Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab

In researching this short biography, I was astonished at the wealth of material that is available online, but it soon became clear that the people who write about him come from two solid archetypes; both at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Those who loathe Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab are guilty of including too many apocryphal sources in their work, while those who admire him stand accused of omitting critical parts of his history. Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab was certainly not a two-dimensional character who passed through events much as the Biblical Christ did. His admirers often describe his surroundings as being filled with misrule and debauchery- a literary technique that Gospel writers used on Jews in the New Testament. The intention, of course, is to dramatize a hero’s mission and grant an otherwise mundane story a sense of irresistible destiny.

Demonizing the context is dangerous. European anti-Semitism is fueled in large part by the colorless portrayal of Jews in the Gospels. I have carefully avoided being overly-simplistic in my analyses, and indeed, diverge occasionally from the main theme to explain matters that I deem are critical to understanding Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab and his environment.

I hope this essay benefits those interested in seeking answers about the sharp divisions within the Muslim community today.

Tribal Lore
The Najd, present-day Riyadh, was a harsh, arid and sparsely-populated place. The Arabs, after having established one of the greatest empires in Islam’s early days, had retreated into old tribal ways. Arabian life tended to gather round life-giving oases. Water was scarce and territory fiercely defended. Often, an area acquired the name of the oasis itself. In this way, the village that Bani (tribe) Tamim occupied was known as al-Uyayna. The borough, though overshadowed by the larger town of Huraimila [1], was destined to be the source of a revolution that would not only reshape the Middle-East, but also the Islamic world .

Learned Muslims are certainly no strangers to Bani Tamim. The Hadith explicitly mentions them, sometimes positively, but more often in a harsh manner. It is reported, for example:

Some people of Bani Tamim came to the Prophet and he said (to them), “O Bani Tamim! rejoice with glad tidings.” They said, “You have given us glad tidings, now give us something.” On hearing that the color of his face changed then the people of Yemen came to him and he said, “O people of Yemen ! Accept the good tidings, as Bani Tamim has refused them.” The Yemenites said, “We accept them.” — Narrated Imran bin Husain

Allah’s Messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace) was one day reviewing the horses, in the company of Uyayna ibn Hisn ibn Badr al-Fazari. Uyayna remarked: “The best of men are those who bear their swords on their shoulders, and carry their lances in the woven stocks of their horses, wearing cloaks, and are the people of the Najd.” But Allah’s Messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace) replied: “You lie! Rather, the best of men are the men of the Yemen. Faith is a Yemeni, the Yemen of [the tribes of] Lakhm and Judham and Amila. [...] Hadramawt is better than the tribe of Harith; one tribe is better than another; another is worse [...] My Lord commanded me to curse Quraysh, and I cursed them, but he then commanded me to bless them twice, and I did so [...] Aslam and Ghifar, and their associates of Juhaina, are better than Asad and Tamim and Ghatafan and Hawazin, in the sight of Allah on the Day of Rising. [...] The most numerous tribe in the Garden shall be [the Yemeni tribes of] Madhhij and Ma’kul.’ -– Ahmad ibn Hanbal and al-Tabarani, by sound narrators. Cited in Ali ibn Abu Bakr al-Haythami, Majma‘ al-zawa’id wa manba‘ al-fawa’id [Cairo, 1352], X, 43).

They were late converts, who when they came at last into Prophet Muhammad’s presence, insisted on debating with him. Appalled by their boasts of supremacy amongst Arab tribes, Prophet Muhammad elected Hassan ibn Thabit [2] to reprimand them. This he did by composing a humiliating ode that belittled them. Later, of course, Bani Tamim played a key role in the birth of the Kharijites; a cult that regarded ordinary Muslims as hypocrites and apostates who could be killed with impunity.

By the 15th century, al-Uyayna fell into the hands of the Muammar family, who enjoyed a rather quirky reputation for longevity. Wadi Hanifa, the river that nourished

al-Uyayna oasis, was also home to a number of tribes that lay like strung pearls along its banks. Nearby was al-Jubayla, whose glittering limestone hills had witnessed the fateful showdown between Khalid al-Walid, the brilliant Muslim general, and Musaylima al-Kadhab, the pretender to prophethood. The battle of Yamama had ended badly for Musaylima, who was unceremoniously acclaimed as a liar and a false prophet.

