he is an inspiring writer, a well-versed educator, an ancient economist, a distinguished administrator, a seasoned politician and parliamentarian, a successful businessman, a shining example for generations, and the descendant of a well-known Qasimia family, which played roles in the history of its Saudi homeland and its developmental renaissance as a caper for Caper .
And because many may not have heard of him outside his homeland, we decided to dedicate this article to monitor his biography full of stories of toil, ambition, success, persistence and will since his childhood years until he became one of the flags of Al-Qassim in particular and Saudi Arabia in general, and also with the aim of navigating his public and private life and the images that surrounded it. And inspiring and valid scenes as a subject taught to new generations as a reminder of the struggle of parents and grandparents for self-improvement and decent living. That is why we used a book about him prepared by the World Center for Documentation, entitled “The Ship and the Captain,” and another book, “Saden as Travels,” prepared by a team of researchers, in addition to many separate articles about him.
Dr. Abd al-Rahman bin Abdullah bin Abdulaziz bin Hamoud al-Mushiqih was born in the city of Buraydah al-Qassim, at a time when the Second World War was raging (specifically in the year 1264 AH corresponding to the year 1945 AD), the eighth son of notable Abdullah al-Mushiqih and the eldest son of his mother, Mrs. Saqiba Mubarak Nasser al-Mubarik, the third wife of between his father's four wives. He grew up in a family with a reputation, prestige, prestige, respect and history, so it was not surprising that he was brought up from an early age on the values, ideals and good morals that he imbibed from his parents, uncles and maternal uncles.
His father's council full of knowledge
His first school was his family’s council, which was always crowded with men of knowledge, notables, notables, and merchants, as he was keen, when he was a young boy, to listen and think about all the stories, anecdotes, discussions, and news that were going on in it, and to reflect on the faces of the audience and read their personalities, especially since that council was like a mini Shura council Hence, a permanent destination for the people of Buraidah at that time to discuss public affairs, as the city at that time was small in area, sparsely populated, and its government departments were very few. His father was keen for his son Abdul Rahman and the rest of his brothers to be part of the council so that they would benefit and continue the march of the Mushaiqh family, and lead its fourth generation after the first generation represented by grandfather Hammoud, who returned to Saudi Arabia from Iraq with the proceeds of his vast trade to start a new march in his motherland. The second generation represented by his son Abdulaziz and his family, then the third generation represented by his grandson Abdullah and his children. This is noteworthy that the grandfather of the eldest family, “Hamoud bin Mushaiqah bin Abdullah Al Azzam,” had gone out with his brother Abdullah from Najd to Iraq, after the fall of Diriyah and the end of the rule of the first Saudi state in the year 1233 AH (1818 AD), where he worked there in the camel trade, moving between Basra and Aleppo, so he achieved abundant money and great wealth by the standards of his time.
Schools of his upbringing
As for his second school, it was his affectionate mother, who cultivated in him the qualities of tenderness, affection, humility, great literature, commitment and love of goodness. As she grew up in the palace of the Emirate of Buraydah when her father was the Emir of Al-Qassim.
His third school was represented in his father’s shop for food supplies coming from India via Bahrain via Jubail, where he monitored with a keen eye the buying and selling relations, the process of writing down the coming goods, and listened to what was going on in the shop attached to the shop of conversations of profit and loss and other stories, so he learned early A B commercial transactions.
We can add to the above a fourth school, which is the Al-Mushaiqah Mosque in Buraydah, which he used to frequent to pray, attend his preaching lessons, and listen to the readings of his sheikhs, especially since the mosque was at that time a destination for students of Sharia knowledge after the Al-Mushaiqah family attached rooms for living and subsistence to it, so it became more like what it is. in Rabat.
Education priority
Abd al-Rahman was fortunate with his father Abdullah, a man who believed in the importance of formal education, unlike others who were afraid of him and saw legal sciences in mosques and books as the ultimate goal. Thus, when his father enrolled him in Al-Faisaliah School in the year 1372 AH to begin his primary education, he was comprehending things that were not the realization of his peers, so he outperformed them and won the satisfaction of his teachers.
