Al Anoud Al Fayez
former wife of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (born 1957)

Sheikha Al Anoud bint Dahham Al Fayez (Arabic: العنود بنت دحام الفايز; born 1957) is a Jordanian noblewoman and former Saudi royal. She is the daughter of one of the sheikhs of the Al-Fayez clan from Bani Sakher, Sheikh Daham bin Dardah Al-Bakhit Al-Fayez and his wife Gutnah bint Mithqal Pasha Al-Fayez, daughter of the paramount Sheikh of the Bani Sakher.
She married King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in 1972 when she was 15 years old and he was about 50 years old. They divorced in 2003 and she has since then lived in London, United Kingdom. The King reportedly soured on her because of their inability to produce a son. She is the mother of four daughters: Jawaher, Hala, Maha, and Sahar Al-Saud. Her daughters were held captive by the Saudi regime, prompting Sheikha Al Anoud to call on the international community to help them. In 2021, her daughter Hala died. Her daughter Maha died six months later.
Marriage to the Saudi king
When she was fifteen years old, Sheikha Al Anoud entered into an arranged marriage with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
“Al Anoud Al Fayez” enters the record as former wife of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (born 1957). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Anoud, Fayez and former can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Al Anoud Al Fayez” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Anoud, Fayez and former provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q54967144. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1957, 1972, 2003 and 2021.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Al Anoud Al Fayez” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.