Abdullah is said to have been born on 1 August 1924 in Riyadh. However, some sources state that this date is incorrect, and that he was approximately eight years older. He was the tenth son of King Abdulaziz. His mother, Fahda bint Asi Al Shuraim, was a member of the Al Rashid dynasty, longtime rivals of the Al Saud dynasty. She was descended from the powerful Shammar tribe and was the daughter of former tribe chief, Asi Shuraim. She died when Abdullah was six years old. He had younger full-sisters, Nouf and Seeta.

In 1963, Abdullah was made commander of Saudi National Guard (SANG). This post allowed him to secure his position in the House of Saud. SANG, which had been based on the Ikhwan, became a modern armed force under his command. Beginning 1985, SANG also sponsored the Janadiriyah festival that institutionalized traditional folk dances, camel races and tribal heritage.

King Khalid appointed Abdullah as second deputy prime minister on 29 March 1975 just four days after his kingship which was a reflection of his status as second in the line of succession to the Saudi throne. Therefore, he became the number three-man in the Saudi administration. However, his appointment caused friction in the House of Saud. Then-crown prince Fahd, together with his full-brothers known as the Sudairi Seven, supported the appointment of their own full brother, Sultan. Abdullah was pressured to cede control of SANG in return for his appointment as second deputy prime minister. In August 1977, this generated a debate among hundreds of princes in Riyadh. Abdullah did not relinquish authority of SANG because he feared that this would weaken his authority.

King Abdullah had long been pro-American and a longtime close ally of the United States. In October 1976, as Prince Abdullah was being trained for greater responsibility in Riyadh, he was sent to the United States to meet with President Gerald Ford. He again traveled to the United States as Crown Prince in October 1987, meeting Vice President George H. W. Bush. In September 1998, Crown Prince Abdullah made a state visit to the United States to meet in Washington with President Bill Clinton. In September 2000, he attended millennium celebrations at the United Nations in New York City. In April 2002, Crown Prince Abdullah made a state visit to the United States with President George W. Bush and he returned again in April 2005 with Bush. In April 2009, at a summit for world leaders President Barack Obama met with King Abdullah, while in June 2009 he hosted President Obama in Saudi Arabia. In turn, Obama hosted the King at the White House in the same month.

On 13 June 1982 – the day King Khalid died – Fahd bin Abdulaziz became King, Abdullah became Crown Prince the same day and also maintained his position as head of the National Guard. During his years as crown prince, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz was described as a supporter of accommodation. He managed to group a large number of fringe and marginalized princes discontented with the prospect of the succession being passed among the Sudairi brothers one after the other. His control of the National Guard was also a key factor to his success in becoming crown prince. When King Fahd was incapacitated by a major stroke in 1995, Crown Prince Abdullah acted as de facto regent of Saudi Arabia.

One of King Abdullah’s daughters, Nuora, died in 1990 in a car accident near Riyadh airport. She was married to Sultan bin Turki Al Saud. Fayza is yet another daughter, the mother of Prince Saud bin Abdulaziz bin Nasser Al Saud who was accused of murdering his servant Bandar Abdulaziz in London in 2010. His daughter, Haya, was featured on the cover of Vogue Arabia magazine’s June 2018 issue. The wife of Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Salman, a member of Al Kabir branch of Al Saud, is married to another daughter of King Abdullah, Oraib bint Abdullah who is the blood sister of Turki bin Abdullah. Another daughter, Seeta, was married to Faisal bin Thamir, a son of Thamir bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.

On 4 June 2000, the Al Saud Family Council was established by Crown Prince Abdullah to discuss some private issues, including the business activities of House of Saud members and the marriages of princesses to nonroyals. In May 2001 Crown Prince Abdullah did not accept an invitation to visit Washington due to US support for Israel in the Second Intifada. He also appeared more eager than King Fahd to cut government spending and open Saudi Arabia up economically. He pushed for Saudi membership of the World Trade Organization, surprising some.

In August 2001, he ordered then Saudi Ambassador to the US, Bandar bin Sultan, to return to Washington. This reportedly occurred after Crown Prince Abdullah witnessed brutality inflicted by an Israeli soldier upon a Palestinian woman. Later, he also condemned Israel for attacking families of suspects.

In 2002, he developed the Arab Peace Initiative, commonly referred to as the “Abdullah plan”, to achieve a mutually agreed-on resolution of the Arab–Israeli conflict. The initiative was adopted at the Arab League’s Beirut summit in March 2002.