He continued his regular education after that, moving from primary to intermediate and secondary successfully, while his knowledge was expanding year after year, his companions were increasing in number, and his hobbies were crowding. Reading and reading were at the top of those hobbies, as evidenced by the fact that he established his own small library while he was in middle school. The radio, at the time of his entry into the homes of Qassim, also received a large share of his interest and the interest of his friends as a source of education, pleasure and entertainment, so they would follow his programs and discuss their contents.
University study
The dream of the boy Abd al-Rahman at that time was simple and he did not go beyond the independence of his own room within his father’s house in order to put his books and small belongings in it and practice his privacy, which was not achieved except in his high school stage. However, Abd al-Rahman did not enjoy his room for a long time. Rather, his pain was more severe because of the loss of his small library, which was devoured by a fire that broke out in his room while he was absent from school. He was very sad, but soon decided to establish an alternative library for himself.
He graduated with a high grade from the scientific section of his secondary school in 1386 AH, to start thinking about the specialization that he will study at the university level, and when his thinking guided him to chemistry, he asked himself where he would study it? At that time, he had several options to enroll in whatever majors he wanted in any internal or external university. His father was not the type to impose on his children what to study or where to study, and therefore Abdul Rahman was free in his decisions. He thought of traveling on a scholarship abroad, as many others did, in order to enjoy what he heard from them of the joys and amazements of civilization, but he realized with the feeling of a son attached to his parents since childhood that his travel far would hurt them and disturb the life of his beloved mother in particular, so he decided to stay in the homeland and travel to Dhahran to study at the College of Petroleum and Minerals, where it is easy to communicate with his family and even visit them during vacations.
College of Science in Riyadh
The atmosphere of Dhahran and the environment of the modern College of Petroleum and its advanced educational programs constituted an exciting addition to the life of Abdul Rahman. In it, he learned English, watched television for the first time, met citizens, Arabs, and foreign students from different regions and countries, received knowledge from professors from the West, and practiced sports, cultural, and recreational activities that he had never seen before.
However, the nostalgia for his parents, friends, and the pastures of his childhood and youth in Buraidah began to hurt him and negatively affect his performance, so he decided to leave his college after five months of study, and instead join the College of Sciences of the University of Riyadh. As for why the University of Riyadh, it is because it is the only option left, and then because there are many of his high school classmates studying, in addition to his maternal uncles and aunts, and his maternal grandmother, “Lulwa bint Muhammad Al-Rashid Al-Mushaqih,” who insisted that he live with her in her house, and therefore it seemed to him as if he It is located in a suburb of Buraidah.
Thus, our friend studied the period from 1387 to 1391 AH at the College of Sciences at the University of Riyadh, boasting of his English that he learned in Dhahran, attending uninterruptedly, enjoying the familiarity that he missed in his previous college, and investing his spare time in reading and knowledge, without preoccupying himself with his future career after graduation. Jobs were never one of his goals or priorities because he was one of those who learn for the sake of knowledge only and who see learning as an emotional and spiritual appeal.
Draw the attention of officials
His university years passed quickly and were interspersed with his marriage to his relative, “Muzna bint Sulaiman bin Hammoud Al-Mashaqih”, and many trips to farms, factories and deserts with doctors of plant and animal sciences to collect plant and insect samples, and many visits to plastic and soft drinks factories to watch chemical reactions and so on. It was also punctuated by sad times due to the defeat of the Arabs in the June war and the repercussions of the sixtieth civil war in Yemen on Saudi Arabia.
In 1971 he graduated with a Bachelor of Science (major in chemistry and zoology) and armed with encyclopedic external reading, but neither this nor that nor his rare specialization (at the time) gave him a better job than a biology teacher at Rass High School, so he accepted the matter and coexisted with it without complaining, rather he gave He made an exceptional effort to present everything in his arsenal to his students, and on top of that he agreed to release his knowledge energies to the broad audience through lectures at Al-Hazm Sports Club in Al-Rass. His lectures attracted the attention of officials, who were certain that a person with such energies and knowledge should not be locked up in an ordinary educational job. Soon, a telegram came to him from the Ministry of Education stating that he had been chosen to represent Saudi Arabia at a conference in Baghdad devoted to developing scientific curricula for Arab countries.
