Wahhābīyah

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WAHHĀBĪYAH

WAHHᾹBĪYAH . An Islamic renewal group established by Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. ah 1206/1792 ce), the Wahhābīyah continues to the present in the Arabian Peninsula. The term Wahhābī was originally used by opponents of the movement, who charged that it was a new form of Islam, but the name eventually gained wide acceptance. According to the teachings of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, however, the movement is not a new Islamic school but, rather, a call or mission (daʿwah al tawḥīd) for the true implementation of Islam. The Wahhābīyah often refer to "the mission of the oneness of God" (daʿwat al-tawḥīd) and call themselves "those who affirm the oneness of God," or muwaḥḥidun.

Historical Background and Context

Renewal movements have deep roots in Islamic experience. The Qurʾān and the sunnah, or normative practice of the prophet Muḥammad, provide standards by which the belief and actions of Muslims in any age can be judged. A strict interpretation of these fundamentals has often provided the basis for an active call for reform. The Wahhābī call is one of the most famous of these so-called fundamentalist movements. Specifically, it can be seen as a continuation of the strict Sunnī tradition associated with the Ḥanbalī school of law based on the teaching of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (d. 855 ce).

Aḥmad ibn Taymīyah (d. 1328) was a Ḥanbalī scholar whose works have had a major influence on the thinking of fundamentalist advocates of renewal. He became well known for his opposition to devotional innovations and popular religious customs not specified in the Qurʾān or sunnah. His preaching against even established scholars made his work controversial, while his polemical skills made him popular.

The core of his teaching was the "science of the oneness of God" (ʿilm al-tawḥīd), which stresses the comprehensive nature and unity of the Islamic message. Rationality, mystic intuition, and the legal prescriptions are seen as parts of a single whole. Ibn Taymīyah rejected claims by Islamic mystics that "the law" and "the [mystical] path" were somehow separate. He also stressed that independent interpretation (ijtihād) by scholars was possible, although subject to clear rules. He actively opposed what he considered innovations in devotional practices, such as the visitation of the tombs of famous figures. In these and other themes Ibn Taymīyah provided a basis for later Sunnī fundamentalism, including the Wahhābīyah.

The Ḥanbalī school did not gain a mass following in the Islamic world, but groups of Ḥanbalī scholars had local influence in some regions. One such region was the Najd in central Arabia, where the Ḥanbalī tradition continued in towns with established families of Ḥanbalī teachers. Nevertheless, the local lifestyle in the Najd did not reflect a fundamentalist spirit. People commonly believed that trees and rocks possessed spiritual powers and that the graves of holy men were places of special holiness. Such a society contained many elements that Islamic fundamentalists view as manifestations of polytheism (shirk ) and the ignorance of the pre-Islamic era (Jāhīliyah).

Najd was not unique in the eighteenth-century Islamic world. While Islam had flourished in the strong empires of the fifteenth and sixeenth centuries, by the eighteenth century, compromises with local religious customs and ineffective political organizations led Muslims from West Africa to Southeast Asia to call for Islamic renewal. The Wahhābī movement emerged at the very center of this world.

History of the Movement

Wahhābī history can be divided into three periods, in each of which the movement is associated with the establishment of a state as well as a community of believers. While the call has been Wahhābī, the state in each case was based on leadership by the Saʿūd family.

The era of Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb

Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, born in the central Arabian town of al-ʿUyaynah in 1703, traveled and studied widely. In the process, he developed a belief in the need for purification of Muslim beliefs and practices, and this belief became his life's mission.

At first the mission took the form of preaching opposition to popular religious practices and Shīʿī Islam, in Basra and eastern Arabia. Returning to his homeland to continue this call, he initially won some support from the ruler of al-ʿUyaynah, but the vigor of his purification efforts soon aroused opposition, and he was forced to leave.

Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb then went to al-Darʿī yah, where the ruler was Muḥammad ibn Saʿūd. In 1744 the two men formed an alliance that became the basis for both the subsequent Saudi states and the Wahhābī movement. The ruler and the teacher worked together in the creation of the first Saudi-Wahhābī state.

The deaths of Ibn Saʿūd in 1765 and of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb in 1792 did not stop the expansion of the mission or the state. Political leadership remained in the hands of the Saʿūd family, while the family of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, subsequently called "the family of the shaykh," or Ᾱl al-Shaykh, maintained a position of intellectual leadership in the later history of the state and movement.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Saudi-Wahhābī community controlled most of the Arabian Peninsula and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. This central position and attacks on Ottoman territories in Iraq and Syria brought a reaction, however: The Ottoman sultan ordered the governor of Egypt, Muḥammad ʿAli, to use his newly reformed army to defeat the Wahhābīyah. In 1812, the Egyptian army took Medina and in 1818 captured the Saudi capital of al-Darʿī yah. With this defeat, the first phase of Wahhābī history came to an end.

