Between the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the following decade, colonizers ultimately left the territories that had been under their control in the Arab world. The last Arab state to obtain independence was Algeria in 1962, after a period of great tension and severe internal conflict with France. As a result, the newly independent Arab nations regained importance in the international arena and their political leaders became well-known, as in the case of Ǧamāl ʿAbd al-Nāṣir or Habib Bourguiba (Būrqība).

The Arab world was going through a radical change. The Free Officers Movement fomented revolution in the region and took over Arab monarchies in Iraq (1958), Yemen (1962) and Libya (1969). Ǧamāl ʿAbd al-Nāṣir represented the Arab world's ‘center of political gravity’ (Osman, p. 58) and a focal point of these demands for change. This fact prompted Egypt to assume a leading role in the entire region. In 1958, Egypt and Syria merged as one state, which was called the United Arab Republic (abbreviated to UAR). The United Arab Republic had a short life since it existed only until 1961; however, it represented a first step toward a larger unitary pan-Arab socialist state. With the Conference of Belgrade of 1961, Egypt and other Arab countries adopted nonaligned positions, which diverged both from NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Nonetheless, pan-Arab and socialist sentiments were very strong in many Arab countries and this inevitably generated tensions at an international level. The United States and the Soviet Union had already entered the Cold War era and the Arab world did not remain untouched by the emergence of the two power blocs. Egypt had tense relations with Saudi Arabia, which opposed pan-Arabism with pan-Islamism. In 1964, the accession of Fayṣal to the throne in the Kingdom of Āl Saʿūd marked the beginning of a new era, which was characterized by economic growth, projects of vital importance and reforms such as that concerning education (cf. Abd-el Wassie). Fayṣal was a modernist leader and at the same time pan-Islamist, as he feared the transmission of pan-Arabism in his country, a trend that was spreading rapidly in the Arab world at that time. At the time, Saudi Arabia was experiencing exceptional development, which was likely thanks to the rise in the price of oil and its respective revenues.