Will death of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah hasten reform?

CAIRO -- King Abdullah ibn Abdul Aziz, the monarch who ruled over Saudi Arabia since 2005 as a staunch ally of the United States, has died. He was 90 years old.

A statement read on Saudi national television announced his death late Friday evening and said Crown Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz had been named the new king.

Abdullah will be remembered by some as a cautious reformer who gingerly opened elements of the ultraconservative state and its economy to the modern world. He oversaw Saudi Arabia's accession to the World Trade Organization, was the first Saudi ruler to have presided over elections, and appointed women to high-level government positions.

Abroad, he shepherded the oil-rich country through the regional turmoil of the Iraq War, the Arab Spring, and the rise and spread of extremist jihadi groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also known as ISIS.

But his critics say Abdullah failed to live up to expectations of true reform in an absolute monarchy that brooks no dissent and has enshrined into law one of the most puritanical and extremist strains of Sunni Islam -- a place where women are still banned from driving, capital punishment is delivered in the form of public beheadings, and dissident bloggers are flogged in city squares.

Though crowned a decade ago, Abdullah effectively ran the Saudi Arabian affairs of state going back to 1996, after his half-brother (and former King) Fahd was incapacitated following a stroke.

Under his stewardship, Saudi Arabia grew to play a much larger and more prominent role on the international stage. Using the wealth and influence enabled by his country's 265 billion barrels of oil reserves, Abdullah acted to project Saudi policies across the region and its hotspots, from Libya and Egypt to Yemen and Syria.

Abdullah also reinvested oil wealth in a massive construction program, developing six different economic cities across the Kingdom in an effort to diversify the economy.

And though he worked in concert with the administrations of United States Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama as a key American ally in the Middle East, over the last few years, Abdullah increasingly indicated that the Saudis would pursue their own foreign policy interests and objectives.

His death comes at a time of massive regional turmoil: Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula demonstrated its global reach by striking the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, the resignation of Yemen's government, and the rise of ISIS.

THE NEW LEADER

The new king, Salman bin Abdul Aziz, has served as defense minister since 2011. Prior to that, he was Riyadh's governor for decades.

Abdullah was the sixth Saudi monarch to rule since his father, King Abdul Aziz Al Saud, founded the nation in 1932. Upon his death, succession passed to his sons, who have kept the throne within the same generation ever since.

But Abdullah's death and Salman's coronation lay the groundwork for the inevitable paradigm shift facing the House of Saud: the eventual transfer of power to the next generation of Saudis.

At 79 years old Salman, is himself no youngster, and is even rumored to suffer from dementia.

In a departure from tradition, Abdullah appointed a deputy crown prince - 69 year-old former head of intelligence Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz.

Though Muqrin stands next-in-line for now, the infamously competitive palace politics of the Saudi court are mercurial and often inscrutable.

But with Saudi Arabia's burgeoning youth population, the major tectonic shifts happening in the region, the slow but steady pace of modernization in a conservative Kingdom, and now, Abdullah's death, one thing is certain: the Kingdom is changing.