The second Saudi-Wahhābī state

The Egyptian army did not remain long in central Arabia, and Saudi leaders soon reestablished their state with a new capital at Riyadh. Key figures in this restoration were a grandson of Muḥammad ibn Saʿūd, Turkī (d. 1834), and his son Fayṣal (d. 1865). Although smaller than the first, the new state restored the political and religious mission of the original one. An important part of the Wahhābī heritage is the work of administering and consolidating a functioning fundamentalist state in the nineteenth century.

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century the Saudi ruling family divided, and in the conflicts that followed the death of Fayṣal, other Arabian chieftains began to take control of Saudi lands. By the 1890s, the leaders of the Saʿ ūd family were forced into exile and the second state came to an end.

The twentieth-century revival

The third period of Wahhābī history began in 1902, when a young Saudi prince recaptured Riyadh. This man was ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥman, often called Ibn Saʿūd (1879–1953). ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz reconquered many of the lands of the first Saudi state in a series of bold diplomatic and military moves. The final steps came in the 1920s when, among other areas, Mecca and Medina again came under Saudi-Wahhābī control. Although geographic expansion stopped during that decade, the new Wahhābī state continued to develop.

The twenty-first century state is based on the pillars of Saudi leadership and the Wahhābī mission. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz consciously adhered to Wahhābī teachings, and the official constitution of the state is the Qurʾān. The "family of the shaykh" and the learned teachers play important roles as advisers and legitimizers of the state. At first they were important in administration but later were active primarily in traditional education and legal interpretation. A key to early Saudi military success was the creation of the Ikhwān, tribal soldiers organized in special settlements as warriors for the faith. A critical transition in the development of the state came in 1929, when the Ihwān unsuccessfully revolted against the pragmatism of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz's policies. Because the Wahhābī program is identified with the Saudi state, state policies represent an important definition of its mission. Thus the pragmatic style became characteristic of the Wahhābī movement during the twentieth century. In the spectrum of Islamic reform movements, however, the Saudi state continued to reflect a fundamentalist orientation.

Since the consolidation of the Saudi monarchy, the predominant tone of the Wahhābīyah has evolved significantly. Generally, fundamentalism works to change the existing social order. It is not a conservative style. However, the success of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz and his successors in creating a relatively prosperous state has favored a more pragmatic and conservative policy. While still within the tradition of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, the twenty-first century version of the Wahhābī mission works within the framework of a modernizing state.

A major factor in this development is the impact of Saudi oil revenues. Exploitation of oil resources began during the lifetime of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, and Saudi Arabia became a major oil-exporting state under his sons and successors, Saʿūd (r. 1953–1964) and Fayṣal (r. 1964–1975). Saudi policy in the early twenty-first century is designed to implement the fundamentalist call in a wealthy and modernizing state. An example is Fayṣal's ten-point program presented in 1962, which, like subsequent policies of Fayṣal's successors, Khālid (r. 1975–1982) and Fahd (r. 1982-), affirms that a modernizing state can be based on the Qurʾān and the sunnah.

Basic Ideas and Concepts

Despite the development of a more pragmatic ideology, the basic concepts of the Wahhābī program have remained quite constant. The oneness of God, or tawḥīd, is the fundamental concept in Wahhābī writings. It is an affirmation of the comprehensive nature of the statement "There is no god but [the one] God." Tawḥīd means that the political and economic realms are as much subject to God as are the realm of creeds. Any action or belief that seems to recognize ultimate authority or spiritual power in something other than God becomes poly-theism.

In the eighteenth century the concept of tawḥīd provided the basis for opposition to saint worship and other popular religious customs. In the consolidation efforts of the nineteenth century, tawḥīd formed the logical basis for the legal decisions and religious positions of the scholars in the state ruled by Turkī and Fayṣal. In the twenty-first century pragmatic fundamentalism of the Saudi state tawḥīd provides an Islamic basis for comprehensive planning and a Muslim orientation to all aspects of policy.

A second basic concept is ijtihād, or independent informed reasoning, which directs a person with the proper training to base opinions on direct analysis of the Qurʾān and the sunnah. The analyst using ijtihād is not required to accept the conclusions of the great medieval scholars. In fact, blind adherence to the teachings of such scholars could be regarded as polytheism.

The Wahhābīyah have not carried the emphasis on ijtihād to the extreme of rejecting all medieval Islamic scholarship. Instead, they have stayed within the Ḥanbalī tradition but have felt free to go beyond its limits at times. In the thinking of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, this flexibility opened the way for a more vigorous rejection of Sufism (mysticism) than is found generally among the Ḥanābilah. It also allowed the shaykh more freedom in developing the Islamic policy of the first Saudi-Wahhābī state and in later years has given the Wahhābīyah some freedom in adjusting to the changes of the modern era.

