Bolkiah Muʿizzaddin Waddaulah, Haji Hassanal

▪ sultan of Brunei

born July 15, 1946, Brunei Town [now Bandar Seri Begawan], Brunei

      29th sultan of Brunei.

      Hassanal Bolkiah was the eldest son of Sultan Sir Haji Omar Ali Saifuddin. He was educated privately and later attended the Victoria Institution in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, England. In 1961 Sir Omar named him crown prince, and when Sir Omar abdicated six years later, Hassanal Bolkiah became sultan on October 5, 1967, his coronation taking place on August 1, 1968. For the next decade, however, his father remained the power behind the throne. After the death of his mother in 1979, his father withdrew from public affairs, and the sultan quickly took the dominant role in the administration of Brunei. He made frequent trips throughout the country to listen to his subjects as well as to promote himself as ruler. In anticipation of independence from Britain, he began to create a native bureaucracy, replacing British expatriates in the civil service with Bruneians, and he cracked down on corruption.

      After having held Brunei as a protectorate for 95 years, the British formally withdrew on January 1, 1984. Although there were minor disagreements over matters such as the management of Brunei's huge investment portfolio, relations between the two countries continued to be friendly. Sir Omar died in 1986, and on October 5, 1992, the sultan, who also acted as prime minister and as the minister of defense and of finance, celebrated the 25th year of his reign. He continued to rule under a state of emergency declared by his father in 1962. In the 1980s and 1990s the sultan regularly appeared at or near the top of lists of the world's richest individuals, his fortune deriving from Brunei's oil and gas.

* * *