The most impressive feature of Najdi nomadism is its relative instability as compared with other tribal systems in the area. In North Yemen, for example, Yemeni tribes managed to preserve their structure over the same territory from pre-Islamic times until the present. Similarly, tribes in the Hijaz have managed to maintain their genealogical continuity over many centuries. This phenomenon is not replicated in Najd, where tribal turnover was both high and fickle. Constant immigration from the south and southwestern areas and migration out of Najd into the Fertile Crescent created a complex environment of fission and fusion among Bedouins. Prophet Muhammad’s frequent warnings about Najdi tribes proved far-reaching.

The Traveler
It was into this desolation that a man named Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab was born in 1703. His father was Abdul Wahhab ibn Sulaiman, a renowned qadi (judge) in al-Uyayna. He also had a brother, Sulayman ibn Abdul Wahhab. Abdul Wahhab ibn Sulaiman saw to it that both his sons received a grounding in the fundamentals of religion.

From a very young age, though, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab must have promulgated radical opinions. His father and brother, both respected scholars, detected heresy and warned others not to follow him. Sulayman wrote a book refuting his brother’s ideas, entitled Al-Sawaiq al-Ilahia fi al-Ra’d ala al-Wahabia, or Divine Lightning Bolts on the Teachings of Wahhab.

The book’s title is misleading. Its pages are inundated instead with
gentle and sincere invitations for his brother to repent.

“My brother asks: ‘A hadith sharif says: “Of all that will befall you, shirk is what I fear more.” Is not this a dalil of the fact that a part of this Ummah will be engaged in shirk?’

“I say: It is inferred by many other hadiths that this hadith refers to shirku-l-asghar. There are similar ahadith, narrated by Shaddad Ibn ‘Aws, Abu Hurayrah and Mahmud Ibn Labid (may Allah be pleased with all of them), according to which the Prophet (sall-Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) feared that shirku-l-asghar would be committed by his Ummah. It has exactly happened as it was foretold in the hadith, and many Muslims are guilty of shirku-l-asghar. But you, in your ignorance, confuse shirku-l-asghar with shirku-l-akbar, and the tragic consequence of this mistake of yours is that you regard as ‘unbelievers’ those Muslims that do not accept to call other Muslims unbelievers.”

Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab remained unmoved. He was wholly convinced that he was on the path of righteousness. After performing the hajj in Mecca, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab resumed his education in Medina under the tutelage of such luminaries as Muhammad ibn Sulaiman al-Kurdi and Muhammad Hayat al-Sindhi. Both shaykhs (teachers) professed deep unease over his ideas. Nonplussed, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab returned to al-Uyayna. Youthful zeal, however, soon propelled him to try his hand at exploration. Trade and business, which had been the Prophet Muhammad’s early occupation, seemed especially alluring. He left the oasis and traced a circuitous route that took him to Basra, Iraq, Iran and Damascus.

While there had always been a Shia presence in Mecca and Medina, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab was to have his first real taste of Shia rituals when he reached Iran somewhere between 1725-26. Unsympathetic to the context of the Shia’s intensity, he was appalled by what he saw and later condemned as ‘deviations’ and ‘innovations’. The thrashing that the Shia administered on themselves during Ashura especially [3], must have shaken him. He roundly denounced the practices, and fled when a mob pursued him.

He arrived in the venerable city of Damascus, where abandoned Crusader forts built on lush, green hills still overlooked Arab cities. Certain Turkish sources say that the impressionable young man had met with a British spy named Hemper. Hemper, so the story goes, had been implanted by the British government to sow discord in the Muslim world. He successfully managed to impregnate Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab with revolutionary ideas. Aside from the fact that the British had tried this in India with the Bahais and Ahmedies, there is little else going for this hypothesis. Daniel Pipes quickly dismisses it as an elaborate Turkish plot.

