A love-hate relationship spanning several decades.

Damascus: When Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, the Sultan of Nejd, united the tribes of the Arabian Desert in the 1920s to create Saudi Arabia, he contacted a family friend from Damascus, Shukri Al Quwatli, asking for Syrian advisors to build a modern state.

Prominent Syrians made the then difficult journey to Saudi Arabia - long before the discovery of oil - rising to become heavyweights in Saudi public life in the decades to come, as advisors, ambassadors, and physicians to the Saudi King. Among those prominent were two doctors from Damascus Midhat Shaikh Al Ard and Rashad Pharoan.

When Quwatli became president in 1943, he relied on King Abdul Aziz's network in the West to build bridges with President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, hoping they could help Syria liberate itself from the French mandate.

King Abdul Aziz orchestrated a Quwatli-Churchill Summit in Egypt in 1945, the year his son and Foreign Minister Prince Faisal helped Syria become a founding member of the United Nations.

King Abdul Aziz fumed when Quwatli was overthrown by a CIA-backed coup in 1949, refusing to recognise its architect, General Hosni Al Zaim, as the new president of Syria.

In 1948, Quwatli and Abdul Aziz joined forces to launch the Army of Deliverance, sending volunteers to fight in Palestine before the Arab armies officially went to war after the creation of Israel in May 1948.

After King Abdul Aziz's death in 1953, relations were to take a new turn with his son and successor King Saud during the era of President Adib Al Shishakli.

King Saud was the first Saudi monarch to visit Syria under Shishakl. He offered Shishakli asylum when he was overthrown in 1954.

Relations temporarily plummeted during the early stages of the Syrian-Egyptian union in 1958, due to a never-ending rivalry for Arab leadership between King Saud and Egyptian president Jamal Abdul Nasser.

They were briefly revived betweem 1961 and 1963, only to worsen during Ba'ath Party rule in Syria. When Hafez Al Assad came to power in 1970, he immediately set about mending broken fences with Riyadh, famously shutting down anti-Saudi opposition media in Damascus, creating a "strategic alliance" with King Faisal, especially after Anwar Sadat signed the Camp David Accords in 1978.

The Saudi king's support for Syria during the October War of 1973 - when he famously imposed the oil embargo - was warmly received by the Syrians, who hailed him as a national hero, upon his untimely death when he was assassinated in 1975.

Faisal's successor, King Khalid, insisted that Syria keep an open channel with Iran, after outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980, believing that Syria's considerable influence in Iran could help moderate Iranian behaviour in the Arabian Gulf.

Khalid's successor King Fahd was the man to talk President Assad into joining Operation Desert Storm in 1991, to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. During the 1990s, Syria enjoyed an excellent balance of its foreign relations with the Saudis, the Iranians, and the Americans.

The two countries cooperated well through a middle-man in Lebanon, being Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, who saw to it that Syria ally Hezbollah received a free hand to lead its war of liberation against Israeli occupation of the South.

The death of President Assad in 2000 was yet another milestone, and the first Arab leader to take part in his funeral, and visit the new President Bashar Al Assad, was Crown Prince Abdullah.

Syria supported the Abdullah Plan in 2002, later renamed the Arab Initiative, to bring peace between Israel and the countries of the Arab League.

Relations hit rock-bottom in 2005, however, with the assassination of Hariri and the 2006 war in Lebanon, which was frowned upon by the Saudis, who described Hezbollah's activities as "adventurism."

Saudi Arabia famously boycotted the 2008 Arab Summit in Damascus, yet mended its fences with Syria during a summit over Gaza last January, sending an ambassador to Syria to fill a post that had been vacant for 18-months.

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