By late 2003, after the Saudi Arabian branch of al-Qaeda carried out a series of bombings that threatened to destabilize the country, Crown Prince Abdullah, together with other decision-making elites began to deal with political concerns. As Toby Jones wrote in Middle East Report:

On 16 February 2003, Parade magazine’s David Wallechinsky rated King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah as the second worst dictators in the world. Most of this criticism stems from the fact that most of Saudi citizens live under a strict Wahhabist interpretation of Sharia law, which mandates the amputation of hands as a punishment for theft and floggings for crimes like drunkenness. Execution by public beheading is common for murder, rape, drug trafficking and witchcraft, and Abdullah’s policies towards the rights of women have also been criticized. In a slight rebuff to accusations of human rights violations, Saudi inmates of Najran Province sent the King well-wishes from jail and wished him a speedy recovery.

King Abdullah had thirty-six children sixteen of whom are male. His eldest son was Mutaib who died young. The second eldest son of him, Prince Khalid, was deputy commander of the Saudi Arabian National Guard West until 1992. His second son, Prince Mutaib, is former commander and former minister of the National Guard. Prince Mishaal was governor of the Makkah Province (2013–2015). Prince Abdulaziz was the king’s former Syria adviser and was deputy foreign affairs minister from 2011 to 2015. Prince Faisal was the head of the Saudi Arabian Red Crescent Society. King Abdullah’s seventh son, Prince Turki, who was a pilot in the Royal Saudi Air Force, was governor of the Riyadh Province (2014–2015). The youngest son, Prince Badr, was born in 2003, when Abdullah was about 79 years old.

Abdullah succeeded to the throne upon the death of his half-brother King Fahd. He was formally enthroned on 2 August 2005.

In 2005, King Abdullah implemented a government scholarship program to send young Saudi men and women abroad for undergraduate and postgraduate studies in different universities around the world. The program offered funds for tuition and living expenses up to four years. It is estimated that more than 70,000 young Saudis studied abroad in more than 25 countries, with the United States, England, and Australia as top three destinations aimed for by the students. There are more than 22,000 Saudi students studying in the United States, exceeding pre-9/11 levels. Public health engagement included breast cancer awareness and CDC cooperation to set up an advanced epidemic screening network to protect 2010’s three million Hajj pilgrims.

In 2005 King Abdullah declared that the national day of the country, 23 September, would be a public holiday in an attempt to reduce the influence of religious figures and some of the social restrictions. It was criticized by the religious figures who argued that such celebration was not part of Islam.

In 2006, Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei had sent his adviser Ali Akbar Velayati with a letter asking for King Abdullah’s agreement to establish a formal back channel of communication between the two leaders. Abdullah said he had agreed, and the channel was established, with Velayati and Saud Al Faisal as the points of contact. In the ensuing years, the King noted, the channel had never been used.

Since King Abdullah’s visit to Beijing in January 2006, Saudi-Chinese relations have focused predominantly on energy and trade. The king’s visit was the first by a Saudi head of state to China since the two countries established diplomatic ties in 1990. Bilateral trade with China has more than tripled, and China would soon be Saudi Arabia’s largest importer. Saudi Arabia also committed significant investments in China, including the $8 billion Fujian refinery. Based on a WikiLeaks cable, the King told the Chinese that it was willing to effectively trade a guaranteed oil supply in return for Chinese pressure on Iran not to develop nuclear weapons.

In 2006, Abdullah set up the Allegiance Council, a body that is composed of the sons and grandsons of Saudi Arabia’s founder, King Abdulaziz, to vote by a secret ballot to choose future kings and crown princes. The council’s mandate was not to have started until after the reigns of both King Abdullah and late Prince Sultan were over. It was not clear what was to happen when Prince Sultan died before the end of Abdullah’s reign, leaving a question as to whether the council would vote for a new crown prince, or whether Prince Nayef would automatically fill that position. Despite such concerns, Prince Nayef was appointed Crown Prince on 27 October 2011 after consultation with the Allegiance Council by Abdullah.

In November 2007, King Abdullah visited Pope Benedict XVI in the Apostolic Palace, being first Saudi monarch to do so. In March 2008, he called for a “brotherly and sincere dialogue between believers from all religions”.

King Abdullah has also been criticized for his policies on religious freedom and the Saudi government allegedly has arrested Shiite pilgrims on the Hajj. On 24 January 2007, Human Rights Watch sent an open letter to King Abdullah asking him to cease religious persecution of the Ahmadi faith in Saudi Arabia. Two letters were sent in November 2006 and February 2007 asking him to remove the travel ban on critics of the Saudi government. Human Rights Watch has not yet indicated whether they have received any response to these letters.