While in Damascus, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab was greatly impressed by ideas from the Hanbali School of Thought, as filtered through the 13th century scholar, Ibn Taimiyya. The latter, while a towering Hanbalite of his day, eschewed traditional Islam’s attachment to the Four Schools of Thought, and claimed the mantle of mujtahid, which granted him the right to make independent decisions. Thereafter, under the Mamluk Sultan’s patronage, Ibn Taimiyya declared the Mongol ruler of Baghdad, Ghazan Khan, an apostate and agitated for a rebellion against the Mongol empire. His efforts earned the almost unanimous condemnation of the ulema (religious scholars). He was imprisoned where he died embittered by his failure.

Admirers of Ibn Taimiyya assert that he had been a victim of tyranny, but there is good reason to believe that it was his theological stance that had set traditional Sunni scholars against him. Ibn Battuta, the famous Moroccan globetrotter, for example, sets the record straight:

“When I came to Damascus there was a man called ibn Taimiyya speaking about religious science, but there was something strange in his mind… Once he was doing kutbat aljuma’a and he said yanzilou rabbuna ila assam’a adunya, then he went down two steps on the minbar and he said kanuzuli hatha (like my descending). The people of Damascus jumped on him and wanted to kill him. [4]“

Yet, unlike Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, Ibn Taimiyya was, in the words of Hamid Algar (Wahabism, A Critical Essay):

“…a far more rigorous and careful thinker and an infinitely more prolific scholar.”

Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab next traveled to Medina, a natural stop to refine his interest in Hanbali jurisprudence. It was here also that Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab cultivated a passion for books on heretics such as Musaylima al-Kadhab, Sajah al-Aswad al-An’si and Tulaiha al-Assadi.

The proximity of Musaylima’s demise to his own hometown could hardly have escaped his notice. More remarkable still was that Musaylima had come from Bani Hanifa, whose remnants continued a brigand’s existence in the ramshackle outpost of al-Dirriya. Knowledge of al-Dirriya’s lineage would later prove invaluable.

Again, according to some commentators, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s Medinite teachers voiced concerns about him:

“He will be misguided, and he will misguide those for whom Allah willed the misguidance.”

A Short Homecoming
Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab returned to the Najd in 1727 with a band of African slaves as a bodyguard. Settling in Huraimila, which was his father’s new residence, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab quickly started preaching against what he saw as ‘innovations’. He dismissed practices such as visiting the graves of the Prophet Muhammad’s close companions as shirik, or polytheism. This is a label that the Quran applies on disbelievers rather than Muslims, so the accusations must have stung. Later, religious scholars who inherited Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s message would solidify this perception by spitefully redefining the practice of visiting the graves of honored predecessors as grave worship, though it was far from that.

It was around this time (1736), in the relative safety and comfort of his hometown, that he commenced work on the only literary output of his lifetime, entitled Kitab al-Tawhid, or Book on Monotheism. This reactionary magnum opus produced no new insights, only an annotated reprint of ahadith [5] that had been carefully selected to uphold his ideas. The title is provocative, to say the least, for it suggests that one of Islam’s most-cherished dogma, monotheism, had been abandoned by the Muslim community. The charge isn’t as superficial as it seems. A society without tawhid, or monotheism, is a throwback to the time of jahiliya, the age of ignorance which was characterized by disbelief and debauchery. Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s ideas on the Muslim ummah, or community, were beginning to evolve.

For obvious reasons, the majority of traditional scholars forbid the labeling of any Muslim environment, post-revelation, as jahiliya [6]. Such conservatism is justified in the wake of Syed Qutb’s imitation of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s apocalyptic theme in 20th century Egypt. Qutb considered present-day Muslim governments as apostates and hence, valid targets for jihad. In itself, revolution and rebellion went against the grain of traditional Islam.

While his father was alive, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s activities were severely curtailed. Abdul Wahhab ibn Sulaiman, after all, was a respected authority on religion, and together with his elder son, Sulayman ibn Abdul Wahhab, had openly and concisely chastised Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab. The latter was astute enough not to provoke further repudiation of his teachings. When his father finally passed away in 1740, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab embarked on a campaign of vociferous preaching. His belligerence angered Huraimila’s residents. At Sulayman’s persuasion, the town evicted his brother.