Studying abroad
In Baghdad, the newly graduated young man sat next to older Arab scholars with rich experience and knowledge, discussing, proposing, and participating in developing biology curricula for the Arab world, proud of representing his country. After returning to his place of work, he was transferred to the position of a biology teacher in Buraydah High School, and simultaneously he was assigned to work as a science teacher at the nearby Teachers Training Institute. Not a year ago, but our friend found his name on the lists of scholarships abroad under a contract between the Saudi Ministry of Education and the American universities of Indiana and Oklahoma to develop education programs.
Going to the United States was a quantum leap in his life, for the first time he boarded the plane that carried him from Riyadh to New York through the stopping airports in Beirut and Rome, then from New York to Indiana by air, then to Bloomington, where he attended his university, by car. For the first time, he leaves a city whose houses are mostly made of mud and most of which lack electricity and telephone services to cities of skyscrapers, lights, communications, luxury, crowds, libraries and giant science houses.
From the first moment of his presence in the United States, he decided to discover this new world and scoop out everything useful from it. While he was studying a master's degree in a new major, the methods of teaching science at Bloomington University, he began to voraciously visit American tourist and cultural attractions, inspect the houses of science, factories, and farms to discover new American education, draw from the libraries of ancient American universities, read various newspapers and magazines, and make new friendships with his compatriots. and expatriate Arabs, and is active in scientific and non-scientific meetings, family activities, and Islamic events.
Back from America
Our friend returned to his homeland in 1976 with a master's degree, so he was appointed immediately as director of the Agricultural Technical Institute in Buraidah, but he felt that he had not gained enough knowledge and research, so he decided, while he was at the helm of his new job, to enroll in the College of Education at Kennedy Western University in the US state of California to obtain Doctorate degree based on an unprecedented thesis entitled “Vocational and Technical Education and the Inevitability of the Arab Orientation”, due to his early belief in the need for vocational and technical education in the region. When he was about to write his dissertation, he asked his superiors to second him from the government job to the Agricultural Ways Company in order to devote himself to research and writing. His desire was met and he succeeded in achieving his goal amidst difficult circumstances and great suffering due to the scarcity of written references.
After that, he decided not to return to his previous government job, and to discover himself and her capabilities in a new job that would satisfy his ambitions, so he would devote himself to working with his family in managing and developing their business. Soon, he succeeded in gathering his brothers around him to create a large economic entity bearing the name of Al Mushaiqeh, in which he poured everything he learned, experienced, witnessed and read during his previous educational and career career. This entity whose activities have expanded to include industry, agriculture, food, medicine, fodder and contracting.
Successive successes and prestigious social status
After a busy journey in the world of business and finance, and remarkable success in developing the family business, and creating a new generation qualified to lead it, he decided to give up his administrative responsibilities and content himself with chairing the board of directors of the “Al-Wasail Industrial Company”, in an effort to devote himself to reading, writing, and serving scholars, researchers and students of knowledge. Here we see him achieving this goal through the opening of a huge library that included about 35,000 books in various fields of knowledge under the name “The Library of Dr. Qassim National Colleges” to one of the largest private universities in the Kingdom, which is the “University of the Future”, which was launched at the beginning of the current millennium, not to mention his launch of the “Dr. In support of the cultural and knowledge movement.
In appreciation of his social and scientific stature and due to his successive successes, Al-Mushaqih won the confidence of the political leadership and was appointed in the year 1422 AH as a member of the Saudi Shura Council. He made a creative contribution to the work and march of the Saudi Shura Council. He also won the confidence of Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz, former Minister of Defense and Aviation, who appointed him as a member of the Board of Directors of Saudi Arabian Airlines for eight consecutive years (between 1423 and 1430). In addition, he won many awards and honors, and headed the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Al-Qassim for three sessions between 1413 and 1425 AH.
Written by: Dr. Abdullah Al-Madani abu_taymour@