On 30 October 2007, during a state visit to the UK, King Abdullah was accused by protestors of being a “murderer” and a “torturer”. Concerns were raised about the treatment of women and homosexuals by the Saudi kingdom and over alleged bribes involving arms deals between Saudi Arabia and the UK.

In June 2008, he held a conference in Mecca to urge Muslim leaders to speak with one voice with Jewish and Christian leaders. He discussed with, and obtained approval from, Saudi and non-Saudi Islamic scholars to hold the interfaith dialogue. In the same month, Saudi Arabia and Spain agreed to hold the interfaith dialogue in Spain. The historic conference finally took place in Madrid in July 2008, wherein religious leaders of different faiths participated, and which later led to the 2010 proclamation of World Interfaith Harmony Week.

In November 2008, he and his government arranged discussion at the United Nations General Assembly to “promote dialogue among civilizations, cultures and peoples, as well as activities related to a culture of peace” and calling for “concrete action at the global, regional and subregional levels.” It brought together Muslim and non-Muslim nations to eradicate preconceptions as to Islam and terrorism, with world leaders—including former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Israeli President Shimon Peres, US President George W. Bush and King Abdullah II of Jordan—attending.

In April 2008, according to a US cable released by WikiLeaks, King Abdullah had told the US Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, and General David Petraeus to “cut off the head of the snake”. Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, “recalled the King’s frequent exhortations to the US to attack Iran” and to put an end to that country’s nuclear program. King Abdullah asserted that Iran was trying to set up Hezbollah-like organizations in African countries, observing that the Iranians didn’t think they were doing anything wrong and didn’t recognize their mistakes. He said that the Iranians “launch missiles with the hope of putting fear in people and the world”. The King described his conversation with Iranian foreign minister Mottaki as “a heated exchange, frankly discussing Iran’s interference in Arab affairs”. When challenged by the King on Iranian meddling in Hamas affairs, Mottaki apparently protested that “these are Muslims”. “No, Arabs”, countered the King. “You as Persians have no business meddling in Arab matters”. King Abdullah said he would favor Rafsanjani in an Iranian election.

King Abdullah implemented many reform measures. He re-shuffled the ministry of education’s leadership in February 2009 by bringing in his pro-reform son-in-law, Faisal bin Abdullah, as the new minister. He also appointed Nora Al Fayez, a U.S.-educated former teacher, as deputy education minister in charge of a new department for female students.

In November 2009, King Abdullah was received by Nicolas Sarkozy, who committed various diplomatic faux pas. The diplomatic relationship Jacques Chirac had with Saudi Arabia was not evident with Sarkozy. In January 2011, the Kingdom granted asylum to the ousted Tunisian leader, Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, under conditions of no further political involvement. According to leaked cables, King Abdullah was more receptive than Crown Prince Sultan to former Yemeni President Saleh.

King Abdullah supported renewed diplomatic relations with the Syrian government and Bashar al-Assad. They met in Damascus on 7 October 2009. In addition, Assad attended the opening of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in October 2009. Relations between Syria and Saudi Arabia deteriorated as a result of the Syrian Civil War. In August 2011, King Abdullah recalled the Saudi Ambassador from Damascus due to the political unrest in Syria and closed its embassy.

In August 2010, King Abdullah decreed that only officially approved religious scholars associated with the Senior Council of Ulema would be allowed to issue fatwas. Similar decrees since 2005 were previously seldom enforced. Individual fatwas relating to personal matters were exempt from the royal decree. The decree also instructed the Grand Mufti to identify eligible scholars.

In December 2010, leaked diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks revealed that King Abdullah wanted all released detainees from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp to be tracked using an implanted microchip, in a way similar to race horses. The King made the private suggestion during a meeting in Riyadh in March 2009 with White House counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan. Brennan replied that “horses don’t have good lawyers” and that such a proposal would “face legal hurdles” in the United States.

In November 2010, Prince Nayef chaired a cabinet meeting because of the deterioration of the King’s health. During the same month, King Abdullah transferred his duties as Commander of the Saudi National Guard to his son Prince Mutaib. King Abdullah is credited with building up the once largely ceremonial unit into a modern 260,000-strong force that is a counterweight to the army. The Guard, which was Abdullah’s original power base, protects the royal family. This was suggested as an apparent sign that the elderly monarch was beginning to lessen some of his duties.

From 2010 to 2012 King Abdullah had four back surgeries. The first two of the surgeries were in New York, one in 2010 for a slipped disk and a blood clot pressing on nerves in his back and a second to stabilize vertebrae in 2011. The third one was in Riyadh in 2011. And the last one was also in Riyadh on 17 November 2012.

