Hassanal Bolkiah

Biography

Hassanal Bolkiah was born in 1946 at Istana Darussalam, the eldest son of the future Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien III. He was educated in Brunei and at the Victoria Institution in Kuala Lumpur, was proclaimed crown prince in 1961, and entered the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1966. When his father abdicated in October 1967 he was proclaimed the 29th Sultan of Brunei on 5 October, and he was crowned in August 1968.

In his early reign his father remained an influential adviser. He led repeated negotiations in London over British protection and defence, which produced the 1971 agreement giving Brunei full internal self-government and later the treaty under which the sultanate became fully independent on 1 January 1984. At independence he took the posts of prime minister, finance minister and home affairs minister and declared Melayu Islam Beraja the national philosophy; he has held the defence portfolio since 1986 and finance again since 1997.

He rules as an absolute monarch under emergency powers dating from the 1962 revolt, and oil and gas revenues have made him one of the world's richest people. His reign has seen a long legal fight with his brother Prince Jefri over billions of dollars drawn from the Brunei Investment Agency, and international protests after Brunei introduced a sharia penal code from 2014 that in 2019 extended to death by stoning for adultery and homosexuality. He is the world's longest-reigning current monarch and marked his golden jubilee in 2017.