In a 1987 cover article about Mr. Khashoggi, Time magazine said his “unrivaled profligacy gilds his self-image as a grand merchant-statesman.” It said he spent $250,000 a day to support his lifestyle, operating in “a dazzling and ostentatious realm of luxury beyond the dreams of Croesus, a shadowy sphere of deals, arms brokering and billion-dollar investments.”

Soon after that article appeared, Mr. Khashoggi’s fortune began slipping away. His holding company in the United States, Triad America, filed for bankruptcy. Its biggest project, a hotel and shopping complex in Salt Lake City, fell victim to what he called “cash flow problems.”

In his later years, Mr. Khashoggi lived well but in much-reduced circumstances. He flew on commercial jets, fended off creditors and dismissed his bodyguard, a Korean martial arts expert known as Mr. Kill.

Mr. Khashoggi was born in the holy city of Mecca on July 25, 1935, one of six children. His father, the court doctor to King Ibn Saud, was of Turkish descent, leaving the family outside the web of connections, obligations and suspicions in the Saudi court.

Mr. Khashoggi attended Victoria College in Alexandria, Egypt, a traditional training ground for the Middle Eastern elite, where pupils were caned for using any language other than English. Afterward, he enrolled at what was then Chico State College in California.

Barely a year after arriving at Chico State, at 21, he brokered his first major deal, the sale of $3 million worth of trucks to Egypt. His commission was $150,000. He never returned for his college degree.