In November 2010, his back problems came to light in the media. He had an “accumulation of blood” around the spinal cord. He suffered from a herniated disc and was told to rest by doctors. To maintain the Kingdom’s stability, Crown Prince Sultan returned from Morocco during the King’s absence. The King was admitted to NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital after a blood clot complicated a slipped disc and underwent successful back surgery. The lead surgeon was Muhammad Zaka, who probably removed the herniated disk and performed a lumbar fusion. He subsequently had another successful surgery in which surgeons “stabilized a number of vertebras”. He left the hospital on 22 December 2010 and convalesced at The Plaza in New York City. On 22 January 2011, he left the United States for Morocco, and returned to the Kingdom on 23 February 2011.

In light of the Arab Spring, Abdullah laid down a $37 billion (€32.8 billion) programme of new spending including new jobless benefits, education and housing subsidies, debt write-offs, and a new sports channel. There was also a pledge to spend a total of $400 billion by the end of 2014 to improve education, health care and the kingdom’s infrastructure. However, Saudi police arrested 100 Shiite protesters who complained of government discrimination. Later during the 2011–2012 Saudi Arabian protests, in September 2011, the King announced women’s right to vote in the 2015 municipal council elections, a first significant reform step in the country since the protests. He also stated that women would become eligible to take part in the unelected shura.

In 2011, an agreement for the establishment of the King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue in Vienna was signed between the governments of Austria, Spain, and Saudi Arabia. The official opening of the centre was in November 2012, with foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal as its first general secretary and Austria’s former federal justice minister Claudia Bandion-Ortner as the first deputy general secretary.

King Abdullah called for the establishment of an Arab common market in January 2011. Saudi foreign minister, Saud bin Faisal, stated that the Arab Customs Union would be ready by 2015, and that by 2017 the common market would also be in place. There have been intensive efforts to link Arab countries with a railway system and an electricity power grid. Work on the power grid project has started in some Arab countries.

In December 2011, King Abdullah called on leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council to strengthen their alliance into a united “single entity” as they confront threats to national security. “I ask you today to move from a stage of cooperation to a stage of union in a single entity”, King Abdullah said at the opening session of a GCC meeting in Riyadh in comments aired on Saudi state television. “No doubt, you all know we are targeted in our security and stability”.

King Abdullah’s heir apparent was his half-brother Crown Prince Sultan until the latter’s death on 22 October 2011. The title of Crown Prince then passed to Prince Sultan’s full-brother, Nayef, until his death in Geneva, Switzerland, on 16 June 2012, while undergoing medical tests for an undisclosed ailment. His third heir apparent was his half-brother Salman, who was named as Crown Prince on 18 June 2012, and would succeed him in 2015.

King Abdullah had twenty daughters. Princess Adila is married to Faisal bin Abdullah bin Mohammed. She is one of the few Saudi princesses with a semi-public role, and a known advocate of women’s right to drive. She was also known as “her father’s public face”. Youngest daughter of Abdullah, Princess Sahab, (born 1993), married Khalid bin Hamad Al Khalifa, son of Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, on 6 June 2011. Another daughter, Abeer, is the wife of Fahd bin Turki Al Saud. Sara bint Abdullah first married to Turki bin Talal and they have one son, Abdulaziz. Then she married to Fahd bin Badr with who she has five children.

In 2011, the financial magazine Forbes estimated his and his immediate family’s documentable wealth at US$21 billion, making him one of the world’s richest monarchs.

In January 2012, King Abdullah dismissed the head of Saudi Arabia’s powerful religious police, replacing him with a more moderate cleric, state news agency SPA reported, without giving reasons. Abdullatif Abdel Aziz al-Sheikh was named, in place of Sheikh Abdulaziz al Humain, to head the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. King Abdullah had appointed Humain in 2009 to head the “mutaween,” which ensures the strict application of the country’s ultra-conservative version of Islam, as a step towards reforming it. Humain hired consultants to restructure the organisation, met local human rights groups and consulted professional image-builders in a broad public relations campaign. Under his leadership the commission also investigated and punished some “out-of-control” officers for misbehaviour.

In July 2012, Saudi Arabia announced that it would allow its women athletes to compete in the Olympics for the first time and that the country’s Olympic Committee would “oversee participation of women athletes who can qualify”. The decision ended speculation that the entire Saudi team might have been disqualified on grounds of gender discrimination. The public participation of women in sport was still fiercely opposed by many Saudi religious conservatives. There had been almost no public tradition of women participating in sport in the country. Saudi officials said that, if successful in qualifying, female competitors would be dressed “to preserve their dignity”. On 11 January 2013, King Abdullah appointed thirty women to the Consultative Assembly or Shura Council and modified the related law to mandate that no less than 20 percent of 150 members would be women.

