Sempena dengan Kedatangan Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud ke Malaysia (Feb 2017), dikongsikan artikel mengenai hubungan yang terjalin antara dua negara ini. Artikel penuh diterbitkan dalam Saudi Arabian Foreign Policy: Conflict and Cooperation yang diterbitkan oleh IB Tauris. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2uERDAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA1&pg=PT156#v=onepage&q&f=false.

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Historical Background

The relationship between Saudi Arabia and south-east Asian countries can be traced back to ancient times when the Silk Route served as a connecting network of trade routes across the Asian continent linking Eastern, Southern, Central and Western Asia with the Mediterranean. The relationship was built not only on trade and commerce but also on cultural and civilisational factors and Malaysia’s shared historical relationship with Saudi Arabia is significant. As early as the 16^th century, trade and business that linked the Asian continent to the Arab world emerged around this pivotal connection.

At that time there was no country of Malaysia. The area was part of the Malaccan Empire which had become one of the most powerful on the Malay Peninsula under the Sultan of Malacca, who had converted to Islam in 1414. Both Malacca and Arabia were centres of trade and religious activity with Malacca the central location for an expanding Muslim community in South East Asia and Arabia the centre for Islamic scholarship in the Middle East. So although trade was one reason for the interaction and close relationship between the two regions, the rapid spread of Islam throughout the Malay Archipelago was another.[i] This historical symbiosis was superseded in the following centuries by Portuguese, Dutch and then British colonisation although the removal of customs duties by the British encouraged a resumption of trade with Arabia. With the emergence of the modern nation state in the 20^th century, the Malay Peninsula became Malaysia while Arabia (in part at least) became Saudi Arabia. The interaction between these two modern states is now multidimensional and interdependent but with considerable potential for development in the future.

Diplomatic relations in the modern era

The early formal mechanism of Saudi-Malaysian relations commenced immediately after the founding of the independent federation of Malaya (the former name of Malaysia) in 1957 with the visit of Malaysia’s first prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman in 1958. In a demonstration of Saudi Arabia’s importance to Malaysia, the Prime Minister performed the haj pilgrimage to Mecca to thank God for giving Malaya full independence from Great Britain.[ii]

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Artikel penuh di sini: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2uERDAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA1&pg=PT259#v=onepage&q&f=false