[1][2] He was the de facto ruler of the Bani Sakher after his father Fendi Al-Fayez gave him most of his responsibilities in the late 1870s,[3] and was the first person to have led Westerners to view the Moabite Stone in 1868.
[6] In September 1881, after the reunification of the Al-Fayez family under Sattam, he was recognized by the Ottoman Administration as the Emir of Al-Jizah and the paramount Shaykh of the Bani Sakher clan.
[10] Although his efforts towards peace and stability weren't fully successful, his legacy in reinstating control over the desert and his interest in agriculture would start a century long process of sedentariness in Jordan.
As Alois Musil recalls in 1907: "Even today, people still talk about how Prince Sattäm ibn Fendi of al-Fäjez himself punished wayward members of his own tribe, who made the roads of the territories under his sovereignty unsafe.
Sattam would become the ancestor of 6 of the following 7 paramount sheikhs of the Beni Sakher, and he is also the maternal grandfather of a branch of the Saudi Royal family from the marriage of his granddaughter Nouf to King Abdulaziz I.