King Abdullah left Saudi Arabia on “special leave” on 27 August 2012. Al-Quds reported that he had an operation at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, on or before 4 September 2012, following a heart attack. However, there was no official report on this alleged operation—instead, it was announced that the King went on a private trip to Morocco, where he was known to frequent. The King returned to Saudi Arabia from Morocco on 24 September. Nearly two months later, in November 2012, King Abdullah underwent another back surgery in Riyadh and left hospital on 13 December 2012. A report in April 2014 stated that the King had around six months left to live, citing a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer. On 2 January 2015, Abdullah was hospitalized in Riyadh for pneumonia and died on 23 January at the age of 90. Per Islamic tradition, his funeral was held the same day, a public ceremony at the Grand Mosque of Riyadh before burial in an unmarked grave at the Al Oud cemetery. Three days of national mourning were declared, in which flags would fly at half-mast. Flags were also flown half-mast at Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey in London.

King Abdullah was, in 2012, named as the most influential Muslim among 500 Muslims for the previous 4 years. In December 2012, Forbes named him as the seventh-most-powerful figure in its list of the “World’s Most Powerful People” for 2012, being the sole Arab in the top ten.

In April 2012, he was awarded by the United Nations a gold medal for his contributions to intercultural understanding and peace initiatives.

In August 2013, the Saudi cabinet, for the first time, approved a law making domestic violence a criminal offence. The law calls for a punishment of up to a year in prison and a fine of up to 50,000 riyals (€11,500/US$13,000). The maximum punishments could be doubled for repeat offenders. The law criminalizes psychological, sexual as well as physical abuse. It also includes a provision obliging employees to report instances of abuse in the workplace to their employer. The move followed a Twitter campaign. The new laws were welcomed by Saudi women’s rights activists, although some expressed concerns that the law could not be implemented successfully without new training for the judiciary, and that the tradition of male guardianship would remain an obstacle to prosecutions.

In September 2014, following the spread of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), he issued a statement, “From the cradle of revelation and the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad, I call on leaders and scholars of the Islamic nation to carry out their duty towards God Almighty, and to stand in the face of those trying to hijack Islam and present it to the world as a religion of extremism, hatred, and terrorism, and to speak the word of truth, and not fear anybody. Our nation today is passing through a critical, historic stage, and history will be witness against those who have been the tool exploited by the enemies to disperse and tear the nation and tarnish the pure image of Islam”.

From his marriage to Princess Alanoud Al Fayez (arranged when she was 15 without her having ever met him), whom he later divorced, he had four daughters— Sahar, Maha, Hala and Jawahir. They have been under house arrest for several years, and are not allowed to leave the country. After media releases in March 2014, Sahar and Jawaher received no food or clean water for 25 days, lost 10 kg each and their mother carried out weekly protests in front of the Saudi Arabian embassy in London. Sahar and Jawaher spoke and released a video while under house arrest, pleading for help from the international community. After 2014, media reports of their condition dried up.

The King had curtailed his activities from June 2010 with no clear explanation. Diplomats said there had been uncertainty about the extent of his health problems since Abdullah canceled a visit to France. In a television appearance in which he was seen to use a cane, King Abdullah said he was in good health but had something “bothering” him. In a visit by US diplomats to Saudi Arabia in April 2014 the Saudi King was seen connected to breathing tubes during talks, indicating increasing health problems.

King Abdullah was Commander of the Saudi National Guard from 1963 to 2010. He was Chairman of the Saudi Supreme Economic Council until 2009. He also continued to be the President of the High Council for Petroleum and Minerals, President of the King Abdulaziz Center For National Dialogue, Chairman of the Council of Civil Service, and head of the Military Service Council until his death in 2015.

In October 2015, his son, Majid bin Abdullah Al Saud, was arrested in Los Angeles on suspicion of “forcing oral copulation”, amid allegations that he had been unlawfully imprisoning, threatening, sexually harassing, and assaulting employees, while under the influence of cocaine and alcohol. He was released on bail, and felony charges were dropped for lack of evidence; a civil suit filed by three housekeepers continues. Another son, Mohammad, is married to Nouf bint Nayef, a daughter of late Prince Nayef and Maha bint Mohammad Al Sudairi. An Eritrean nanny of Nouf and Mohammad’s children sued them for improper working conditions and other negative acts in 2018.