He fled to his family’s holdings in al-Uyayna. There, his preaching attracted some of his younger relatives. It must be noted that Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab had only just returned from a long journey; in the eyes of al-Uyayna’s impressionable youth, he represented a worldly-wise figure who was everything that the stuffy old elders weren’t. Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab cultivated and used this aura effectively, railing against the ‘aberrant’ practices he had witnessed in his travels. The Shia, especially, became his favorite scapegoat. Among other things, he condemned the smoking of tobacco and declared trees to be religiously objectionable. An appreciation of their beauty, according to him, could lead to apostasy.

The governor and qadi of al-Uyayna, Uthman ibn Muammar, was initially sympathetic to Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s preaching,. To cement his links with the oasis and prevent another Hurailima-like scandal from happening here, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab married Uthman’s paternal aunt, al-Jauhara. This was the first in a series of political marriages he would make to seal whatever tenuous alliances could be solicited in the Najd. In his lifetime, he married a total of 20 wives (taking care not to exceed 4 at a time, of course) who furnished him with 18 children.

Uthman ibn Muammar’s indifference, however, came to be sorely tested when Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab dragged a woman accused of adultery out into a public square and stoned her to death. Some report that he had, in fact, used a heavy boulder to crush her head. The action triggered widespread fury.

Non-Muslims would profess puzzlement at the villagers’ reaction. Does Islam, like Judaism, not condemn all adulterers to death by stoning?

The perception is true, but there is a caveat. Umar ibn Khattab, one of Prophet Muhammad’s close companions and a Rightly-Guided Caliph, is said to have caught a couple engaging in adulterous sex. The Quranic punishment for such behavior was indeed death by stoning, but Ali, another companion, reminded Umar that no fewer than four witnesses are required to certify guilt for such an accusation, and that if he acted without such testimony, he himself would sin. Umar abided by Ali’s advice and pardoned the couple. It must be noted here that although Umar- whose very shadow the devil was said to run away from- had witnessed the act, he had no authority to suspend Quranic laws.

Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s behavior was made worse by the fact that he was not recognized as al-Uyayna’s qadi, which was Uthman’s position. At best, the woman’s death was a product of vigilante justice, which flies completely in the face of Islam. In his book, the “The Eternal Message of Muhammad”, the late Abdul Rahman Azzam stated that an ulema “should be of mature age and a man of wisdom, enjoy popular support and be a person who draws on the…counsel of the natural leaders. But if he disobeys the commands of God and disregards the interests of the people, he will be repudiated.”

Hurailima had already repudiated him. History would repeat itself again. In 1744, under intense pressure from the ruler of al-Hasa, al-Uyayna expelled Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab. In the Najd’s context, being cast out was not an act of mercy, but a delayed death sentence. Set aside only for severe crimes, it entailed the critical loss of a tribe’s patronage and protection. It made him one of the non-asil, or outcasts with whom it was shameful to marry and befriend. After two expulsions, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab was painfully aware of the danger. There was hope in the south, though, and it was toward this direction that he went.

A New Friend in Bani Hanifa
His well-exercised instincts led him along the bank of Wadi Hanifa, past al-Jubayla’s limestone caves and finally into a small outpost called al-Dirriya, which was governed by Muhammad ibn Saud. Al-Dirriya was a familiar name. It was populated by a people who proudly claimed to be the last vestiges of Bani Hanifa. From his studies in Medina, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab knew that he was trespassing in the land of a tribe whose loins had produced one of Islam’s most malignant enemies, Musaylima.

The desert at that time consisted of two social components, namely the Hadar, or settled communities, and the Bedouins, or nomadic tribes. A striking feature of Hadari society was its total failure to evolve any reliable mechanism for effective rule and orderly succession. In most cases, dominance was fought over by several families, sometimes from disparate genealogical backgrounds. Succession was often effected through murder. This device reared its ugly head nearly a century later, when in the bitter war for power over Saudi holdings, Imam Turki was murdered by his nephew, who was in turn killed by Turki’s son, Faysal al-Saud.