A different set of concepts involves aspects of life that the Wahhābīyah reject, including innovation (bidʿah ), idolatry or polytheism (shirk ), and sinful ignorance (jāhilīyah ). These concepts are in counterpoint to the positive positions involved in tawḥīd and ijtihād. The opposition to innovation is not simply a rejection of all change. After all, the Wahhābī movement began with the call for major changes in society. The Wahhābīyah oppose innovations for which a justification cannot be found in the Qurʾān or the sunnah. In this way many medieval devotional practices were rejected as "innovations." At the same time, the exercise of ijtihād can provide justification for changes that fall within Islamic limits.

Idolatry and sinful ignorance represent a violation of tawḥīd; they are the identifying features of the real nonbeliever. In the early days of the Wahhābī mission, opposition to idolatry and ignorance focused on concrete issues such as saint worship, veneration of trees and stones, and ignoring explicit Qurʾanic commands. In the twentieth century these concepts have been expanded to include ideologies that are viewed as atheistic (such as communism). Originally in Islamic history the so-called Age of Ignorance or Jāhilīyah was the period before the time of Muḥammad. However, in modern fundamentalist thought, the concept of Jāhilīyah has been broadened to include willfully ignoring the guidance for human life given in the Qurʾān and the sunnah. Such defiance makes people nonbelievers to be opposed by Muslims of the Wahhābī tradition.

General Impact and Significance

The establishment of the Saudi-Wahhābī state in the Arabian Peninsula represents the most concrete heritage and impact of the Wahhābī movement. Since the eighteenth century the Wahhābīyah have represented the spirit of fundamentalism in the central lands of Islam, establishing the tradition of a community based on the Qurʾān and the sunnah. However, the significance of the movement goes beyond the state. In the rigor of their attachment to the renewal mission, the Wahhābīyah have provided an example of what was and is possible. The implementation of the call for renewal contributed to the general spirit of fundamentalism in the eighteenth century. Some Muslims were directly inspired by Wahhābī teachings while others were affected more by their general effort. The fame of the Wahhābīyah spread to such an extent that by the nineteenth century almost any movement of rigorous fundamentalist reform came to be called a "Wahhābī movement."

The Wahhābīyah are the best-known example of a Muslim movement calling for strict recognition of the oneness of God, with all of the social and moral implications of that belief, and advocating the reconstruction of society on the basis of a strict and independent interpretation of the fundamentals of Islam. This message helped to inspire movements ranging from holy wars to modernist rethinking of medieval formulations. Following the Shīʿī fundamentalist revolution in Iran in 1979, the Wahhābī movement as represented by the policies of the Saudi state became a more conservative influence in a context of more radical Islamic revivalism. However, the Wahhābī mode of activist renewal also became identified with many of the militant Islamic movements of the early twenty-first century. As happened in the nineteenth century, "Wahhābī" came to be the term used to describe terrorist and militant groups as well as puritanical advocates of Islamic renewal. Both as the followers of the specific movement that developed in the Arabian Peninsula and as the adherents of movements of the "Wahhābī-type," the Wahhābīyah have had and continue to have a significant role in the modern history of the Islamic world.

Bibliography

There are a number of important primary sources for the teachings and history of the Wahhābīya. Of particular interest are the numerous works of Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, but few of these have been translated. His works are listed in an important biographical study, ʿAbd Allah al-Ṣaliḥal-ʿUthaymin's Al-Shaykh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, ḥayātuhu wafikruhu (Riyadh, n. d.). A large collection of legal decisions and letters by a number of important nineteenth-century Wahhabi leaders is contained in Majmūʿāt al-rasāʾil wa-al-masaʾil al-najdīyah (Cairo, 1927). Two important histories are ʿUthmān ibn Bishr's Kitab ʿunwan al-majd fī taʾrīkh Najd (Mecca, 1930) and Ḥasan ibn Ghannām's Rawḍat al-afkār (Bombay, 1919).

Major secondary sources include the works of H. St. John Philby, a close associate of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Ibn Saʿūd; see, for example, Arabia (New York, 1930). For the Ḥanbalī background, the standard work on Ibn Taymīyah and his impact is Henri Laoust's Essai sur les doctrines sociales et politiques de Taki-d-Din Ahmed ibn Taymiyya (Cairo, 1939). The life of Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is covered in the biographical study by al-ʿUthaymin. The life and thought of Ibn Abd al-Wahhāb and the subsequent movement's impact is discussed in Natana J. Delong-Bas, Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Threat (New York, 2004). The second Saʿūdi-Wahhābī state is described in R. Bayly Winder's, Saudi Arabia in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1965). For the twentieth century, there are many studies dealing with specific aspects of the movement, such as John S. Habib's Ibn Saʿūd's Warriors of Islam (Leiden, 1978) and Christine Moss Helms's The Cohesion of Saudi Arabia (Baltimore, 1981), which contains an excellent summary of Wahhābī teachings. A useful general survey of the history of the movement and of the three Saudi states is Alexei Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia (New York, 2000).