In writings about Saudi Arabia, the kingdom is typically identified with the Bedouin and the ennobling tribal ethic that is supposed to suffuse the state, at least at its inception. This opinion is difficult to sustain for the state had been an exclusively Hadari effort with profound anti-tribal and anti-Bedouin tendencies. There is no greater evidence of this than the well-documented atrocities that the Saudi Ikhwan, who were inheritors of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s flagellant message, inflicted on nomadic tribes decades later.

This dogmatism stemmed from Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s own contempt for the Bedouin. He had attempted to kick-start his pogrom by enlisting Huraimila and al-Uyayna, both Hadari communities. That had ended in dismal failure, and he fled to al-Dirriya, another Hadari place.

Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s teachings found fertile ground in al-Dirriya, both in terms of the Saud clan’s political opportunism and its theological heritage. Thus, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s campaign to purify the faith was met with enthusiasm. He destroyed a tree that was particularly beloved by the Sufis, and prevented people from visiting caves which was believed to hold baraka in al-Jubayla. Ancient domes that had been constructed above tombs of the Prophet Muhammad’s companions and family were demolished, the sites covered over. By and large, his teachings were accepted, but not without friction. In a famous story, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab had demanded that all women shave their heads, but an indignant woman stood up and challenged:

“Hair is the precious ornament of a female as is the beard for a male. Is it apt to leave human beings deprived of their ornaments bestowed upon them by Allahu ta’ala?”

The comical quality of the story disguises an important moral. This was not the first time that Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab had re-interpreted Islamic law. His non-response to the outraged woman is testimony to his methodology, which in the end, was not based on what traditional scholars call ‘ijma’, or consensus of the scholars. To do otherwise would be to gainsay one the Quran’s most powerful yet ignored verses:

“There is no compulsion in religion. Truth is distinct from error.”

Traditional Islamic scholarship is well-acquainted with the dangers of coalescing religious authority on a single individual. Without the check and balance of ijma, which Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab regarded as destructive and tainted by subjectivity, rulings have a habit of leaning toward extremism. Ijma upholds the prophetic assurance- “My ummah will not unite upon error.”- and chains Muslims to the Prophet Muhammad’s warning- “O you people, beware of being extreme…for that which destroyed the people before you was none other than extremism in the religion.”

The Saud clan saw in Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s message an opportunity to cloak their ambitions in religion. This aspiration for Najdi domination was eagerly sealed, first by marriage between Saud women and the preacher, and then by the formal declaration of a proto-Saudi state in 1746. Using al-Dirriya as its base, dakwah (evangelism) was initially conducted peacefully, but as soon as it was clear that ibn Saud’s ideology of religiously-justified dominion was being met with maddening amusement, quickly degenerated into a brawl.

The theme of ‘tawhid’, or the apparent loss of it, was the ideological pretext that the Saud-Wahhab alliance exploited to attack otherwise Muslim towns. Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab insisted, for example, that his followers call themselves al-muwahhidun, or monotheists. The path he laid out was hence clear. The rest of the Muslim ummah were al-mushrikun, or polytheists and therefore licit targets for persecution, embargo, property-confiscation and outright raids; all of these were conveniently stitched into the tapestry of jihad. As Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s kitab al-tawhid starkly puts it, “The disbelieving polytheist has only two choices: (i) To embrace Islam or (ii) to be fought.”[7]

Purity through the sword
This militant-cum-religious doctrine was crystallized in an essay Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab wrote for Muhammad ibn Saud. Entitled “The Clarification of Unclarity Concerning the Creator of Heaven and Earth” [8], the newly-appointed Shaykh al-Islam spelled out for his emir that all present-day Muslims were disbelievers and had been so for the last six hundred years; the tenure of Ottoman rule. It was this accusation that prompted Muhammad Ibn Sulayman Effendi, a prominent scholar of that time to retort:

“It is more correct to call you, a single person, kafir, than calling millions of Muslims kuffar.”

In a process that would last almost half a century, however, the Saud-Wahhab alliance slowly defeated their opponents, both ideologically and militarily.

Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab was certain that the religious authorities in the two holy cities would come round to his point of view. Made confident by the backing of a zealous emir in Muhammad ibn Saud, he dispatched thirty wakil, or emissaries to Mecca to request for permission to perform the pilgrimage. These wakil had a more important goal, however, and that was to summon the Meccan ulema to support Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s vision. Grimly, the judges of the four official schools of Sunni Islam listened to the wakils’ arguments, and in the end, pronounced a verdict of rejection. They accused Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab of being a deviant and forbade his followers from performing the annual hajj. The Chief Mufti, Sayyid Ahmad Zayni Dahlan as-Shafi’i, was incensed enough to denounce Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s ideas in a book entitled al-Futuhatu-al-Islamiyyah [9].

“To deceive the ulemas in Mecca and Medina, those people sent emissaries in al-Haramayn, but these missionaries were not able to answer questions asked by Sunni scholars. It became evident that they were ignorant bid’ah (innovation) holders. Muftis of the four madhhabs (schools of thought) wrote a fatwa that declared them kuffars, and this document was distributed in the whole Jazirah. The Amir of Mecca, Sharif Mas’ud Ibn Sa’id, ordered that the followers of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab should be imprisoned. Some of them fled to Dariyyah and informed their leader of what was happening.”

This incident, among others, was one of the reasons that the Saud-Wahhab alliance desired control over the two holy cities. It seemed particularly criminal that Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s followers were barred while the Shia, whom he regarded as the worst of apostates, were allowed to walk Mecca’s streets freely. This, some commentators assert, was sufficient grounds to initiate hostilities against Mecca and Medina, ruled then by Ottoman proxies.

The logic is unnecessarily convoluted, given that the traditional ulema considered Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab as much a deviant as he considered the ummah-at-large to be in grave error. The ideological and physical embargo that the traditional ulema imposed on Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s followers find comfortable resonance with the aggressive action that both Prophet Muhammad and his companions took against heretics.

Meanwhile, the changes wrought on Bedouin society by the Saud-Wahhab alliance were drastic and violent. The nomads were re-indoctrinated in Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s interpretation of faith principles, and ritual observances forced down their throats. Ibn Bishr [10], Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s official biographer, proudly describes the Saud clan’s success in curbing Bedouin hegemony. His diagnosis of the Bedouin problem is typical of the Hadari view, in which he reiterates that the only way to deal with nomads was through the “sword”. In other words, compulsion.

Their campaigns enraged the rest of the Arab world, who saw in them a blatant and deadly denial of Quranic principles. Except for a few shameful bouts in history, Islam had never been spread at the point of the sword.

Other towns and tribes were attacked, their mosques and religious architecture demolished to make way for Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s “pure” religion, which he painstakingly anchored to the so-called Salaf, or Pious Predecessors. As a news report on the succession of the new King Abdullah puts it:

“Mohammad bin Abdul Wahhab…set about propagating by the sword a return to pure Islam.”

The only tribal ethic that the Saud-Wahhab alliance aspired to was the need

for expansion, both to protect itself from other tribes who deplored hegemony, and also to sustain its growing size. But the ethic is less a tribal trait than it is a primitive idea of society. Once set in motion, the virus-like behavior can never stop without destroying itself. Saudi expansion was due more to Muhammad ibn Saud’s recognition of this desert law of survival than to any divine intervention. It was either kill or be killed.

In 1750, an invigorated Saud-Wahhab alliance arrived at al-Uyayna to punish Uthman ibn Muammar for allegedly conspiring with al-Hasa. The irony was not lost on Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, who must have seen in the return a just revenge on those who had precipitated his early disgraces. To Muhammad ibn Saud, however, it was another piece of land to be added to the tally. Unsurprisingly, Uthman was killed and al-Uyayna fell into al-Dirriya’s control. By then, Sulayman ibn Abdul Wahhab must have felt vindicated for his opposition to his brother. Gathering what people he could muster, he led a revolt in Huraimila. This came to naught when Muhammad ibn Saud’s son Abdul Aziz promptly invaded Huraimala with 820 men. Sulayman fled to Sudair. Ten years later, the Saud-Wahhab alliance entered al-Hasa in triumph.

But the Bedouin, who hated tyranny, particularly the one imposed by the Saud-Wahhab hegemony, were motivated enough to launch a rebellion in 1764. In Narjam, they killed 500 of Abdul Aziz’s men and captured 200. The numbers were shocking, a testimony to the power of Bedouin hatred for their recent subjugation. Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, fearing that his adopted clan would be demoralized, quickly negotiated the prisoners’ release during an armistice.

In about this time, Sulayman ibn Abdul Wahhab and his family were captured and delivered to al-Dirriya, where the former ulema was given strict orders not to preach.

Of Deaths and New Directions
Muhammad ibn Saud died a year later and was succeeded by Abdul Aziz, but it would be another ten years before the Saud-Wahhab alliance consolidated their rule in Riyadh, which would henceforth become the capital of the new kingdom. By this time, more than 5000 people had been killed by a war that had been skillfully portrayed as a climatic showdown between muwahhidun and mushrikun. Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s adopted clan had gone beyond his wildest dreams, grabbing sizable territory, property and goods, and implementing teachings he had first tried, unsuccessfully, to impose on his birthplace. Ummah arabiyya, so to speak, stood on the brink of a glorious future.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Muslim world watched and waited as the crumbling Ottoman empire collected its still-considerable resources to deal with what they deemed was a rebellion to their rule. Muslim scholars who had not been subjugated continued to criticize and refute Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab. They saw in him a re-awakening of the ancient cult of the Kharijites, and based their opinion on an authentic hadith that said:

“They recite the Quran and consider it in their favor but it is against them.
They transpose the Quranic verses meant to refer to unbelievers and make them refer to believers.
What I fear most in my ummah is a man who interprets verses out of context.
They will pass through Islam as an arrow passed through its quarry.”

Unbeknownst to the Saud-Wahhab alliance, the Ottomans would send one of her most gifted generals, Muhammad Ali Pasha, into the Arabian desert. There, he would break the rebellion and bring the Saudi clan to heel. But this lay in the future, beyond the lifetime of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, and hence, this essay.

By 1787, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab felt confident enough to declare himself the leader of a worldwide ummah. This was his most direct challenge to the Ottoman empire. In 1791, the Saud clan seemed poised to overwhelm Mecca and Medina when Abdul Aziz routed Meccan loyalists, Shammar and Mutair, and made off with 100,000 sheep and goats and thousands of camels. The battle for Islam’s two holiest cities was gaining momentum.

Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab did not live to see his adopted clan overcome Mecca and Medina. In 1792, he died, almost a decade shy of being a centenarian. His acumen for survival had made possible the dawn of a new age in which the Saud clan would attain to power and begin the arduous task of finishing, this time in a global scale, what they had started out to do with the Bedouin. Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab dedicated almost his entire adult life to imposing, not unity, which he saw as dangerous and unstable, but uniformity.

He lies buried in an unmarked grave, but his name will remain forever etched in the minds of those who bear the same torch he did.

---

References:

[1] Location of tribes http://www.sunnipath.com/Resources/PrintMedia/Books/B0033P0001.aspx

[2] Diwan Hassan ibn Thabit [Beirut, 1966], p.440

[3] Sistani

[4] Tuhfat al-nuzzar or “Travels”

[5] the plural of hadith is ahadith, instead of the commonly quoted ‘hadiths’.

[6] Moderation in Islam, PERGAS

[7] Kitab al-Tawhid, Chapter: 4, Explanation of the Meaning of Tawheed and the Testimony

[8] Its Arabic title: kashf al-shubuhat an khaliq al-ardi wa al-samawat.

[9] The book exists in the Indiana University Libraries, listed under index DS38.1 .D34 1997.
http://www.indiana.edu/~libsalc/daym/1998newbooks4me-summer.htm

[10] Unwan al-majd fi tarikh najd, Uthman ibn Bishr

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